A lively comment!--he said.--But Rome, in her great founder, sucked the blood of empire out of the dugs of a brute, Sir! The Milesian wet-nurse is only a convenient vessel through which the American infant gets the life-blood of this virgin soil, Sir, that is making man over again, on the sunset pattern! You don't think what we are doing and going to do here.Why, Sir, while commentators are bothering themselves with interpretation of prophecies, we have got the new heavens and the new earth over us and under us! Was there ever anything in Italy, I should like to know, like a Boston sunset?
--This time there was a laugh, and the little man himself almost smiled.
Yes,--Boston sunsets;--perhaps they're as good in some other places, but I know 'em best here.Anyhow, the American skies are different from anything they see in the Old World.Yes, and the rocks are different, and the soil is different, and everything that comes out of the soil, from grass up to Indians, is different.And now that the provisional races are dying out---What do you mean by the provisional races, Sir?--said the divinity-student, interrupting him.
Why, the aboriginal bipeds, to be sure,--he answered,--the red-crayon sketch of humanity laid on the canvas before the colors for the real manhood were ready.
I hope they will come to something yet,--said the divinity-student.
Irreclaimable, Sir,--irreclaimable!--said the Little Gentleman.
--Cheaper to breed white men than domesticate a nation of red ones.
When you can get the bitter out of the partridge's thigh, you can make an enlightened commonwealth of Indians.A provisional race, Sir,--nothing more.Exhaled carbonic acid for the use of vegetation, kept down the bears and catamounts, enjoyed themselves in scalping and being scalped, and then passed away or are passing away, according to the programme.
Well, Sir, these races dying out, the white man has to acclimate himself.It takes him a good while; but he will come all right by-and-by, Sir,--as sound as a woodchuck,--as sound as a musquash!
A new nursery, Sir, with Lake Superior and Huron and all the rest of 'em for wash-basins! A new race, and a whole new world for the new-born human soul to work in! And Boston is the brain of it, and has been any time these hundred years! That's all I claim for Boston,--that it is the thinking centre of the continent, and therefore of the planet.
--And the grand emporium of modesty,--said the divinity-student, a little mischievously.
Oh, don't talk to me of modesty!--answered the Little Gentleman,--I'm past that! There is n't a thing that was ever said or done in Boston, from pitching the tea overboard to the last ecclesiastical lie it tore into tatters and flung into the dock, that was n't thought very indelicate by some fool or tyrant or bigot, and all the entrails of commercial and spiritual conservatism are twisted into colics as often as this revolutionary brain of ours has a fit of thinking come over it.--No, Sir,--show me any other place that is, or was since the megalosaurus has died out, where wealth and social influence are so fairly divided between the stationary and the progressive classes! Show me any other place where every other drawing-room is not a chamber of the Inquisition, with papas and mammas for inquisitors,--and the cold shoulder, instead of the "dry pan and the gradual fire," the punishment of "heresy"!
--We think Baltimore is a pretty civilized kind of a village,--said the young Marylander, good-naturedly.--But I suppose you can't forgive it for always keeping a little ahead of Boston in point of numbers,--tell the truth now.Are we not the centre of something?
Ah, indeed, to be sure you are.You are the gastronomic metropolis of the Union.Why don't you put a canvas-back-duck on the top of the Washington column? Why don't you get that lady off from Battle Monument and plant a terrapin in her place? Why will you ask for other glories when you have soft crabs? No, Sir,--you live too well to think as hard as we do in Boston.Logic comes to us with the salt-fish of Cape Ann; rhetoric is born of the beans of Beverly; but you--if you open your mouths to speak, Nature stops them with a fat oyster, or offers a slice of the breast of your divine bird, and silences all your aspirations.
And what of Philadelphia?--said the Marylander.
Oh, Philadelphia?--Waterworks,--killed by the Croton and Cochituate;--Ben Franklin,--borrowed from Boston;--David Rittenhouse,--made an orrery;--Benjamin Rush,--made a medical system;--both interesting to antiquarians;--great Red-river raft of medical students,--spontaneous generation of professors to match;--more widely known through the Moyamensing hose-company, and the Wistar parties;-for geological section of social strata, go to The Club.--Good place to live in, --first-rate market,--tip-top peaches.--What do we know about Philadelphia, except that the engine-companies are always shooting each other?
And what do you say to New York?--asked the Koh-i-noor.
A great city, Sir,--replied the Little Gentleman,--a very opulent, splendid city.A point of transit of much that is remarkable, and of permanence for much that is respectable.A great money-centre.San Francisco with the mines above-ground,--and some of 'em under the sidewalks.I have seen next to nothing grandiose, out of New York, in all our cities.It makes 'em all look paltry and petty.Has many elements of civilization.May stop where Venice did, though, for aught we know.--The order of its development is just this:--Wealth;architecture; upholstery; painting; sculpture.Printing, as a mechanical art,--just as Nicholas Jepson and the Aldi, who were scholars too, made Venice renowned for it.Journalism, which is the accident of business and crowded populations, in great perfection.
