And the time when, to use their own
language, he "departed," and this is the sole epitaph. But innovations
have been recently made on this simplicity; a rhyming couplet or quatrain
is now sometimes added, or a word in praise of the dead One recent grave
was loaded with a thick tablet of white marble, which covered it entirely,
and bore an inscription as voluminous as those in the burial places of
other denominations. The graves, as in all Moravian burying grounds, are
arranged in regular rows, with paths at right angles between them, and
sometimes a rose-tree is planted at the head of the sleeper.
As we were leaving Nazareth, the innkeeper came to us, and asked if we
would allow a man who was travelling to Easton to take a seat in our
carriage with the driver. We consented, and a respectable-looking,
well-clad, middle-aged person, made his appearance. When we had proceeded
a little way, we asked him some questions, to which he made no other reply
than to shake his head, and we soon found that he understood no English. I
tried him with German, which brought a ready reply in the same language.
He was a native of Pennsylvania, he told me, born at Snow Hill, in Lehigh
county, not very many miles from Nazareth. In turn, he asked me where I
came from, and when I bid him guess, he assigned my birthplace to Germany,
which showed at least that he was not very accurately instructed in the
diversities with which his mother tongue is spoken.
As we entered Easton, the yellow woods on the hills and peaks that
surround the place, were lit up with a glowing autumnal sunset. Soon
afterward we crossed the Lehigh, and took a walk along its bank in South
Easton, where a little town has recently grown up; the sidewalks along its
dusty streets were freshly swept for Saturday night. As it began to grow
dark, we found ourselves strolling in front of a row of iron mills, with
the canal on one side and the Lehigh on the other. One of these was a
rolling mill, into which we could look from the bank where we stood, and
observe the whole process of the manufacture, which is very striking.
The whole interior of the building is lighted at night only by the mouths
of several furnaces, which are kindled to a white heat. Out of one of
these a thick bar of iron, about six feet in length and heated to a
perfect whiteness, is drawn, and one end of it presented to the cylinders
of the mill, which seize it and draw it through between them, rolled out
to three or four times its original size. A sooty workman grasps the
opposite end of the bar with pincers as soon as it is fairly through, and
returns it again to the cylinders, which deliver it again on the opposite
side. In this way it passes backward and forward till it is rolled into an
enormous length, and shoots across the black floor with a twining motion
like a serpent of fire. At last, when pressed to the proper thinness and
length, it is coiled up into a circle by the help of a machine contrived
for the purpose, which rolls it up as a shopkeeper rolls up a ribbon.
We found a man near where we stood, begrimed by the soot of the furnaces,
handling the clumsy masses of iron which bear the name of bloom. The
rolling mill, he said, belonged to Rodenbough, Stewart & Co., who had very
extensive contracts for furnishing iron to the nailmakers and wire
manufacturers.
"Will they stop the mill for the new tariff?" said I.
"They will stop for nothing," replied the man. "The new tariff is a good
tariff, if people would but think so. It costs the iron-masters fifteen
dollars a ton to make their iron, and they sell it for forty dollars a
ton. If the new tariff obliges them to sell it for considerable less they
will still make money."
So revolves the cycle of opinion. Twenty years ago a Pennsylvanian who
questioned the policy of the protective system would have been looked upon
as a sort of curiosity. Now the bloomers and stable-boys begin to talk
free trade. What will they talk twenty years hence?
Letter XL.
Boston. - Lawrence. - Portland.
Portland, _July_ 31, 1847.
I left Boston for this place, a few days since, by one of the railways. I
never come to Boston or go out of it without being agreeably struck with
the civility and respectable appearance of the hackney-coachmen, the
porters, and others for whose services the traveller has occasion. You
feel, generally, in your intercourse with these persons that you are
dealing with men who have a character to maintain.
There is a sober substantial look about the dwellings of Boston, which
pleases me more than the gayer aspect of our own city. In New York we are
careful to keep the outside of our houses fresh with paint, a practice
which does not exist here, and which I suppose we inherited from the
Hollanders, who learned it I know not where - could it have been from the
Chinese? The country houses of Holland, along the canals, are bright with
paint, often of several different colors, and are as gay as pagodas. In
their moist climate, where mould and moss so speedily gather, the
practice may be founded in better reasons than it is with us.
"Boston," said a friend to whom I spoke of the appearance of comfort and
thrift in that city, "is a much more crowded place than you imagine, and
where people are crowded there can not be comfort.
