a guest is usually expected to ascend to the very top of the house
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to take his cloak off; that he is certain to see, at every dinner,
an unusual amount of poultry on the table; and at every supper, at
least two mighty bowls of hot stewed oysters, in any one of which a
half-grown Duke of Clarence might be smothered easily.
There are two theatres in Boston, of good size and construction,
but sadly in want of patronage. The few ladies who resort to them,
sit, as of right, in the front rows of the boxes.
The bar is a large room with a stone floor, and there people stand
and smoke, and lounge about, all the evening: dropping in and out
as the humour takes them. There too the stranger is initiated into
the mysteries of Gin-sling, Cock-tail, Sangaree, Mint Julep,
Sherry-cobbler, Timber Doodle, and other rare drinks. The house is
full of boarders, both married and single, many of whom sleep upon
the premises, and contract by the week for their board and lodging:
the charge for which diminishes as they go nearer the sky to roost.
A public table is laid in a very handsome hall for breakfast, and
for dinner, and for supper. The party sitting down together to
these meals will vary in number from one to two hundred: sometimes
more. The advent of each of these epochs in the day is proclaimed
by an awful gong, which shakes the very window-frames as it
reverberates through the house, and horribly disturbs nervous
foreigners. There is an ordinary for ladies, and an ordinary for
gentlemen.
In our private room the cloth could not, for any earthly
consideration, have been laid for dinner without a huge glass dish
of cranberries in the middle of the table; and breakfast would have
been no breakfast unless the principal dish were a deformed beefsteak
with a great flat bone in the centre, swimming in hot butter,
and sprinkled with the very blackest of all possible pepper. Our
bedroom was spacious and airy, but (like every bedroom on this side
of the Atlantic) very bare of furniture, having no curtains to the
French bedstead or to the window. It had one unusual luxury,
however, in the shape of a wardrobe of painted wood, something
smaller than an English watch-box; or if this comparison should be
insufficient to convey a just idea of its dimensions, they may be
estimated from the fact of my having lived for fourteen days and
nights in the firm belief that it was a shower-bath.
CHAPTER IV – AN AMERICAN RAILROAD. LOWELL AND ITS FACTORY SYSTEM
BEFORE leaving Boston, I devoted one day to an excursion to Lowell.
I assign a separate chapter to this visit; not because I am about
to describe it at any great length, but because I remember it as a
thing by itself, and am desirous that my readers should do the
same.
I made acquaintance with an American railroad, on this occasion,
for the first time. As these works are pretty much alike all
through the States, their general characteristics are easily
described.
There are no first and second class carriages as with us; but there
is a gentleman’s car and a ladies’ car: the main distinction
between which is that in the first, everybody smokes; and in the
second, nobody does. As a black man never travels with a white
one, there is also a negro car; which is a great, blundering,
clumsy chest, such as Gulliver put to sea in, from the kingdom of
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Brobdingnag. There is a great deal of jolting, a great deal of
noise, a great deal of wall, not much window, a locomotive engine,
a shriek, and a bell.
The cars are like shabby omnibuses, but larger: holding thirty,
forty, fifty, people. The seats, instead of stretching from end to
end, are placed crosswise. Each seat holds two persons. There is
a long row of them on each side of the caravan, a narrow passage up
the middle, and a door at both ends. In the centre of the carriage