The river at present is very low; I noticed to-day it had
much more of a blue-clear look than usual. I hear the slight ripples,
the air is fresh and cool, and the view, up or down, wonderfully
clear, in the moonlight. I am out pretty late: it is so fascinating,
dreamy. The cool night-air, all the influences, the silence, with
those far-off eternal stars, do me good. I have been quite ill of
late. And so, well-near the centre of our national demesne, these
night views of the Mississippi.
UPON OUR OWN LAND
"Always, after supper, take a walk half a mile long," says an old
proverb, dryly adding, "and if convenient let it be upon your own
land." I wonder does any other nation but ours afford opportunity for
such a jaunt as this? Indeed has any previous period afforded it?
No one, I discover, begins to know the real geographic, democratic,
indissoluble American Union in the present, or suspect it in the
future, until he explores these Central States, and dwells awhile
observantly on their prairies, or amid their busy towns, and the
mighty father of waters. A ride of two or three thousand miles, "on
one's own land," with hardly a disconnection, could certainly be had
in no other place than the United States, and at no period before
this. If you want to see what the railroad is, and how civilization
and progress date from it--how it is the conqueror of crude nature,
which it turns to man's use, both on small scales and on the
largest--come hither to inland America.
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