The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1853-1911, 1853-08-04

common sense perVadlng III our land!
internal improvements are character
istic of our time, and within reasonable
limits nobly characteristic. But no one
can be even casually acquainted with the
operations Of the country without seeing
extravaganza here also. Posterity, we
may be assured, will look with amaze
ment at these times. The velocity of q
railway train may be fearful, and yet by
custom we forget the immense speed. At
the city of Dayton, in Ohio, We found
recently constructed and constructing
nearly dozen railroads. At Indian
napolis, in Indiana, the ease is still more
extreme; and at Chicago, in Illinois, fair
ly wearied out, we gave up trying to un-
derstand the projects. Some of these
roads are hundreds of miles long, and all
in new States yet in infancy, or at most
extreme youth. But this is not excite
ment enough. Men are toiling to invent
new plans for business and to open new
avenues for trade. An American, We
heard, has just taken contract to cut
pine spars in Oregon for the Dutch navy,
The only question touching a railroad to
the Pacific is which of half dozen routes
shall be taken, and two years more may
witness three or four roads, thousands of
miles long, running parallel to each other,
commenced almost simultaneously We
have recently heard that lot, thirty-fve
feet by seVenty-fve, was rented in an
eastern city for twenty years at fourteen
thousand dollars a year. The earth is
moving at a fearful velocity around the
sun, and yet we seem to be standing still.
4 rate that to an Anglo-Saxon seems
slow to a man Of any other race mingles
earth and sky together, and turns his
brain into idiotcy.
The increase of lunacy in this country
is another frightful indication of the mad
extravaganza of the people. No wonder
indeed that in a single new State they
have built or are building three lunatic
asylums. The whole land will be a Iu-
nutic asylum if from some quarter, from
experience or observation, from states
manship or scholarship, from the pulpit
or the Bible, we cannot learn some de-
gree of moderation. The lawer speaks
until he is exhausted, and recruits per-
haps with frery stimulus of the worst
kind, though called by some foreign name
the merchant comes home too much worn
out at night to converse with his family
and lays himself on sofa until he is
reused to 60 into deeper sleep in his
chamber; the young and delicate girl is
driven through system of education in
tensely rapid and exciting, without any
suitable physical exercise, and then fades
every remaining vestige of rose in her
cheek, by late hours and unceasing dis
sipation, to break off suddenly and sense
lesSly, shortly after she is married, from
all society and labor until she is scarcely
able to walk, in work that, if things were
regulated in more reasonable way,
might and would be done mainly by SER
wants; the young man alternates from
exhausiing business to cxhausting revel-
ry; and the minister of the gospel works
ceaselessly and with intense excitement
until be destroys his bronchial tubes and
hopclessly skaters his entire nervous sys-
TEN; and whoever will not work at this
fearful rate is thrown aside US behind the
times One asks, in terror, whether this
is the infancy of a country; and if it is,
what kind Of nation will tumultuate O.
yer this land when two hundred millions
Of people shall be flying to and fro from
the Atlantic to the Pacific? If these
things are done in the green tree, what
shall be done in the dry?
Our next proof that the nation is mad
will hardly be questioned. 1t is drawn
from the fearful recklessness in regard to
human life. On recent Western tour
we passed over the Baltimore and Ohio
railroad day or two after two passenger
cars had been precipitated over bank,
and rolled over and over four times be-
fore they reached the bottom, distance
measured along the slope of eighty feet;
some eight or ten of the passengers being
killed. We saw the wrecks of the cars
at the foot of the embankment as we pas
sed by the spot. One morning on the
same tour, we took the train of the Mich
igan Central railroad from Chicago and
after passing along it eight miles were
directed to leave the car in which We
were and pass to another. In reaching
the latter we passed by the wreck of two
cars and an engine. Theevening before the
Of Ia1