The Plymouth weekly Democrat. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1860-1869, 1860-02-02
MOBILE, Ala, Dec. sd, 1889.

MOBILE, Ala, Dec. 23d, 1889.
ED. DEMOCRAT: wrote you from New Or
leans, but what said have forgotten. The in
fernal cold and chill pinches the life out of me-
Showing here yesterday, and freezing last night.
One is constantly in draaght. Big hotels with
wide halls and stair cases and doors open. Steam
boats with a big current all The time of course
Railroad cars worse yet Half enough bed clothes
and no more Cold rooms and nothing but coal
fires. Either red hot cold damp chills. The
ID take such weather, and the comforts of tray
cling in it.
This is a nice little city. | like it far better
than New Orleans I crossed Lake Ponchartrain
and the Gulf in the night, and could see nothing
expect that it wa shallow water. The tide was
ont when we reached here, and we left the city on
our left and passed up the "Spanish pass" and
came down the rivcr-making some miles of ex
ira running, to get half mile. They have no
stone here, and all that is used is shipped from
Massachusetts. The cobble stone Is brought from
the Coast; but the ground is soft both here and
New Orleans that it does not hold well for pave
ment. In New Orleans they are paving with
square blocks of granite from Quincy, Mass. The
Custom house and Post Office here is built of the
same material, and is fine building costing some
$500 600. The Odd Fellows Hall and some 9th
err buildings here quite imposing. This is a
great cotton mart and but for the want of a har-
Dor, would become a large and wealthy CITY,
Ships of over five or six feet draught cannot come
within thirty miles of the city and have to be
loaded and unloaded with lighters. The cotton
warehouses cover ground and hold untold wealth.
The streets are full of drays, niggers and cotton
and other elements of driving business times. In
New Orleans they are mules altogether-a good
mule being worth $25O@ $500 Here they are
horses - and but few mules are quick enough
see some splendid looking and moving horses in
the cotton drays. There are many vessels of light
draught and steamboats, lying at the wharves.-
The steamboats, on the Alabama river are fine
boats, but those for the Warrior and Tombigbee
are not so nice.
This is another of the "frst-class hotels where
one pays for show and noise and everything but
comfort, except fashionable comfort, tO-wit:-
Climbing stairs, setting in n cold dining room, eat
ing cold victuals and pretending they are warm
ordering dishes with tempting names and totally
uneatable, having meals at all sorts of impossible
hours aud when no one wants them, and sitting
at table an hour and half to get something tC
keep soul and body together, while people &c
through all sorts of motions called dining tina
would drive man mad who is used to good
comfortable home dinner When you pay three
dollars per day for the privilege of ringing bell
and calling servant, to get nothing you ask for
unless you give bin fifty cents every time h'
comes; to be advised that the ''proprietors, desi
ring to make guests as comfortable possible
desire all neglect to be reported at the Office;
and when you do so to be set down as grumble
and have no more attention while you remain
when you sleep cold on mahogany bedstead, will
a forty cent blanket and snowy spread over you
where you dine ats P. NJ, the boat starts at 4, j
, takes an hour to get piece of meat, and hal
more little potatoe; where fifty cents block il
the price for passengers in a hotel hack or omni
bus and-in short-where man who loves hom
and q uiet and comfort and reasonable hours find
everything else but these. You will have MIC
rooms, fine furniture, elegant bill of fare, pent,
of outside comforts but the ID take the realitie
of fashionable hotel comforts. Bathurshin'
didn't mean to say half much, but the chill
and cold has pinched me into a misanthrope.
J leave this afternoon for Selma, on the Alabama
river, some $50 miles from here. If find N
pleasanter quarters or climate, shall either star
for Tallahassee, Fla, or for st. Paul. Min. hi
is said to be an extraordinary season here, an
> perhaps it is; but am under the impression, an
and the doctors here say it is Gl,oays enough lik
I the present to send consumptives and invalid
' generally who come here from the North, to "D'
w Jones' in a hurry.
Politics are comparatively quiet. You hear bu
little said, but that little is now all based on tw
D ideas. First, that tie free niggers must leave tn
the south, and second, that the North must repea
her obnoxious laws, such as the personal liberty
. acts. Unless the latter done the South will hav
: little confidence in the Union demonstrations @
the North so far as practical effect is concerned