The Iowa transcript. (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1858-1866, 1866-10-12

boots and brooches, and so your right-hand
neighhor is no hero At your left, "a fellow
Is busy with double fists kneading his straw
bed like crazy baker. Now here, now
there. and then pause and bent ear; and
then The paws, and so it went. Recall what
you heard him say, and you are impressed
with the truth that if aweary man is COM
PEELED to knead rat in straw bed, as he
was, he needs religion more than he needs
sleep. Across the narrow hall-narrow
enough to lead to life everlasting-a set of
teeth glitters sardonically from a spawned
| washstand, q scalp lock lies beside it, and
an aborigines of a skirt hoops around q
chair. @ for the days when our sweet
hearts and sisters were all and altogether
the work of the Lord, and not the cooper !!
And the moral Of the night is, that if you
sleep in n lantern you should cxtinguish
the light.
Descending TO the bar room in the morn
ing, you await ~ our turn at a tin washbasin,
a cake of soap, yellow as the locks Of 1ulus,
strong as the locks Of Sampson; an endless
towel, running upon a broken broom han
die: a harmless old comb, hung in chains,
like felon, and a bit of looking glass that
furnishes one cheek and fattens the other.
boot jack makes mouth at you from the
middle of the floor: so does a lean and
liver colored dog. A barber is driving a
''rattler,' his patient perched upon stool;
he flat upon feet as bare as a possibility
driver, arrayed III a buffalo robe, is asleep
in the bunk; a candle, with SCOTIA in
the wick, is smoking on the counter; so is
a man in buckskin; so is a bilious looking
stove. The chairs long ago ceased TO be
quadrupeds: discomfort is king, and dirt is
prime minister. Its a picture for Hogarth:
a tailpiece for his 'tend of all things" An |
yet ''mine host derives greater income
amid this wreck Of matter than he would
if the portfolio Of the Secretary Of War were
rendered, and he must abandon the tavern
to take it.
Aud the means that have rendered these
splendid regions accessible; the magnificent
system of railroads that is sounding the
Northwest; that is feeling for the Missouri,
reaching out over the unshorn pastures Of
God, and mile nearer its waters every
night. How towns crystalize along tina,
iron wand; how the corn springs up in the
furrow beneath its torch how it suggests
possibilities to-day, only to realize them to-
morrow. Let us take the census "Dixon
Air Line" striking straight out from the
shoulder to the Mssissippi; the "lowa 4
Nebraska and the Cedar Rapids X Mis-
souri, passing on the blow to the bluffs Of
Nebraska. And then for the other fingers
of this gauntleted hand now laid on the
West, we have the .'Freeport Line" the
"Madison Line" the "Kenosha & Rockford
Line" the "Green Bay Line" the PENN
sula Line" and there's one finger upon the
iron as there is another pointing to the Gold
and Silver Sta es. And this right hand has
been christened magnifcently: they an
chored one end of the name to Chicago,
flung the other all abroad like q steamer
over the Northwest and so they called it the
"Chicago & Northwestern" The wheels
clank to-day over nine hundred and seventy
six miles of iron, aud before men are weary
Of writing "lS6T," they will roll along
twelve hundred. And from what feeble and
recent beginnings has it all grown. Let
me rehearse the story another day.