Delaware gazette. [volume] (Delaware, Ohio) 1855-1886, 1868-05-29
Letters from Chicago.
CHIcAao. ~ - Is8.

! CHICAGO, May 18th 1865.
fsancho Panza could have looked
down the future a few centuries ne
would have not only blessed the man
who invented sleep but the man who
invented the sleeping car. Modern dis
covery has nearly turned the laugh on
/ Cervantes and taken the edge from his
satire. Even as the genius Of errantr.y
once adventured through airy dream
land on the wings Of fancy are we in
this modern day borne in a gilded char
lot, unconscious Of time and space or
care, over field and food, through
forest and mountain, on the strong PIN
ions ofsteam. 1t oul-quixotes Quixote
and realizes that of which the wild
dreams of Phaethon and Centaur were
poetic prophecies.
/ Daylight smiling from an unelouded
sky awolze us to see the comfortable
hOm esteads, green prairies and b1Os-
somed woods of the Hoosier State whir1-
ing in a giddy dance to the rear. It
was a morning to make one philan-
i
we blessed the man whose invention
had furnished weary souls so blessed
an escape from night long vigils in a
carbonic acid bath, amid baggage, ba-
bies and tObaccO-suoke we almost for
gave the wretch who had sought to muir
der sleep (if not to do something more
tragicaI) by laying the rails SO roughly.
Both alike were soon forgotten as Indi-
ana unfolded before as her rich carpet
of green, figured here and there with
clump of blOssoming foliage, and anon
spreading out in the far-reaching, IN
broken prairie until the emerald Of
earth was dimly lost in the blue Of
heaven.
/ As the hours and miles sped away to-
gether the mind began to long for a
change Of scene. The landscape of the
/ present seemed almost a copy of that
which had dropped out of sight hours
! ago, being an illusion OF space like that
Of time when
"To-dRy is so like yesterday 1t cheats;
! We take the lying sister for thesame."
At length an insignificant hilIock on
the prairie becomes a loveable object
and a cIump of trees relieves the eye
like an island where the railway train
seems as a ship sailing on an ocean of.
green. Thousands Of acres are covered
with water through which the prairie
grass has grown up paler than its won't,
suggestive of the delayed season and
continuous rains. The Ohio pioneer had
to take his axe and hew his way through
the wilderness but here in these prair-
ie wilds the plow waits only for the
drying of the soil and the genius Of
fortune is the skill that shall devise
means for draining off the water.
The timetable (nothing else) warns
you of your approach to the modern
City Of the Plain, the New York of the
West. On either hand stretches far
! as the eye can see an uncultuved, al
most uninhRbited prairie that You
would as unlikely conceive Of as the
vicinage to a great metropolis as the
wild pine barrens of North Carolina.
This admits Of one qualification, Look
ing forward you see n great ragged
cloud Of smoke darlzening the horizon
and that, they tell you, is Chicago. The
cloud enIarges as the wheels roll on
and beneath it appears at length a wide
circle of roof and spire bordered by a
fringe of struggling cottages. You dart /
across railway after railway with their
long Hnes-of telegraph poles dwindling
to fence paIihgs across the plain, then
you enter the fringe and in a moment |
you have passed from the wild prairie |
to region Of busy life which they tell |
you is your destination.
1t is we'll along in the afternoon when |
we have dined and are on our way to /
the National Soldiers and Sailors Con-
vention. Far out North clark street an
American fag floating over a long
plain building known as the Hall Of
the German Turner's Society indicates
the place where the convention is ait.
ting. The front Of the building is dec
GRATED with flags and festoons of ever
greens encircling a large scroll over the