Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1881-08-14
A MINNESOTA VILLAGE.

Town Notable for Quiet Comfort and
Solid Nothtngness-Deca yed Nininger
and a Cemetery IA a Suburb Mr.. Dom
nelly at Home-what He Abandoned for
Desolation.
have been to Hastings.
When said to Demades am going to
write something about it he uttered the
sententlous summary of Punch to the
matrimonial aspirant:
Don'tl
"Why," said he, "pretty soon you will
be doing Minneapolis for an analogous
reason which l will presently explain.
Now the fact is, no matter with what
fanciful trickery you invest it, that Has
tings Is the deadest town in Minnesota.
1t is as dead as Marley, and he was as
dead as door nail But there was
enough of him to get out respectable
and salutary ghost, and Hastings is too
dead for that-too dead to have any mis-
givings that the auroral prosperity of
nearly quarter of century ago might
have been the guarantee of progression,
of railroads, and continuous growth.
cit ought to be dead for, with its ca
pacities of meanness, If it had thriven
| according to the original scheme, 1t
| would have been wonder of cheap,
dubious, and hollow pretence.
1t had nothing of, or in itself, and when
it ceased. to be the highway to the river,
1t had no offsetting honest, native enter
prise.
"Look at its representative man LIE Due!
What does he do when he ought to do
something else? True to the dubious
and hollow pretence of the Hastings in
oculation, he gets out those characteristic
circulars, and then he is relegated to the
pleasant country house which he ap-
praised so extravagantly in his vain glory,
that the taxes are more than he can carry
Hastings had its big sheep in the farming
community of several counties in those
halcyon days of yore, and now since they
have been turned over to the railroads to
be shorn, the Hastings shears are hung
up and rusty"
You will infer that Demades has a
grievance. So he has, but am not 60
ing to tell what it is, for it is neither here
nor there.
1t has become some of the current
State cant to speak of Hastings
as a "dead town." but, nevertheless,
/ nit ont 1.Ir I,nfn
ment in statistics to prove the justice of
the assertion, it may be said, however,
| that it is about the handsomest town in
Minnesota, and that for the lover of ma
ture and the artist heart 1t has the great
er charm for being "dead'' to the re-
morseless business activity, and the
sweeping sway of Mammon which level
the heights, and sink the picturesque
generally.
Hastings stands in primeval loneliness,
sky, river and prairie making a grand
harmony of picture
Standing on Rose hill, one of these
August afternoons, can anything in the
State be more enhancing than the diver
sified view of woodland, river, majestic
bluffs, harvest fields and homesteads set
in the sunny mist and the quivering blue
haze of the horizon line? The partiality
of the Greeks for their picturesque val
| leys and plains, rather than for rugged,
savage scenery, is easily understood.
The serenity of nature is apparent in
their architecture, literature, and art
Sunny slopes, classic groves and smooth
seas were the influences which inspired
most of their creations.
Whether the peaceful landscapes affect
the people of Hastings socially, morally
and pecuniarily l cannot say-but the
spell of the place has wrapt them out Of
much semblance to their neighbors. So
Hastings stands like very beautiful
woman with nothing remarkable save
good looks, whose extraordinary dover
therein precluded the notion of stirring
usefulness and bristling activity.
Most of the houses look as if the own
ers had made goodly competence years
ago, and then retired into this soothing
inactivity and stiffness. Silence broods
over the town, broken only by the whis-
tie of cars and steamboats,, and the shall
low clang of church bells. The hum of
insects, the twittering of birds, and the
rustic of trees are different keys of one
blended strain in the mind.
In the evening listless knots of men
drone about the postoffice and
in store doors. They look aim
lessly into the wide street and at the
passers by--pertinaciously doing nothing
very warm, indolent and energy ex-
hailed
If you catch watts Of the talk 1t will
be concerning the harvest, and the po-
litical situation anent the governorship
this fall.
The streets are deserted by the farmers
these busy days, and the store folk have
more than the usual leisure for exchang-
speculations on the leading topics.
They havn't much incentive to keeping
any more than the simples of existence
in stock, and they buy goods close; leav-
ing the superfuities 10 be brought from
the capital-or below. The capital has