Bismarck weekly tribune., 1888-11-30
A PICTURE OF, HALIFAX.
A City Of Queer. Antiquated Structures.
A Restful Old Place.

a Caty OF queer Anttquated Structures
A Restful Old Place.
From the sea, advancing upon the city;
from Pleasant Point, looking up the noble
basin; from Dartmouth. gazing across the
city facades and upon the fortressed islands,
or from the citadel, peering over the slate
roofs and grim chimneys Of Halifax to the
shining sea and the far horizon beyond, is q
spectacle of unusual and reflective interest
To one accustomed to the brightness and
newness of architecture, to the virility and
glowing in every day activities, and the snap
and flash Of business life in American cities,
the grimness, dullness and inaninity of Hall
fax challenges an involuntary testy resent
ment. The city is both too rich and too poor
for even comparatively equable conditions
Her rich are the lordly, isolated rich. Her
poor are the squalid, sodden, hopeless poor.
The former have no need to exercise enter
prise or disposition to bestow in countless
possible ways for their own and their city's
bettering, wise benevolence. But shutting
your eyes to this, and only contemplating
the whole as q concrete series of pictures for
passing inspection aud interest, there is
something like charm in her grim old
buildings, her shaded, unkempt streets, and
even in her ramshackle, storm ratified ten
ements. There is not on our coast, not ex-
cepting old Salem, such queer and anti
quated structures. They seem composite
of half city, half country architecture
of Normandy, Holland and our own
colonial time. Ponderous porches, little
windows, spacious porch boxes as
among the old Pennsylvania Dutch settle
ments, bunchy window roofs, cumbrous
gables, dormer windows innumerable,
shipped" roofs, shingled house sides and the
tremendous chimneys of Marblehead suggest
q day and time Of old, projected with sturdy,
lasting qualities into the new. If this be true
of the habitations, still quainter flavor is
found down on Upper and Lower Water
streets, on Bedford row and where the lanes
and alleys converge and intersect and strag-
gle along the wharves. All this region is like
the huddled water front groupings at our
own picturesque Gloucester; and more dimi-
nutive, but as dainty, bits can here be found
for the artists pencil as at ancient Nurem-
berg ITSELF
No one can deny the restfulness of the old
city. Nobody is in hurry. You seldom see
people about, or at the windows of the great
mansions Beggars beg listlessly as in Cuba
One sleeps in street car as it creeps along,
lulled by the sluggish somnolence of the
driver and the dreamful tinkling of the lazily
shaken bell. In the shops there is hush and
quiet as at church. The very birds perch,
adjust their feathers and chirp as, if after
some olden habit, and not from impelling
life and instinct of song. Citizens promenade
the streets-that is, when any are to beseen
-as if hesitant and in doubt over the object
of thei' errand. The noon and night cannon
boom as if with delayed report, and their
echoes rumble over the city with delinquent
echoings. Along the wharves, the waterside
folk and all business affairs of shipping seem
to rest as if under delayed orders. And away
above all, up on the citadel heights, the
measured pacings Of the sentinels have q life
lessness that emphasizes this sense of endless
siesta, and harmonizes completely with the
feeling of reposeful fnality involuntarily
possessing the loiterer here.-Edgar L.
Wakeman in St. Louis Republic