Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1888-10-08
A PICTURE OF HALIFAX.
A City Of Queer, Antiquated Structures.
A EestfuI 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 Balifax to the
shining sea and the far horizon beyond, is a
spectacle of unusual and reflective interest.
To cne accustomed to the brightness and
newness of architecture, TO the virility and
glowing in every day activities, and the snap
and fash 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 eSiIcise 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 a 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 q 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,
"hipped" 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, a still quainter favor 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 Ole
city Nobody is in hurry. You seldom sex
people about, or at the windows of the great
mansions Beggars beg hstlessly as in Cuba
One sleeps in street car as it creeps along
lulled by the slnggish somnolence of tn,
driver and the dreamful tinkling of the lazil,
shaken bell. In the shops there is a hush anc
quiet as at church. Tho very birds perch
adjust their feathers and chirp as If afte
some oldeQ habit, and not from impellin:
life and instinct of song. Citizens promenad
the streets-that is, when any are to be seel
as if hesitart and in doubt over the objec
, of their erraad. The noon and night canno
boom as if with delayed report, and thei
echoes rumble over the city with delinquen
echoings. Along the wharves, the watersid
folk and all business affairs of shipping seer
, to rest as if under delayed orders. And ava
, above all, up on the citadel heights, th
, measured pacings of the sentineis have life
! lessness that emphasizes this sense of endles
siesta, and harmouizes completely with th
! feeling of reposeful finality involuntaril
! possessing the loiterer here.-Edgar l
Wakeman in St Louis Republic