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Children of the Market Place, a novel by Edgar Lee Masters |
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Chapter 30 |
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_ CHAPTER XXX Large mercantile establishments were building in Chicago. Elevators and pork-packing plants fronted the Chicago River. The harbor was being improved by the Federal government. The population had risen to more than ten thousand people. Great labor was necessary to keep the facilities of life equal to the growing demands upon it. The first water works had been installed at a cost of $95.50, and consisted of a well alone. Now the city purveyed water through wooden pipes, laid under the ground. The Illinois and Michigan canal, which Douglas had done so much to originate, was nearing completion. The thousands of Irish laborers engaged upon the work added to the liveliness and colorfulness of the city life. We had excellent mail service. Long since the drygoods box had disappeared which had served as the only depository of mail. The hogs had been barred from the main streets, so that in my boarding place at Michigan Avenue and Madison Street I was no longer disturbed by grunts and squeals as they fed and wandered through the city. Mr. Williams and I had formed a real estate and brokerage partnership, and we were making money at a phenomenal rate. The air was vibrating with the ring of the trowel and the hammer. Gardens and roadhouses had appeared in the pleasanter places out of town. Everywhere in the central part of the city were livery stables, restaurants, saloons. The harbor was full of sailing craft. Every day saw the tides of emigration pour upon this hospitable shore. I felt the stir of the new life, the growing city. I was fascinated with the money making. I had found new friends. My change of life had brought me happiness. Abigail and I saw much of each other and we talked of many things, and much of Douglas. I saw him as the symbol of this intense life, this miraculous development. He seemed to me the man of the hour, the man even of the age. No sooner was he sworn in as a Congressman than he proceeded to make his presence felt. He did precisely what he had done in Illinois when he came to Winchester, penniless and unknown: he seized an opportunity. He admired Andrew Jackson with an almost unqualified heart, and he rose to Jackson's defense in Congress. I have said that I was reading Niles' _Register_. Through it I was able to follow Douglas' career in Congress from the beginning. Abigail had made friends with a certain Robert Aldington, who had also come west to teach school. And when we met at the Williams' residence of evenings there were sharp exchanges of opinion between us about life, books, the new city of Chicago, the destiny of America, and Douglas. Aldington was keeping abreast with all the new books in America and England as well. He too had read De Tocqueville; but he was also familiar with Rousseau, Voltaire, the French Encyclopaedists; with Locke. And he assured me that Calhoun, the Senator from South Carolina, had written a treatise on the philosophy of government which for depth and dialectic power, was a match for Locke. He also knew the poets Shelley and Byron. He had studied the French Revolution. He was watching the feverish developments of Italy and Germany. The tide of emigration into Chicago and Illinois furnished him material for infinite speculation. What would this hot blood, seeking opportunity and freedom from old world restraints, do for the new country? He admired Douglas to a degree, but he disliked what he sensed in him as materialism. We were reading together the proceedings in Congress concerning the fine which had been imposed by court upon Jackson at New Orleans when he was in military charge of the city in 1812. Douglas had taken this as his occasion to make himself known to the House and to the country at large. He was nothing in Congress because of his achievements in Illinois. He had to win his spurs. He had contended with great force and brilliancy that Jackson, in declaring martial law, had not committed a contempt of court; that if Jackson had violated the Constitution in declaring martial law the matter was not one of contempt or for a local court to judge. "Do you see," said Aldington, "his mind runs in a channel of pure legalism, and then it escapes between freer shores." Aldington continued: "The trouble with Douglas is that he does not see that idealism is as real as realism. Douglas is something of a sophist. I do not mean to disparage his value to the country. But he is a genius in making the course of Jackson consistent. He has applied the same art to justify his own conduct. He will always prove an elusive debater; and you see, after all, this makes against his candor. This is not the sort of stuff of which a thinker is made. There are men who will not trifle with facts. They are your Shelleys, your Emersons. These men make the brain of a nation. Douglas may make its body, if you can make a body without making a brain." "That's exactly it," said Abigail. "But it is not possible to have a statesman as clear in his logic as Emerson, though dealing with coarser material than philosophy's. Surely there is a chance now for some mind of deep integrity, of real spirituality, to do something for this chaotic, vulgar mass of humanity that is grabbing, feeding, trying to foment war with Mexico. I am sure of it. Why this contempt of his for the idealist, the reformer? He classes all sorts of grotesque, half-insane people with the high-minded thinkers of the East. And now that he is in Congress, and will have to face some of them, Adams for example, I expect him to find a match." I tried to have my friends understand Douglas, as I understood him. What was he doing in Congress now? Trying to get appropriations for the rivers and harbors of Illinois. "Won't that ensure his reelection?" asked Abigail. "Yes, but do we not need the harbors?" I replied. "Why pursue Douglas with arguments like these?" Abigail's argumentativeness made me turn to Dorothy. Did I want a wife who had such definite opinions about masculine questions such as these? But now how to find Dorothy again? She had been back and forth between Nashville and Reverdy's. We had exchanged only a few letters, with long silences between. I began to depreciate myself for allowing Zoe or anything connected with her to thwart my will with reference to Dorothy. These meetings with Abigail and these conversations and arguments had clarified my mind both as to Dorothy and as to Abigail. I wanted Dorothy and I did not want Abigail. This being the case why should I not go to Dorothy and tell her so? If I went to her with the same will that I took up the matter of the farm, could I not win her? It was not many days before I had the rarest opportunity in the world to go to Nashville upon an interesting mission. Douglas suddenly appeared in Chicago. The session of Congress was over. He was going to Nashville to see Andrew Jackson. He asked me to go with him; and I took this opportunity to see Dorothy. _ |
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