Chapter 57

Chapter 57
An Archangel

FROM St. Louis northward there are all the enlivening signs of
the presence of active, energetic, intelligent, prosperous, practical
nineteenth-century populations. The people don't dream, they work.
The happy result is manifest all around in the substantial outside
aspect of things, and the suggestions of wholesome life and comfort
that everywhere appear.

Quincy is a notable example--a brisk, handsome, well-ordered city;
and now, as formerly, interested in art, letters, and other high things.

But Marion City is an exception. Marion City has gone backwards
in a most unaccountable way. This metropolis promised
so well that the projectors tacked 'city' to its name in the
very beginning, with full confidence; but it was bad prophecy.
When I first saw Marion City, thirty-five years ago,
it contained one street, and nearly or quite six houses.
It contains but one house now, and this one, in a state of ruin,
is getting ready to follow the former five into the river.
Doubtless Marion City was too near to Quincy. It had
another disadvantage: it was situated in a flat mud bottom,
below high-water mark, whereas Quincy stands high up on the slope
of a hill.

In the beginning Quincy had the aspect and ways of a model New England town:
and these she has yet: broad, clean streets, trim, neat dwellings
and lawns, fine mansions, stately blocks of commercial buildings.
And there are ample fair-grounds, a well kept park, and many
attractive drives; library, reading-rooms, a couple of colleges,
some handsome and costly churches, and a grand court-house, with grounds
which occupy a square. The population of the city is thirty thousand.
There are some large factories here, and manufacturing, of many sorts,
is done on a great scale.

La Grange and Canton are growing towns, but I missed Alexandria;
was told it was under water, but would come up to blow in the summer.

Keokuk was easily recognizable. I lived there in 1857--an extraordinary
year there in real-estate matters. The 'boom' was something wonderful.
Everybody bought, everybody sold--except widows and preachers;
they always hold on; and when the tide ebbs, they get left.
Anything in the semblance of a town lot, no matter how situated,
was salable, and at a figure which would still have been high if the ground
had been sodded with greenbacks.

The town has a population of fifteen thousand now, and is progressing with
a healthy growth. It was night, and we could not see details, for which we
were sorry, for Keokuk has the reputation of being a beautiful city.
It was a pleasant one to live in long ago, and doubtless has advanced,
not retrograded, in that respect.

A mighty work which was in