Silver City

“ I rode on up the valley to the settlement of Silver Lake City without meeting a soul.
“That city, as they call it, is beautifully situated, and is composed of adobe houses, the people seeming to have very little to do. Some mine in the mountains, others of the men are cowboys on the ranches down the valley, there are several stores, saloons, and a blacksmith shop or two, with an old mission chapel and a priest. There is a halfway inn there, and if the landlord is not a villain, then his looks belie him. ”

“ Search for the Silver City: A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan. By James Otis. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.
Two American lads, Teddy Wright and Neal Emery, embark on the steam yacht Day Dream for a short summer cruise to the tropics. Homeward bound the yacht is destroyed by fire. All hands take to the boats, but during the night the boat is cast upon the coast of Yucatan. They come across a young American named Cummings, who entertains them with the story of the wonderful Silver City, of the Chan Santa Cruz Indians. ”

“ Here and there, hid by pines and vines, up the dusty side-hill roads, one caught glimpses of pretty cottage homes, where dwelt the few who, when the tide had turned, were left stranded in this far-off California mining town.
Yes, Gold City was of the past. Her glory had long since departed. Yet somehow everyone expected its return. The old men read the 'Frisco papers, when they could get them, and grew excited when they heard that silver had fallen and gold had a new chance for life. ”

“ The city is squalid and sinister,
With the silver-barred street in the midst,
Slow-moving,
A river leading nowhere. ”

“ Chicago, Tunis, Johannesburg, Stockholm, Canberra, Strasbourg, Kiev, Hankow, Calcutta, Manila, Leopoldville. They were strange and alien names; to him, abstract symbols of Ducal power rather than concrete geographical localities.
It was easy to see that this was Miguel's abode. The walls of the city bristled with dark-skinned riflemen in blue shorts and gold brocade, zealously guarding their Immortal's city against armed attack. Standing outside the city walls, Kesley could see, looming above the blocks of low, grubby buildings, the arching sweep of Don Miguel's palace. ”

“ I’ve only been in town two hours, but it don’t dawn upon me that it’s ours with a cherry in it. There ain’t enough rus in urbe about it to suit me. I’d be a good deal much better satisfied if the citizens had a straw or more in their hair, and run more to velveteen vests and buckeye watch charms. They don’t look easy to me.”
“You’ve got it, Billy,” says Silver. “All emigrants have it. New York’s bigger than Little Rock or Europe, and it frightens a foreigner. You’ll be all right. ”

“ In the West a sucker is born every minute; but in New York they appear in chunks of roe—you can’t count ’em!”
Two years afterward I found that I couldn’t remember the names of the Russian admirals, and I noticed some gray hairs over my left ear; so I knew the time had arrived for me to take Silver’s advice.
I struck New York about noon one day, and took a walk up Broadway. And I run against Silver himself, all encompassed up in a spacious kind of haberdashery, leaning against a hotel and rubbing the half-moons on his nails with a silk handkerchief. ”

“ The Colony was even more grotesque and wonderful a place than Kesley had imagined, in that first dazzling introduction in the park. After the darkness of the world of the Twelve Dukes, and the different darkness of Mutie City, the Colony stood forth as a land of beacon.
Total anarchy prevailed, for one thing. People lived where they liked, ate as they pleased, worked or did not work. There was always enough food. The Colony was self-sufficient, insular, smug in its seclusion. ”

“ One might climb to the top of one of the great “sky-scrapers,” and gaze down upon a wilderness of houses, with roofs as innumerable as tree-tops, and people looking like tiny insects below. Or one might go out into the harbour late upon a winter afternoon, and see it as a city of a million lights, rising like an incantation from the sea. Round about it was an unbroken ring of docks, with ferry-boats and tugs darting everywhere, and vessels which had come from every port in the world, emptying their cargoes into the huge maw of the Metropolis. ”

“ Chicago, built on the very ashes of the Old City of that name, was the largest city of Duke Winslow's territories, home to some three hundred thousand souls. Kesley saw eyes brighten at the sight of his magnificent horse; men in the streets cleared back, giving way, as the South American party entered. ”

“ Among the new arrivals, of whom thousands flocked into the township every day, were some dozen men and women, who came in dusty and weary with the toils of the road. They had travelled more than a hundred and fifty miles, being attracted to Silver Creek township by the news of its wonderful prosperity. They were a common-enough troop in outward appearance, and did not look like traders or gold-miners. They had with them a dray drawn by one horse--a poor weak-kneed creature, to whom existence seemed to be a burden as he toiled painfully along with his load behind him. ”

“ Every man's example was an encouragement to his neighbour; emulation was excited, and all strove to outvie each other. But we must away from the scene--nearer ties claim our attention. In a week Silver Creek township will seem scarcely the worse for its terrible conflagration. Business will be carried on as usual and the building of new stores will be going on from one end of High Street to the other. None will be put up of canvas. ”

“ He rephrased the question. "What functions does the City carry out, aside from the normal routine of—of self-repair?"
"The City maintains a record of happenings in the Outer World; this record is not completely available for examination at the moment, due to unsettled conditions without. The City supplies manufactured goods to those who request them, as prescribed by its founders. The City endeavors to supply information within the bounds of self-safety, likewise as prescribed. The City—"
"Does the City know of a poet named Daveen?" Kesley broke in. ”

“ What, then, is tolerable in Chicago? Lincoln Park, which the smoke and fog of the city have not obscured, and the grandiose lake, whose fresh splendour no villainy of man can ever deface. And at one moment of the day, when a dark cloud hung over the lake, and the sun set in a red glory behind the sky-scrapers, each black, and blacker for its encircling smoke, Chicago rose superior to herself and her surroundings.
After ugliness, the worst foe of Chicago is dirt. A thick, black, sooty dust lies upon everything. It is at the peril of hands begrimed that you attempt to open a window. ”

“ They all gazed with interest upon the City by the Lake with its high buildings, and hurrying, scurrying people. The cloud above floated slowly along displaying different parts of the city and its surrounding parks and suburbs.
“Now, let us see Siam and find out what my brother is doing,” said the Prince, and immediately Chicago with its hustle and bustle faded from view and in its place stood the beautiful white palace of Siam. ”

“ After tossing restlessly for a while, he rolled over on his back and sat up. "Van Alen?"
"What is it, Kesley?"
"How big is Galveston?"
"About a hundred thousand people," van Alen said. "It's a very big city."
"Oh." After a pause: "Bet New York was much bigger, wasn't it?"
"Cities were bigger in the old days. Too big. It drove people mad to live in them. That's why the cities were destroyed. Your Dukes make sure the same thing doesn't happen again by building walls around the cities. Galveston won't ever get any bigger than it is."
"Is that the way things are in Antarctica, too?" ”

“ Newer Sydney, with its suburbs and homes along the numerous peninsulas projecting into the waters of Port Jackson, is modern, clean, and airy, and really convenient. Man is a lazy animal and prone to dote on nature's beauties, neglecting his responsibilities to nature. Sydney, proud of its harbor, builds there and forgets its city-self. There are no fine structures to speak of, no monuments, no art, and even the library has to borrow a roof for itself in a building essentially excellent but neglected as a municipal white elephant. ”

“ They knew that one word, Chicago,—and that was all they needed to know, at least, until they reached the city. Then, tumbled out of the cars without ceremony, they were no better off than before; they stood staring down the vista of Dearborn Street, with its big black buildings towering in the distance, unable to realize that they had arrived, and why, when they said "Chicago," people no longer pointed in some direction, but instead looked perplexed, or laughed, or went on without paying any attention. ”

“ Chicago, for a moment paralyzed after a second great fire, had risen from its ruins, white and imperial, and more beautiful than the white city which had been built for its plaything in 1893. Everywhere good architecture was replacing bad, and even in New York, a sudden craving for decency had swept away a great portion of the existing horrors. ”

“ Sylvia and Siward were in the music-room, very busily figuring out the probable cost of a house in that section of the city east of Park Avenue, where the newly married imprudent are forming colonies—a just punishment for those reckless brides who marry for love, and are obliged to drive over two car-tracks to reach their wealthy friends and relatives of the Golden Zone. ”

“ Many such old people set out betimes, on the Sunday afternoon to which Sylvia had been so looking forward, to scale the long flights of stone steps—worn by the feet of many generations—which led up to the parish church, placed on a height above the town, on a great green area at the summit of the cliff, which was the angle where the river and the sea met, and so overlooking both the busy crowded little town, the port, the shipping, and the bar on the one hand, and the wide illimitable tranquil sea on the other—types of life and eternity. ”

“ For many years now Chicago has been known as the ‘pork-packing town.’ Every visitor who comes from overseas insists upon being shown through the ‘Yards.’ English poets have celebrated Chicago for its stockyards odor, and missed the fresh spiritual fragrance of youth and a zest for life that simply exudes from the city through its smoke and its dirt and its city smells. ”

“ It is strange that in communities where one newspaper would languish, two are almost sure to flourish; and the Silver Creek Herald and the Silver Creek Mercury were not an exception to the rule. They led a prosperous and noisy life, and were conducted upon the usual abusive principles, with great vigour and some ability. Their establishments were in the High Street, where there were also sale-rooms, banks, hotels and restaurants, billiard-rooms, clothes and provision stores, and a store with "Pie-office" written over it. ”

“ Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction! But in Brooklyn the ways are narrow, and they lead to the Heavenly City of content. Central Park: there you are—the centre of things, hemmed in by walls of pride. ”

“ In the narrow street that climbs into the upper and newer town, there are curiosity shops of a fatal fascination for such as love old silver, which is indeed so abundant in the old curiosity shops of England everywhere as to leave the impression that all the silver presently in use is fire-new. There are other fascinating shops of a more practical sort in that street, which has a cart-track so narrow that scarce the boldest Bath chair could venture it. ”

“ These were the hotels, billiard-saloons, bars, and gambling-houses.
"It's a place bound to advance, sir," said Mr. Beck proudly. "Empire City, when I first saw it, which is two years ago, was only two years old. It is only in our country that a great city springs up in a day. Empire City will be the Chicago of the West."
"I see a city," said Captain Ladds; "can't see the people." ”

“ Upon it live the multi-millionaires of Cleveland, the finest residences being upon the northern side, where they have invested part of the profits of their railways, mills, mines, oil wells and refineries in adorning their homes and ornamenting their city. This splendid boulevard, in one way, is a reproduction of the Parisian Avenue of the Champs Elysées and its gardens, but with more attractions in the surroundings of its bordering rows of palaces. Here live the men who vie with those of Chicago in controlling the commerce of the lakes and the affairs of the Northwest. ”

“ But it was, when the parish of Don Silverio, an almost uninhabited village; a pale, diminutive, shrunken relic of its heroic self; and of it scarcely any man knows anything except the few men who make their dwelling there; sons of the soil, who spring from its marble dust and return to it.
It had shrunk to a mere hamlet as far as its population was counted; it shrank more and more with every census. There was but a handful of poor people who, when gathered together in the great church, looked no more than a few flies on a slab of marble. ”

“ But as to Royal City! The place tickled me about as much as if it were a cemetery and I were riding in the hearse. It wasn’t even as ripe as that railroad.
My first performance was to step into a mud-hole about half-way to my knees, and I wondered how my pearl-gray trousers stood up under that introduction to the town.
I couldn’t see Mr. Dragg or anybody else; there in that bowl among the hills the darkness was something a man could eat! ”

“ I now understand also how the men you meet look so thin and careworn, and can’t sleep at nights. We are not all saints in London. Chicago boasts that it is the wickedest city in the world, but I question whether New York may not advance a stronger claim to the title. Yet what an Imperial city is New York! How endless is its restless life! and how it runs over with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and worldly pride! ”

“ We sometimes forget that until the reign of George III a town was regarded as improving a landscape. A city was a glorious and beautiful thing, an object to be proud of. The hill of Zion is a fair place, the joy of the whole earth, because it had the holy city built upon it. Never since civilisation began has such ugliness been created as the modern English or American town. Ruskin saw in these structures a true index of the mind of their builders and inhabitants, and the sight filled him with horror. ”