St. Louis

“ And to us the merry gurgle of each bottle was a knell,
Who could hope against such talent the convention to secure—
Hope to make our sham Democracy o’ercome their Simon pure!
No—the contest was a hopeless one—defeat has made me weak!
And I ne’er shall see St. Louis— St. Louis by the creek.
His trembling voice grew faint and hoarse—he motioned for a drink,
His eyes assumed a home-like look, he even ceased to blink;
His comrade mixed a cocktail, but the spark of life had fled—
The Bourbon from St. Louis in a foreign land was dead. ”

“ In St Louis, nevertheless, and from her merchants, have emanated many commercial enterprises of gigantic speculation, not confined to its own locality or the distant Indian fur trade, but embracing all parts of the continent, and even a portion of the Old World. And here it must be remembered that St Louis is situated inland, at a distance of upwards of one thousand miles from the sea, and three thousand from the capital of the United States. ”

“ He gave it platforms, planned its campaigns, contested every election in St. Louis, whether for municipal officers, for State legislature, or for Congress; and always fought his battles on the most advanced ground assumed by the growing free-soil party of the Union. The powerful and rapidly-increasing German population of St. Louis responded nobly to his zeal and skillful leadership. Soon a victory was gained; and St. Louis declared for freedom, amid acclamations that reverberated throughout the States that extended from the Ohio to the lakes, and from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. ”

“ But the fact remains that it was the first structure to span the river, and to end the importunities of the unspeakable ferry. And today it is, with all of its grime, the one impressive feature of downtown St. Louis. It is the only wagonway that leads from the sovereign state of Illinois into the sovereign city of St. Louis. Across its upper deck passes at all hours of the day and far into the night a silent parade of trolley cars, mule teams, automobiles, farm trucks, folk of every sort and description, on foot. It is as interesting as London bridge and a far finer piece of architecture. ”

“ They believe the chevalier's tales have spoiled me for my life in St. Louis, and that I would gladly leave them. When I see them sad over what they believe to be my heartlessness my own heart is like to break, but I say nothing, and they believe me to be entirely ungrateful and unfeeling. ”

“ "Altogether, St. Louis is a growing place, and the West has a large hand and a strong grasp. ”

“ Louis,—that just and austere king—looks with angry, fear-swept eyes down from the rolling heights of Forest Park, which knows him not nor heeds him, there is something of the same thing, but this city is larger and older and the forces of evil have had some curbing from those who have seen the vision and panted for life; but eastward from St. Louis there is a land of no taxes for great industries; there is a land where you may buy grafting politicians at far less rate than you would pay for franchises or privileges in a modern town. ”

“ Louis, though a Southern city, and an Eastern city, and a French city, and a German city, by being also Irish, proves herself American. [ 223]
It is in all that has to do with family life that St. Louis comes off best. She has miles upon miles of prosperous-looking, middle-class residence streets, and the system of residence "places" in her more fashionable districts is highly characteristic. These "places" are in reality long, narrow parkways, with double drives, parked down the center, and bordered with houses at their outer margins. ”

“ Not a day, in fact, passes in which those, who were your enemies, do not repeat with us, who are your faithful servants, that you are unquestionably greater here than in the Tuileries. And even on this rock, to which you have been transferred by violence and perfidy, do you not still command? Your jailors, your masters, are at your feet; your soul captivates every one that comes near you; you shew yourself what history represents St. Louis in the chains of the Saracens, the real master of his conquerors. Your irresistible ascendancy accompanies you here. ”

“ Louis; many Americans and foreigners removed here, and brought their property and their industry with them: and by the introduction of the use of steam-boats, a new and easy intercourse was opened with the shores of the Ohio, and with New Orleans, that important depôt of the western states. A glance at the map of the United States shows what an interesting place St. Louis is destined to become, when the white population has spread itself more westwardly II.97 from the Mississippi, and up along the Missouri river. ”

“ St Louis cannot serve as a port of call to mail-steamers or merchantmen on their way to the southern hemisphere. One goes to St Louis if one must, and this gives one the feeling of being a prisoner cut off from the rest of the world. ”

“ There is no center at which a visitor might stop, knowing by instinct that he was at the city's heart. It is a rambling, incoherent place, in which one has to ask which is the principal retail shopping corner. Fancy having to ask a thing like that!
I do not mean by this that St. Louis is much worse, in appearance, than some other American cities. For American cities, as I have said before, have only recently awakened to the need of broadly planned municipal beauty. All I mean is that St. Louis seems to be behind in taking action to improve herself. ”

“ From clubs, which are pleasant, I progressed to poker, which is pleasanter; from poker I stepped ahead to highballs and gin rickeys. And now I am prepared to reach my highest altitude. I intend to tell the very nicest thing about St. Louis. And the nicest thing about St. Louis [ 235] is the nicest thing that there can be about a place.
It discounts primitive street cars, an ill-set railway station, and an unfinished bridge. It sinks the parks, the botanical gardens, the art museum into comparative oblivion. ”

“ A city that owns itself, with a proper sense of dignity, it has never advertised itself in the modern meretricious fashion. And so the story of St. Louis, an honest tale, will speed best being simply told.
COLONEL AUGUSTE CHOUTEAU, ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF ST. LOUIS. FROM A PAINTING IN MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTION.
St. Louis was founded by Pierre Laclede Liguest and a few companions, all French voyageurs, in 1764; at least it was in that year that Laclede's lieutenant, Auguste Chouteau, cleared away the site of the present city. ”

“ But there is a world below, another nation, seldom mentioned in the aristocratic quarter of St. Louis, where vice, crime, poverty, and misery jostle each other, as pleasure and politics do in the upper town. This is the suburb of St. Roch, in whose tall dark houses and fetid alleys those are to be found whose birthright is toil, who spend life in supplying the necessities of to-day, while indulging in gloomy apprehensions for to-morrow—who have not one comfort in the past to cling to, or one hope for the future to cheer. ”

“ St Louis is the capitol of the far west, and must continue to increase. It is the central point of the great valley of the Mississippi which extends two thousand five hundred miles in width from the Alleghany or Apalachian mountains to the Chipewayan; and three thousand miles in length. It is seated upon a noble river, by which it is only three days voyage to the Mexican gulf,—only eighteen miles from the mouth of the grand Missouri, thirty six from the great artery of Illinois and two hundred from the Ohio, through whose waters it has access to every portion of the States. ”

“ Almost every city presents a paradox, if you will but [ 203] find it. The St. Louis paradox is that she is a fashionable city without style. But that is not, in reality, the paradox, it seems. It only means that being an old, aristocratic city, with a wealthy and cosmopolitan population, and an extraordinarily cultivated social life, St. Louis yet lacks municipal distinction. It is a dowdy city. It needs to be taken by the hand and led around to some municipal-improvement tailor, some civic haberdasher, who will dress it like the gentleman it really is. ”

“ Louis. — Beautiful Residences. — Forest Park. — The Levee. — Alton. — Old Friends. — Legend of the Piasa. — The Confluence of the Rivers. — The Union Depot. — The Car of the International Correspondence Schools. — Crossing the Bridge.
We reached St. Louis in the early morning hour, after a pleasant night's rest on our good car "Lucania." The country approaching St. Louis looks rich and luxuriant, with fine trees, and well-established country places. The effect of an older culture was at once apparent, as we approached this great city of the West. ”

“ A long, long, dangerous road lay before them: three thousand miles, across the mountains into the Blackfeet country, and across the plains guarded by the Blackfeet and the Sioux and other hungry people as bad.
But they got through all right, for they were clever and in earnest. They arrived at St. Louis in the summer.
St. Louis was then nothing like the St. Louis of today ”

“ St. Louis, while in some respects quite as remarkable, bore not the slightest resemblance to this of Mistress Madison's. It was a Turkish turban of white satin and velvet, with a jeweled crescent in front clasping a bunch of nodding white ostrich-plumes. Her gown, of pale pink satin, was heavily trimmed with ermine, and she wore gold chains about her waist and wrists, and carried a jeweled snuff-box in her hand. ”

“ Louis?”
“I am going to buy a mustang and a hunting outfit and go out on the plains.”
“What is your idea of starting from St. Louis?”
“Why, don’t all the hunters and trappers fit out there? I understand that it is the headquarters of the fur trade.”
“It used to be; but it is a smashing big city now, and the hunters fit out at other points. ”

“ New Englanders and Pennsylvanians, six, eight, and ten horses to a waggon, and cattle with their hundred bells, tinkled through the streets of St. Louis.
"Where are you going, now?" inquired the citizens.
"To Boone's Lick, to be sure."
"Go no further," said Clark, ever enthusiastic about St. Louis. "Buy here. This will be the city."
"But ah!" exclaimed the emigrant. "If land is so good here what must Boone's Lick be!"
Perennial childhood of the human heart, ever looking for Canaan just beyond!
The Frenchmen shrugged their shoulders at the strange energy of these progressive "Bostonnais." ”

“ The position of the city near the junction of the Missouri and the Mississippi, its traffic on the former river, with the whole of the great West, and by the latter with the Northern, Southern and Eastern States, give to St. Louis the means of an almost unlimited increase. Probably a railroad will connect St. Louis with the Pacific Ocean. It is an undertaking which is warmly promoted by a number of active Western men, and this would give a still higher importance to the city. Emigration hither also increases every year, and especially from Germany. ”

“ And this rolling, wooded region is most inviting, elevated, open, cheerful. No other eity in the West has fairer suburbs for expansion and adornment, and its noble avenues, dotted with conspicuously fine residences, give promise of great beauty and elegance. In its late architectural development, St. Louis, like Chicago, is just in time to escape a very mediocre and merely imitative period in American building. Beyond Grand avenue the stranger will be shown Vandeventer Place, a semiprivate oblong park, surrounded by many pretty and some notably fine residences. ”

“ Louis, and should exist no longer; nor need allusion be made to that eagerness of interest which the distant traveller, the man of literary taste and poetic fancy, or the devotee of abstruse science, never fails to betray for these mysterious monuments of the past, when, in his tour of the Far West, he visits St. Louis; many a one, too, who has looked upon the century-mossed ruins of Europe, and to whose eye the castled crags of the Rhine are not unfamiliar. ”

“ I do not forget that but for his courtesy I could not have gone to my fête."
Then she added roguishly:
"But I will make amends. I will introduce you to many St. Louis belles, the fascinating Pelagie Chouteau, Émilie Gratiot, who dances like a fairy, and Marguerite and Marie Papin, the beautiful sisters. And there are many more just as beautiful." ”

“ He found Ste. Genevieve unacceptable because of its distance from the Missouri river, and unsanitary location. Consequently he left Fort de Chartres in December, taking along a trusted young man, and surveyed all the land from Fort de Chartres to the Missouri river.
Page 2 He was enchanted to see the location where St. Louis presently stands. He did not hesitate a moment to found the settlement he planned. In addition to the beauty of the site, it had all the advantages one could wish for in a place which might become very important in the future. ”

“ Thus, finally, we pushed in at the vast busy levee of this western military capital.
At that time Jefferson Barracks made the central depot of Army operations in the West. Here recruits and supplies were received and readjusted to the needs of the scattered outposts in the Indian lands. Still I was not in the West, for St. Louis also was old, almost as old as our pleasant valley back in Virginia. I heard of lands still more remote, a thousand miles still to the West, heard of great rivers leading to the mountains, and of the vast, mysterious plains, of which even yet men spoke in awe. ”