378 SUNDRY JOURNEYS AND EXPERIENCES-I 



and the progress of the city northward since my earlier 

 visits was shown by the fact that the best hotel nearest 

 the center of business had become first the Irving House, 

 just at the upper end of the City Hall Park, and later the 

 St. Nicholas and Metropolitan hotels, some distance up 

 Broadway. Staying in 1853 at a hotel looking out upon 

 what was to be Madison Square, I noticed that all north 

 of that was comparatively vacant, save here and there a 

 few houses and churches. 



Going abroad shortly afterward, I gave three years to 

 my attacheship and student life in Europe, traveling 

 across the continent to St. Petersburg and back, as well as 

 through Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy, all of 

 which were then under the old regime of disunion and 

 despotism. To these journeys I refer elsewhere. 



Interesting to me, after my return home, were visits to 

 Chicago in 1858 and at various times afterward. At my 

 first visits the city was wretchedly unkempt. Workmen 

 were raising its grade, and their mode of doing this was 

 remarkable. Under lines of brick and stone houses, in 

 street after street, screws were placed; and, large forces 

 of men working at these, the vast buildings went up 

 steadily. My first stay was at the Tremont House, then 

 a famous hostelry; and during the whole of my visit the 

 enormous establishment, several stories in height, was 

 going on as usual, though it was all open beneath and 

 rising in the air perceptibly every day. Years afterward, 

 when Mr. George Pullman had become deservedly one 

 of the powers of Chicago, he gave me a dinner, at which 

 I had the pleasure of meeting a large number of the 

 most energetic and distinguished men of the city. Be 

 ing asked by a guest as to the time when I first visited 

 Chicago, I stated the facts above given, when my inter 

 locutor remarked, &quot;Yes, and if you had gone down into 

 the cellar beneath the Tremont House you would have 

 found our host working at one of the jack-screws/ I 

 had already an admiration for Mr. Pullman; for he had 

 told me of his creation of the Pullman cars, and had 



