THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
Wisconsin, he was very much puzzled. Of New York he had heard as “a monstrous big town,” so far away that it would take several weeks' travel to get there. He asked me how many people might live there, but when I answered about seven hundred thousand, he understood me to say seven thousand. He threw up his hands in amazement, and exclaimed: “Lord, seven thousand people living in one place! That place must be bigger than Chattanooga!” He had heard somebody say that the earth was traveling around the sun; but he could not believe it. Did he not see the sun rising every morning on one side of him and travel to the other side, where it set in the evening. He cherished some religious notions centering in a somewhat indefinite imagining of heaven and hell and salvation, which he had received from his parents and from itinerant exhorters. He had also heard something about the Atlantic Ocean, beyond which there were large countries with lots of strange people in them, and he was struck dumb with wonder and amazement, looking me over with a sort of puzzled curiosity, when I told him that I and many of the soldiers were born in one of those countries on the other side of the great water.
But I had another experience if possible still more astonishing. On one of my rides I struck a lonely log-cabin, in the door of which I saw a woman, surrounded by a lively flock of flaxen-haired children, some six or seven of them, of various ages. Being thirsty, I rode up to her to ask her for a drink of water, which she brought to me in a gourd from the well-bucket, presenting it with a kindly smile and a few words in the local dialect, which I did not understand. Although poorly clad and barefooted, she looked rather clean and neat; and so did the children, who had evidently been washed that day. She appeared to be about thirty-five years old, and the expression of her face was pleasant, frank, and modest. I asked her
[ 57 ]
