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I am now at St. Louis, on the western bank of the river, deliberating whether or not to go to a bridal party to which I am invited, and where I should see a very lovely bride and "the cream of society" in this great Mississippi city, the second after New Orleans. I saw the bridegroom this forenoon, as well as the bride's mother; he is a very rich planter from Florida, and very much of a gentleman, an agreeable man. The bride's mother is a young-elderly beauty, polite but artificial; somewhat above fifty, with bare neck, bare arms, rouged cheeks, perfumed, and with a fan in her hand; a lady of fashion and French politeness. They have invited me for the evening. An agreeable and kind acquaintance of Mr. Downing's, to whom I had a letter, would conduct me thither in company with his wife, but--but--I have a cold, and I feel myself too old for such festivals, at which I am, besides, half killed with questions; so that the nearer it approaches the hour of dressing, the clearer becomes it to my own mind that I must remain quietly in my own room. I like to see handsome ladies and beautiful toilets, but--I can have sufficient descriptions of these, and I have seen enough of the beau monde in the Eastern States to be able to imagine how it is in the West.

I am now at an hotel, but shall remove, either to-morrow or the day after, to the house of Senator Allen, a little way out of the city.

I came here yesterday with my friends from Connecticut. The journey across the Iowa prairie in a half-covered wagon was very pleasant. The weather was as warm as a summer's day, and the sun shone above a fertile,   [p. 82]   billowy plain, which extended far, far into the distance. Three fourths of the land of Iowa are said to be of this billowy prairie-land. The country did not appear to be cultivated, but looked extremely beautiful and home-like, an immense pasture-meadow. The scenery of the Mississippi is of a bright, cheerful character.

In the afternoon we reached the little town of Keokuk, a high bank by the river. We ate a good dinner at a good inn; tea was served for soup, which is a general practice at dinners in the Western inns. It was not till late in the evening that the vessel came by which we were to continue our journey, and in the mean time I set off alone on a journey of discovery. I left behind me the young city of the Mississippi, which has a good situation, and followed a path which led up the hill along the river side. The sun was descending, and clouds of a pale crimson tint covered the western heavens. The air was mild and calm, the whole scene expansive, bright, and calm, and idyllian landscape on a large scale.

Small houses, at short distances from each other, studded this hill by the river side; they were neatly built of wood, of good proportions, and with that appropriateness and cleverness which distinguishes the work of the Americans. They were each one like the other, and seemed to be the habitations of work-people. Most of the doors stood open, probably to admit the mild evening air. I availed myself of this circumstance to gain a sight of the interior, and fell into discourse with two of the good women of the houses. They were, as I had imagined, the dwellings of artisans who had work in the town. There was no luxury in these small habitations, but every thing was so neat and orderly, so ornamental, and there was such a holiday calm over every thing, from the mistress of the family down to the very furniture, that it did one good to see it. It was also Sunday evening, and the peace of the Sabbath rested within the home as well as over the country.

When I returned to my herberg in the town it was quite dusk; but it had, in the mean time, been noised abroad that some sort of Scandinavian animal was to be seen at the inn, and it was now requested to come and show itself.

I went down, accordingly, into the large saloon, and found a great number of people there, principally of the male sex, who increased more and more until there was a regular throng, and I had to shake hands with many most extraordinary figures. But one often sees such here in the West. The men work hard, and are careless regarding their toilet; they do not give themselves time to attend to it; but their unkemmed outsides are no type of that which is within, as I frequently observed this evening. I also made a somewhat closer acquaintance, to my real pleasure, with a little company of more refined people; I say refined intentionally, not better, because those phrases, better and worse, are always indefinite, and less suitable in this country than in any other; I mean well-bred and well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, the aristocracy of Keokuk. Not being myself of a reserved disposition, I like the American open, frank, and friendly manner. It is easy to become acquainted, and it is very soon evident whether there is reciprocity of feeling or not.

We went on board between ten and eleven at night, and the next morning were in the waters of the Missouri, which rush into those of the Mississippi, about eighteen miles north of St. Louis, with such vehemence, and with such a volume of water, that it altogether changes the character of the Mississippi. There is an end now to its calmness and its bright tint. It now flows onward restless and turbid, and stocks and trees, and every kind of lumber which can float, are whirled along upon its waves, all carried hither by the Missouri, which, during its impetuous career of more than three thousand miles through the wilderness of the West, bears along with it every thing which it finds on its way. Missouri is a sort of Xantippe,   [p. 84]   but Mississippi is no Socrates, because he evidently allows himself to be disturbed by the influence of his ill-tempered spouse.

Opposite St. Louis boys were rowing about in little boats, endeavoring to fish up planks and branches of trees which were floating on the river.

The first view of St. Louis was very peculiar. The city looks as if it were besieged from the side of the river by a number of immense Mississippi beasts, resembling a sort of colossal white sea-bears. And so they were; they were those large, three-decked, white-painted steamers, which lined the shore, lying closely side by side to the number of above a hundred; their streamers, with names from all the countries on the face of the earth, fluttering in the wind above their chimneys, which seemed to me like immense nostrils; for every steam-boat on the Mississippi has two such apparatus, which send forth huge volumes of smoke under the influence of "high pressure."

When we reached St. Louis it was as warm as the middle of summer, and many of the trees in the streets yet bore verdant foliage. I recognize the tree of the South, the "pride of India," which bears clusters of flowers like lilac during the time of flowering, and afterward clusters of red, poisonous berries; and the beautiful acacia, alanthus, and sycamore.

November 7th. Scarcely had I reached St. Louis when I was obliged to take to my bed in consequence of violent headache. My charming young friend from New England attended me as a young sister might have done. When she was obliged to leave me to proceed forward with her father, I found here an Irish servant-girl, who looked after me excellently during my short indisposition. I was better, and then went to pay a morning visit to the bridal pair, who are now residing at the hotel. It was in the forenoon; but the room in which the bride sat was darkened, and was only faintly lighted up by the blaze   [p. 85]   of the fire. The bride was tall and delicately formed, but too thin, but for all this lovely, and with a blooming complexion. She was quite young, and struck me like a rare hot-house plant, scarcely able to endure the free winds of the open air. Her long, taper fingers played with a number of little valuables fastened to a gold chain, which, hanging round her neck, reached to her waist. Her dress was costly and tasteful. She looked, however, more like an article of luxury than a young woman meant to be the mother of a family. The faint light of the room, the warmth of the fire, the soft, perfumed atmosphere--every thing, in short, around this young bride, seemed to speak of effeminacy. The bridegroom, however, was evidently no effeminate person, but a man and a gentleman. He was apparently very much enamored of his young bride, whom he was now about to take, first to Cincinnati, and then to Florida and its perpetual summer. We were regaled with bride-cake and sweet wine.

When I left that perfumed apartment, with its hothouse atmosphere and its half daylight, in which was carefully tended a beautiful human flower, I was met by a heaven as blue as that of spring, and by a fresh, vernal air, by sunshine and the song of birds among the whispering trees. The contrast was delightful. Ah, said I to myself, this is a different life! After all, it is not good; no, it is not good, it has not the freshness of Nature, that life which so many ladies lead in this country; that life of twilight in comfortable rooms, rocking themselves by the fireside from one year's end to another; that life of effeminate warmth and inactivity, by which means they exclude themselves from the fresh air, from fresh invigorating life! And the physical weakness of the ladies of this country must, in great measure, be ascribed to their effeminate education. It is a sort of harem-life, although with this difference, that they, unlike the Oriental women, are here in the Western country regarded as sultanesses,   [p. 86]   and the men as their subjects. It has, nevertheless, the tendency to circumscribe their development, and to divert them from their highest and noblest purpose. The harems of the West, no less than those of the East, degrade the life and the consciousness of woman.

After my visit to the bride, I visited various Catholic asylums and religious institutions, under the care of nuns. It was another aspect of female development which I beheld here. I saw, in two large asylums for poor orphan children, and in an institution for the restoration of fallen women (the Good Herder's Asylum), as well as at the hospital for the sick, the women who call themselves "Sisters," living a true and grand life as mothers of the orphan, as sisters and nurses of the fallen and the suffering. That was a refreshing, that was a strengthening sight!

I must observe that Catholicism seems to me at this time to go beyond Protestantism in the living imitation of Christ in good works. The Catholic Church of the New World has commenced a new life. It has cast off the old cloak of superstition and fanaticism, and it steps forth rich in mercy. Convents are established in the New World in a renovated spirit. They are freed from their unmeaning existence, and are effectual in labors of love.

These convents here have large, light halls instead of gloomy cells; they have nothing gloomy or mysterious about them; every thing is calculated to give life and light free course. And how lovely they were, these conventual sisters, in their noble, worthy costume, with their quiet, fresh demeanor and activity! They seemed to me lovelier, fresher, happier, than the greater number of women living in the world whom I have seen. I must also remark that their nuns' costume--in particular the headdress--was, with all its simplicity, remarkably becoming and in good taste; and that gave me much pleasure. I do not know why beauty and piety should not thrive well together. Those horrible bonnets, or poke-caps, which are   [p. 87]   worn by the Sisters of Mercy in Savannah, would, if I were ill, frighten me from their hospital. On the contrary, the sight of these sisters here would assuredly make a sick person well.

During one of those prophetic visions with which our Geijer closed his earthly career, he remarked, on a visit to me, "Convents must be re-established anew; not in the old form, but as free societies of women and men for the carrying out works of love!" I see them coming into operation in this country. And they must have yet a freer and milder form within the evangelical Church. The deaconess institutions of Europe are their commencement.

The excess in the number of women in all countries on the face of the earth shows that God has an intention in this which man would do well to attend to more and more. The human race needs spiritual mothers and sisters. Women acquire in these holy sisterhoods a power for the accomplishment of such duty, which in their isolated state they could only obtain in exceptional cases. As the brides and handmaidens of Christ, they attain to a higher life, a more expansive consciousness, a greater power. Whether similar religious societies of men are alike necessary and natural as those of women, I will not inquire into, but it seems to me that they are not. Men, it appears to me, are called to an activity of another kind, although for the same ultimate object--the extension of the kingdom of God upon earth.

Last evening and the evening before I made my solitary journeys of discovery both within and without the city.

St. Louis is built on a series of wave-like terraces, considerably elevated above the Mississippi. It seems likely to become an immense city, and has begun to build suburbs on the plain at great distances apart; but already roads are formed, and even a rail-road and streets from one place to another. These commencements of suburbs are generally on high ground, which commands glorious   [p. 88]   views over the river and the country. Thick columns of coal-black smoke ascend, curling upward in the calm air from various distances, betokening the existence of manufactories. It has a fine effect seen against the golden sky of evening, but those black columns send down showers of smuts and ashes over the city, which has not a fine effect. They are building in the city lofty and vast warehouses, immense shops and houses of business. 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. How large this increase is may be shown by the fact that in 1845 its population amounted to thirty-five thousand souls, and that in 1849 it was nearly double that number. The State of Missouri has now about two millions of inhabitants, and is yet, as a state, not above thirty years old.

As I wandered through the streets in the twilight I saw various figures, both of men and animals, which gave me any thing but pleasure. Such I had often seen and grieved over at New York just such people, with the look half of savageness and half of misery--just such poor worn-out horses. Ah! we need still to pray the Lord of all perfection, "Thy kingdom come!" I returned to my hotel with a melancholy and heavy heart.

One of the peculiarities which I observed was the number of physicians, especially dentists, which seemed to abound. Every third or fourth house had its inscription of "physician." What could be the use of all their remedies here?

Among the persons who have visited me here were some of the so-called "New Church," that is, Swedenborgians, who, in consequence of my confession of Faith in "Morgon Väkter," had the opinion that I belonged to the "New Church." I could not, however, acknowledge that I did belong to the New Church; for I find in the old, in its later development through the great thinkers of Germany and Scandinavia, a richer and a diviner life. Swedenborg's doctrine of the Law of Correspondence has for its foundation the belief and teaching of all profoundly-thinking people, from the Egyptians to the Scandinavians; but Swedenborg's application of his doctrine appears to me not sufficiently grand and spiritual.

Every where in North America one meets with Swedenborgians. That which seems to be most generally accepted among them is the doctrines of Christ's divinity, and of the resemblance which the world of spirits bears to the earth, and its nearness to it.

In their church-yards, one often finds upon a white marble stone beautiful inscriptions, such as,

He (or she) entered the spiritual world on such and such a day.

This is beautiful and true; for I say with Tholuck, "Why say that our form is dead? Dead! that word is so heavy, so lifeless, so gloomy, so unmeaning. Say that our friend has departed; that he has left us for a short time. That is better, and more true."