It was evening when the train reached the end of our day's journey, and the party drove in a shower of rain to their quarters at the hotel.
Harrisburg has apparently seen its best days without having ever witnessed very good ones, but our means of judging were meagre indeed. The weather was bad, and our visit was very brief. It must be understood that I write of places as I see or find them, and the contrast between Philadelphia and the capital of the State of Pennsylvania, as we beheld it in the drive from the station to our hotel, was very marked in favour of the former. The shops in the main street belonged to the old country rather than to the new, and there was an aspect of "want of flourishing," as a friend said, which was not in keeping with the surroundings. And yet when John Harris, after his rescue from the Indians who were about to torture him and did not, though they did not foresee that they were about to be disposed of without torture, founded the city, less than a hundred years ago, on the banks of the Susquehanna, he had a very fine eye for a situation, and had fair grounds for thinking he had done a very good thing. But why was it made the State capital in 1812? Surely Philadelphia even then deserved the honour. We were told we should have put up at the Lochiel House (something to do with Simon Cameron who lives here, I suppose), but we did not, and that which was selected for the party was not of the first or second class. The sewers of the city were open, or only partially covered. The rats which played about in view of our sitting-room window were of a size of which Harrisburg may be justly proud, and I observed from the windows of the hotel many fine animals come up to take the air and see what was going on, with the style of well-to-do citizens, meaning no harm and fearing none. They were, perhaps, a little too numerous for the comfort of nervous people, though I will not aver that there is not plenty for them to do. The market-place across the way was ancient and dilapidated, or, as it was of wood, delignified.
It was not till a year before the Civil War Harrisburg received a charter, and at the moment of our visit the population did not number 80,000. A State House and Library, a State Arsenal, a State Lunatic Asylum, a County Prison, Opera houses, Masonic Hall, churches, Harris Park and Cemetery, and great ironworks, all unvisited, but duly enumerated by citizens zealous of the honour of their city, haunted conscientious tourists as things which ought to be seen, but they were not in the programme--we could not find them in the bond--and so they were taken for granted; not so the substantial interviews which had to be attended to, and the arrangements for visiting the Baldwin Iron and Steel Works, and Colonel Long's farm at Middleton, which were to be taken on our way to New York.