I had seen something of cotton-mills
in our Lowell, and I was eager, if not willing, to contrast them
with the mills of Manchester; but such of these as still remained
there were, for my luckless moment, inoperative. Personal
influences brought me within one or two days of their starting
up; one almost started up during my brief stay; but a great mill,
employing perhaps a thousand hands, cannot start up for the sake
of the impression desired by the aesthetic visitor, and I had to
come away without mine.
I had to come away without that personal acquaintance with the
great Manchester ship-canal which I almost equally desired.
Coming or going, I asked about it, and was told, looking for it
from the car window, there, _there_ it was! but beyond a
glimpse of something very long and very straight marking the
landscape with lines no more convincing than those which science
was once decided, and then undecided, to call canals on the
planet Mars, I had no sight of it. I do not say this was not my
fault; and I will not pretend that the canal, like the mills of
Manchester, was not running.
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