A Tour of St. Louis; or, the Inside Life of a Great City

St. Louis: Western Pub Co, 1878. First Edition. Octavo. 554, xix pages The largest book stores in the West before the Gold Rush were in St. Louis and Chicago (though this would change as California became more settled in the next decade). The decline in the prices of books by the late 1870's is noted and the cost of acquiring sets of Dickens insnoted in terms of binding, etc at far below the prices even those with over 250 illustrations. After providing an early history of St. Louis, the author writes of the hundreds of businesses, churches, civic buildings most of which were gone by the early 1960's. The chapter on Ways That Are Dark discusses the schemes of thieves and swindlers that preyed on the citizens and visitors detailing exactly how the "pocket book dropping" scam, "snide jewelry sales", mock auctions to cheat the prospective bidder operated, all with illustrations. The "street Arabs" are the homeless children who wander the streets of the city destined for what at best would be menial labor. The scene he describes at its worst is characterized thievery and prostitution, then the tenements of St. Louis are described which in spite of their filth and terrible odors he points out are not as disgusting as those in New York. It particularly describes "Castle Thunder" which was named by the police as the worst in the city, where mixed races slumber on the roofs in the summer in what the writer calls "promiscuous groups". The gamblers, pimps, fortune tellers and, of course, the prostitutes whose bodies are found all along the Mississippi. Finally, the book deals with drunkenness, the insane asylum and the many charitable organizations trying to at least save a few from a life no different from any other large city where survival among the poor often trumps virtue. Bound in blue-gray blind stamped cloth lettered and decorated in gilt. A very nice copy showing only very edge wear.