A Tale of One City: the New Birmingham / Papers Reprinted from the Midland Counties Herald""

I do not speak merely in regard to the growth, appearance, and the commercial progress of the town and

now, and the leading manufacturers found themselves in the happy position of men who were "getting on" and becoming rich. Men as a rule are, perhaps, more happy when they find they are making money than when they have mad

nial, and hospitable. They did not give themselves any fine airs or pretensions; indeed, they were often proud of their success and prosperity, and would sometimes delight in openly boasting of their humble beginnings, not always to the joy and delight of their children who might hear them. They were sociable, hospitable, generous-hearted, open-handed m

I can call to mind some little-I should say large-dinners, in which I have participated, the like of which

sert would be laid out on a large round table around which we gathered. Then would mine host call for his wine book-for he had a well-stocked cellar of fine vintages. Turning over the leaves of this book he would propose to

I remember my host said he had some seventeen-ninety something wine in his cellar, which he proposed we should taste, but for some reason, now forgotten, it was not produced, and I sometimes rather regret that I so narrowly missed the opportunity of tasting a last century wine. Perhaps

d coffee, and a little music. Supper-yes, my reader, a good supper would be announced about nine o'cl

he excellence of the viands, or to the fact that we took our pleasures not sadly but deliberately, I for one cannot remember ever

aying, "I shall be glad to see everyone at this table to dinner at my house this day week." Considering there were about thirty persons sitting round the mahogany th

de it their custom often to go and spend an hour or two in the evening at some of the old respectable hotels and inns of the town. They had been in the habit of meeting together at these hostelries in their earlier days to talk over the news, at a period wh

itors "put up," but the old-fashioned inns and taverns have mostly gone. The present generation of prosperous well-to-do men, too, are of a different stamp from their predecessors. They

e in all large communities. Many of these, finding themselves well off, begin to discover they had ancestors. They name their houses after places where their grandfathers lived or should have lived. They put crests upon their carriages; they embellish their stationery with a motto, and otherw

s that have come over our city during the past thirty or forty years. The everyday social life is in many respects different from what it was. Young people, with a higher education and more advanced ideas than the

ast, of well-prepared dishes. Under such circumstances social functions have naturally a tendency to become more formal, ornamental, and refined. Many of the older-fashioned school mourn the decay of the very thorough and hearty hospitality of times back, and have often complained t

I began to look about me with my boyish eyes. I made some general reference to these in the opening chapter of these sketches. I will now just indulge in a few br

h was held the first evening concert of the Birmingham Musical Festival in the year 1768. Cannon Street chapel has been too recently removed not to be remembered by many people,

ked up the back of the Town Hall. It was, indeed, an improvement when these wretched houses were removed and the back of the Hall was finished and opened out. It is, I believe, true that what became the back of the Town Hall w

d Birmingham Workhouse standing in Lichfield Street-that poor, dirty thoroughfare which doubtless furnished a fair number of occupants for the afore-mentioned institution. Looking forward as I do-at least in my sombre

urch. I almost shed tears to see the demolition of this church and landmark that had so many old associations. Some of these were no

remarks. I did not make notes in my early days, and now in my later years