The Daily Dispatch

IVANHOE.

Correspondence of the Richmond Dispatch.

St. Louis, September 27, 1866.

There are 1,100 dram shops in St. Louis, including hotel bars splendidly fitted up, and lager-beer saloons indefinitely multiplied. "Everybody who sells liquor must be classed under the head of "dram-shop keeper," and take a license as such—even down to that numerous and respectable class of individuals known as apothecaries. Shade of Galen! what a damper on professional dignity. I am convinced that to be thus registered would be the death of some gentlemen of that persuasion in Richmond.

There are two very large tobacco warehouses here—one of them six stories high, owned by a German, and flanked on the left by the inevitable and inseparable adjunct, a lager-beer saloon. The other belongs to the State, and both are stored full of the weed.

A very large hemp warehouse is just completed, and has been selected by the ladies for holding their Southern relief fair for the benefit of Southern indigents. Many are the magnificent donations made by the generous-hearted of this and other cities to this mournful charity, and many I hope will be the hearts gladdened by the timely assistance it is designed to afford to the needy throughout the land.

The sale of physic and lager beer being the two most lucrative employments in the known world, as a matter of course renders the competition for eligible stands between these two classes of merchants quite lively hereabouts. No sooner is a store on a thoroughfare vacated than out rushes Mynheer to the agent or landlord with "Vat you scharge um rent for dat sthore, for one lager-beer saloon?" "The rent is $1,500 per year, sir," says the agent. "Eighteen hundro dollar! Wbew! Vell, I takes em."

The poor pill-driver, who has had his eye on the stand for months past, and has already planned the fitting-up, is left to study the uncertainty of all preconceived notions, together with the additional fact that landlords are no respecters of persons, but that of every tongue and of every calling he that will pay the price can take the key, with only one reservation—don't damage the house. The damage to be sustained by the public is a matter outside of his calculations, but which he generally and confidently leaves to be provided for by the first law of human nature—self-preservation. I am not sure but what I agree with his policy. If the people will recognize and perpetuate, by their patronage, the imbibing of lager, and whisky, and all that, even until all America be converted into one great beer vat, with a thousand-gallon still on every mountain side, and men shall quaff lager from every town pump, and scoop aqua vita from every running stream, and drink and drink until they lose their senses and commence to feel up for the ground. Why, let them do it. I do verily believe that then, after a while, a saline purgative might be exchanged for a mug of lager beer, and a dose of Dover's powders for a pint of whisky. Then might a druggist succeed in wresting from a vanquished rival a good place to practice his art, and by his recognized importance to the community establish his claim to their confidence.

The streets here are paved with three several materials, viz: iron, stone, and wood. On the principal business streets notice the Nicholson pavement, which is of oblong blocks of wood laid in coal tar and gravel, and making a floor-like surface, very conducive to pleasant rides in wheeled vehicles. The property-owners are separately taxed, in proportion to the number of front feet, to the tune of thirty-eight dollars per square for this improvement upon McAdam. Many of the streets and avenues, however, are macadamized with limestone, which being soft and easily pulverized under the combined forces of cart wheels and horse shoes, renders dust and mud now and then alike pestiferous to all the Bridgets of the city. Iron pavements, though very sightly, have been found unsuitable, owing to their slippery nature when much worn.

One of the res notabilia of St. Louis is her magnificent court-house, located in the very heart of the city, and lifting its capitoline dome high above the surrounding buildings, and standing like Cheops, in Egypt, imposingly grand in the presence of all beholders. The ascent to the dome is by easy stages from the rotunda over spiral staircases of iron, and containing, all told, 225 steps. A bird's-eye view of the city in all its length and breadth—circumscribed only by the strength of your optic nerve—with the grand old Father of Waters rolling beneath—will be your ample compensation for any expenditure of wind or muscle on your way thither. The material is principally white limestone. It occupies a whole square, and has Corinthian portico frontages on the four principal streets, to wit: Market, Chestnut, Fourth, and Fifth. It has been building (in modern phraseology) for the space of thirty years, and only completed a little before the war. It is, both in design and finish, much like the capitol at Washington. Without hyperbole, the St. Louis court-house may be booked as a credit to the city and a sublime monument to the architect, whoever he may have been.

The street railroads are a great institution here, as they are in all populous cities, affording, as they do, the means of rapid locomotion to distant points, either for business or pleasure. For five cents, good fractional currency, you can take a Fifth-street car the whole length, more or less. They are good stock here, as elsewhere, when judiciously and honestly managed. Tell Jackson to hurry up the Richmond concern, or he'll have opposition when I return.

A certain patent medicine man here resident, who has erected a turreted business house, a la Jayne, out of the profits of his nostrum, a few days ago undertook the heroic treatment of a case of cholera with tablespoonful doses of cholera mixture composed mainly of laudanum. A coroner's inquest held over the body of the unfortunate the next morning was so ungenerous as to lay the patient's death at the door of the aforesaid medicine man, alleging and declaring that the deceased came to his end from congestion of the brain, produced by the administration of large doses of narcotic medicine at the hands of Dr. J. H. McLane. Whereupon, the Doctor, in a card intended to be exculpatory, takes exception to the jury's knowledge of medical jurisprudence, and flatly denies that laudanum produces any such effect. When doctors disagree, then who shall decide? If anything farther will come of it, I know not, but in the mean time vive la humbug! Humbugs in physic; humbugs in law; humbugs in theology (so called); humbugs everywhere, as numerous as grasshoppers in Kansas, and fully as destructive to every green thing. Humbug! humbug! humbug!

One notable place of resort, and worthy of a more extended notice than can be here given, is the beautiful retreat three miles from town known as Shaw's Garden. The princely fortune of the gentleman whose name it bears, and his especial delight in the science of botany, has enabled him to concentrate within the area of a few acres a magnificent collection of the rarest and richest productions of the vegetable kingdom. It is presumable that the collection of rare exotics to be found here is not excelled, if equalled, in this country. To particularize would require the pen of a Linnaeus, wielded through a volume. Suffice it to say that a visit to St. Louis and environs would be incomplete without half a day spent luxuriating amid the floral beauties of Shaw's Garden, an institution so munificently endowed and so splendidly sustained by this true lover of nature's handiwork. As the counterpart to all this gorgeous array of nature and art, I noticed away off in a secluded nook of the grounds, in the dark shade of overhanging cedars, a splendidly carved mausoleum of octagonal shape, erected under the supervision of the owner, and designed to receive at no distant day the mortal remains of him who is now the presiding genius and master of ceremonies at this palace of Flora. May he long live to impress his visitors with the sweet urbanity which was conveyed in a passing remark to the writer as he glided past to look after his numerous employés in the discharge of their several duties.

As I am not in sympathy with the sports of the turf, I shall decline to notice the whitewashed enclosure and buildings attached, which I saw on my return to the city, and known as the La Clide race-course. Races over this track were postponed last week in consequence, not of the death of McKeever, on the Chicago course, the day before, but because the rains had rendered the track heavy. May the postponement be indefinite.

The time for the opening of the fairs—mechanical, agricultural, and southern relief—draws rapidly near, and with the primal days of the coming week and the coming month, will be gathered together here the usual concomitants of such institutions—pickpockets, garroters, shoulder-hitters, plugs and pimps, menageries, monkey shows, negro minstrels, boa constrictors—the greatest natural curiosities in the world, including the smallest woman and the biggest woman in the world—all these and more will the St. Louis fairs attract hither, to turn a penny or to steal a penny.

The fairs promise a complete success, if one may judge from the enthusiasm manifested by the managers.

With the subsidence of cholera (only 200 cases last week) and the fair attractions, the merchants hope to greet many of their country customers, who have declined thus far in the season to risk a visit to the city to make fall purchases.

Not the least interesting item which I am permitted to chronicle in the conclusion of my letter is that the thirty days' rain has ceased, the mortar beds on the cross streets and avenues are rapidly drying up, and the sunshine "fills me with a sweet delight which only he who feels it knows."

LIGSUM VITE.