15. Dickens encountered aspects of the American diet which displeased him
During the journey down the Ohio River Dickens was pleased to learn that meals were served three times a day, but displeased with some of the dishes presented. One which earned his ire was cornbread, “almost as good for the digestion as a kneaded pin-cushion”. He was also unhappy with the only beverage offered at the table being “jugs of cold water”. After nearly three months in America, he was beginning to chafe at the company of Americans. “The people are all alike, too. There is no diversity of character. They travel about on the same errands, say and do the same things in exactly the same manner, and follow in the same dull cheerless round”.
His arrival at Cincinnati cheered him immensely. “I have not often seen a place that commends itself so favorably and pleasantly to a stranger at the first glance as this does”, he wrote of the city he called “beautiful”. He also noted the growing temperance movement in the city and its influence on the local government. He spent several days there, observing the various and busy commerce along the riverfront and the businesses taking root at the base of the hills which ringed the basin containing most of the city. Though he did not know it, he was at the place where Roebling would use his steel wires to bridge the Ohio River, beginning the project just over a decade later.