Studies in The South and West, With Comments on Canada

During the winter and spring it uses Louisiana sugars; the remainder of the year, sugars of Cuba and the Sandwich Islands. Like all other refineries of which I have inquired, this reckons the advent of the Louisiana crop as an important regulator of prices. This establishment, in common with other industries of the city, has had to complain of business somewhat hampered by discrimination in railway rates. St. Louis also has what I suppose, from the figures accessible, to be the largest lager-beer brewing establishment in the world; its solid, gigantic, and architecturally imposing buildings lift themselves up like a fortress over the thirty acres of ground they cover. Its manufacture and sales in 1887 were 456,511 barrels of beer—an increase of nearly 100,000 since 1885-86. It exports largely to Mexico, South America, the West Indies, and Australia. The establishment is a marvel of system and ingenious devices. It employs 1200 laborers, to whom it pays $500,000 a year. Some of the details are of interest. In the bottling department we saw workmen filling, corking, labelling, and packing at the rate of 100,000 bottles a day. In a year 25,000,000 bottles are used, packed in 400,000 barrels and boxes. The consumption of barley is 1,100,000 bushels yearly, and of hops over 700,000 pounds, and the amount of water used for all purposes is 250,000,000 gallons—nearly enough to float our navy. The charges for freight received and shipped by rail amount to nearly a million dollars a year. There are several other large breweries in the city. The total product manufactured in 1887 was 1,383,301 barrels, equal to 43,575,872 gallons—more than three times the amount of 1877. The barley used in the city and vicinity was 2,932,192 bushels, of which 340,335 bushels came from Canada. The direct export of beer during 1887 to foreign countries was equal to 1,924,108 quart bottles. The greater part of the barley used comes from Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

It is useless to enumerate the many railways which touch and affect St. Louis. The most considerable is the agglomeration known as the Missouri Pacific, or South-western System, which operated 6994 miles of road on January 1, 1888. This great aggregate is likely to be much diminished by the surrender of lines, but the railway facilities of the city are constantly extending.

There are figures enough to show that St. Louis is a prosperous city, constantly developing new enterprises with fresh energy; to walk its handsome streets and drive about its great avenues and parks is to obtain an impression of a cheerful town on the way to be most attractive; but its chief distinction lies in its social and intellectual life, and in the spirit that has made it a pioneer in so many educational movements. It seems to me a very good place to study the influence of speculative thought in economic and practical affairs. The question I am oftenest asked is, whether the little knot of speculative philosophers accidentally gathered there a few years ago, and who gave a sort of fame to the city, have had any permanent influence. For years they discussed abstractions; they sustained for some time a very remarkable periodical of speculative philosophy, and in a limited sphere they maintained an elevated tone of thought and life quite in contrast with our general materialism. The circle is broken, the members are scattered. Probably the town never understood them, perhaps they did not altogether understand each other, and maybe the tremendous conflict of Kant and Hegel settled nothing. But if there is anything that can be demonstrated in this world it is the influence of abstract thought upon practical affairs in the long-run. And although one may not be able to point to any definite thing created or established by this metaphysical movement, I think I can see that it was a leaven that had a marked effect in the social, and especially in the educational, life of the town, and liberalized minds, and opened the way for the trial of theories in education. One of the disciples declares that the State Constitution of Missouri and the charter of St. Louis are distinctly Hegelian. However this may be, both these organic laws are uncommonly wise in their provisions. A study of the evolution of the city government is one of the most interesting that the student can make. Many of the provisions of the charter are admirable, such as those securing honest elections, furnishing financial checks, and guarding against public debt. The mayor is elected for four years, and the important offices filled by his appointment are not vacant until the beginning of the third year of his appointment, so that hope of reward for political work is too dim to affect the merits of an election. The composition and election of the school board is also worthy of notice. Of the twenty-one members, seven are elected on a general ticket, and the remaining fourteen by districts, made by consolidating the twenty-eight city wards, members to serve four years, divided into two classes. This arrangement secures immunity from the ward politician.

St. Louis is famous for its public schools, and especially for the enlightened methods, and the willingness to experiment in improving them. The school expenditures for the year ending June 30, 1887, were $1,095,773; the school property in lots, buildings, and furniture in 1885 was estimated at $3,445,254. The total number of pupils enrolled was 56,936. These required about 1200 teachers, of whom over a thousand were women. The actual average of pupils to each teacher was about 42. There were 106 school buildings, with a seating capacity for about 50,000 scholars. Of the district schools 13 were colored, in which were employed 78 colored teachers. The salaries of teachers are progressive, according to length of service. As for instance, the principal of the High-school has $2400 the first year, $2500 the second, $2600 the third, $2750 the fourth; a head assistant in a district school, $650 the first year, $700 the second, $750 the third, $800 the fourth, $850 the fifth.

The few schools that I saw fully sustained their public reputation as to methods, discipline, and attainments. The Normal School, of something over 100 pupils, nearly all the girls being graduates of the High-school, was admirable in drill, in literary training, in calisthenic exercises. The High-school is also admirable, a school with a thoroughly elevated tone and an able principal. Of the 600 pupils at least two-thirds were girls. From appearances I should judge that it is attended by children of the most intelligent families, for certainly the girls of the junior and senior classes, in manner, looks, dress, and attainments, compared favorably with those of one of the best girls’ schools I have seen anywhere, the Mary Institute, which is a department of the Washington University. This fact is most important, for the excellence of our public schools (for the product of good men and women) depends largely upon their popularity with the well-to-do classes. One of the most interesting schools I saw was the Jefferson, presided over by a woman, having fine fire-proof buildings and 1100 pupils, nearly all whom are of foreign parentage—German, Russian, and Italian, with many Hebrews also—a finely ordered, wide-awake school of eight grades. The kindergarten here was the best I saw; good teachers, bright and happy little children, with natural manners, throwing themselves gracefully into their games with enjoyment and without self-consciousness, and exhibiting exceedingly pretty fancy and kindergarten work. In St. Louis the kindergarten is a part of the public-school system, and the experiment is one of general interest. The question cannot be called settled. In the first place the experiment is hampered in St. Louis by a decision of the Supreme Court that the public money cannot be used for children out of the school age, that is, under six and over twenty. This prevents teaching English to adult foreigners in the evening schools, and, rigidly applied, it shuts out pupils from the kindergarten under six. One advantage from the kindergarten was expected to be an extension of the school period; and there is no doubt that the kindergarten instruction ought to begin before the age of six, especially for the mass of children who miss home training and home care. As a matter of fact, many of the children I saw in the kindergartens were only constructively six years old. It cannot be said, also, that the Froebel system is fully understood or accepted. In my observation, the success of the kindergarten depends entirely upon the teacher; where she is competent, fully believes in and understands the Froebel system, and is enthusiastic, the pupils are interested and alert; otherwise they are listless, and fail to get the benefit of it. The Froebel system is the developing the concrete idea in education, and in the opinion of his disciples this is as important for children of the intelligent and well-to-do as for those of the poor and ignorant. They resist, therefore, the attempt which is constantly made, to introduce the primary work into the kindergarten. But for the six years’ limit the kindergarten in St. Louis would have a better chance in its connection with the public schools. As the majority of children leave school for work at the age of twelve or fourteen, there is little time enough given for book education; many educators think time is wasted in the kindergarten, and they advocate the introduction of what they call kindergarten features in the primary classes. This is called by the disciples of Froebel an entire abandonment of his system. I should like to see the kindergarten in connection with the public school tried long enough to demonstrate all that is claimed for it in its influence on mental development, character, and manners, but it seems unlikely to be done in St. Louis, unless the public-school year begins at least as early as five, or, better still, is specially unlimited for kindergarten pupils.

Except in the primary work in drawing and modelling, there is no manual training feature in the St. Louis public schools. The teaching of German is recently dropped from all the district schools (though retained in the High), in accordance with the well-founded idea of Americanizing our foreign population as rapidly as possible.

One of the most important institutions in the Mississippi Valley, and one that exercises a decided influence upon the intellectual and social life of St. Louis, and is a fair measure of its culture and the value of the higher education, is the Washington University, which was incorporated in 1853, and was presided over until his death, in 1887, by the late Chancellor William Green-leaf Eliot, of revered memory. It covers the whole range of university studies, except theology, and allows no instruction either sectarian in religion or partisan in politics, nor the application of any sectarian or party test in the election of professors, teachers, or officers. Its real estate and buildings in use for educational purposes cost $625,000; its libraries, scientific apparatus, casts, and machinery cost over $100,000, and it has investments for revenue amounting to over $650,000. The University comprehends an undergraduate department, including the college (a thorough classical, literary, and philosophical course, with about sixty students), open to women, and the polytechnic, an admirably equipped school of science; the St. Louis Law School, of excellent reputation; the Manual Training School, the most celebrated school of this sort, and one that has furnished more manual training teachers than any other; the Henry Shaw School of Botany; the St. Louis School of Fine Arts; the Smith Academy, for boys; and the Mary Institute, one of the roomiest and most cheerful school buildings I know, where 400 girls, whose collective appearance need not fear comparison with any in the country, enjoy the best educational advantages. Mary Institute is justly the pride of the city.

The School of Botany, which is endowed and has its own laboratory, workshop, and working library, was, of course, the outgrowth of the Shaw Botanical Garden; it has usually from twenty to thirty special students.

The School of Fine Arts, which was reorganized under the University in 1879, has enrolled over 200 students, and gives a wide and careful training in all the departments of drawing, painting, and modelling, with instructions in anatomy, perspective, and composition, and has life classes for both sexes, in drawing from draped and nude figures. Its lecture, working rooms, and galleries of paintings and casts are in its Crow Art Museum—a beautiful building, well planned and justly distinguished for architectural excellence. It ranks among the best Art buildings in the country.

The Manual Training School has been in operation since 1880. It may be called the most fully developed pioneer institution of the sort. I spent some time in its workshops and schools, thinking of the very interesting question at the bottom of the experiment, namely, the mental development involved in the training of the hand and the eye, and the reflex help to manual skill in the purely intellectual training of study. It is, it may be said again, not the purpose of the modern manual training to teach a trade, but to teach the use of tools as an aid in the symmetrical development of the human being. The students here certainly do beautiful work in wood-turning and simple carving, in ironwork and forging. They enjoy the work; they are alert and interested in it. I am certain that they are the more interested in it in seeing how they can work out and apply what they have learned in books, and I doubt not they take hold of literary study more freshly for this manual training in exactness. The school exacts close and thoughtful study with tools as well as in books, and I can believe that it gives dignity in the opinion of the working student to hand labor. The school is large, its graduates have been generally successful in practical pursuits and in teaching, and it lias demonstrated in itself the correctness of the theory of its authors, that intellectual drill and manual training are mutually advantageous together. Whether manual training shall be a part of all district school education is a question involving many considerations that do not enter into the practicability of this school, but I have no doubt that manual training schools of this sort would be immensely useful in every city. There are many boys in every community who cannot in any other wayr be awakened to any real study. This training school deserves a chapter by itself, and as I have no space for details, I take the liberty of referring those interested to a volume on its aims and methods by Dr. C. M. Woodward, its director.

Notwithstanding the excellence of the public-school system of St. Louis, there is no other city in the country, except New Orleans, where so large a proportion of the youths are being educated outside the public schools. A very considerable portion of the population is Catholic. There are forty-four parochial schools, attended by nineteen thousand pupils, and over a dozen different Sisterhoods are engaged in teaching in them. Generally each parochial school has two departments—one for boys and one for girls. They are sustained entirely by the parishes. In these schools, as in the two Catholic universities, the prominence of ethical and religious training is to be noted. Seven-eighths of the schools are in charge of thoroughly trained religious teachers. Many of the boys’ schools are taught by Christian Brothers. The girls are almost invariably taught by members of religious Sisterhoods. In most of the German schools the girls and smaller boys are taught by Sisters, the larger boys by lay teachers. Some reports of school attendance are given in the Catholic Directory: SS. Peter and Paul’s (German), 1300 pupils; St. Joseph’s (German), 957; St. Bridget’s, 950; St. Malaehy’s, 756; St. John’s, 700; St. Patrick’s, 700. There is a school for colored children of 150 pupils taught by colored Sisters.

In addition to these parochial schools there are a dozen academies and convents of higher education for young ladies, all under charge of Catholic Sisterhoods, commonly with a mixed attendance of boarders and day scholars, and some of them with a reputation for learning that attracts pupils from other States, notably the Academy of the Sacred Heart, St. Joseph’s Academy, and the Academy of the Visitation, in charge of cloistered nuns of that order. Besides these, in connection with various reformatory and charitable institutions, such as the House of the Good Shepherd and St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum, there are industrial schools in charge of the Sisterhoods, where girls receive, in addition to their education, training in some industry to maintain themselves respectably when they leave their temporary homes. Statistics are wanting, but it will be readily inferred from these statements that there are in the city a great number of single women devoted for life, and by special religious and intellectual training, to the office of teaching.

For the higher education of Catholic young men the city is distinguished by two remarkable institutions. The one is the old St. Louis University, and the other is the Christian Brothers’ College. The latter, which a few years ago outgrew its old buildings in the city, has a fine pile of buildings at Côte Brillante, on a commanding site about five miles out, with ample grounds, and in the neighborhood of the great parks and the Botanical Garden. The character of the school is indicated by the motto on the façade of the building—Religio, Mores, Cultura. The institution is designed to accommodate a thousand boarding students. The present attendance is 450, about half of whom are boarders, and represent twenty States. There is a corps of thirty-five professors, and three courses of study are maintained—the classical, the scientific, and the commercial. As several of the best parochial schools are in charge of Christian Brothers, these schools are feeders of the college, and the pupils have the advantage of an unbroken system with a consistent purpose from the day they enter into the primary department till they graduate at the college. The order has, at Glencoe, a large Normal School for the training of teachers. The fame and success of the Christian Brothers as educators in elementary and the higher education, in Europe and the United States, is largely due to the fact that they labor as a unit in a system that never varies in its methods of imparting instruction, in which the exponents of it have all undergone the same pedagogic training, in which there is no room for the personal fancy of the teacher in correction, discipline, or scholarship, for everything is judiciously governed by prescribed modes of procedure, founded on long experience, and exemplified in the co-operative plan of the Brothers. In vindication of the exceptional skill acquired by its teachers in the thorough drill of the order, the Brotherhood points to the success of its graduates in competitive examinations for public employment in this country and in Europe, and to the commendation its educational exhibits received at London and New Orleans.

The St. Louis University, founded in 1829 by members of the Society of Jesus, and chartered in 1834, is officered and controlled by the Jesuit Fathers. It is an unendowed institution, depending upon fees paid for tuition. Before the war its students were largely the children of Southern planters, and its graduates are found all over the South and South-west; and up to 1881 the pupils boarded and lodged within the precincts of the old buildings on the corner of Ninth Street and Washington, where for over half a century the school has vigorously flourished. The place, which is now sold and about to be used for business purposes, has a certain flavor of antique scholarship, and the quaint buildings keep in mind the plain but rather pleasing architecture of the French period. The University is in process of removal to the new buildings on Grand avenue, which are a conspicuous ornament to one of the most attractive parts of the city. Soon nothing will be left of the institution on Ninth Street except the old college church, which is still a favorite place of worship for the Catholics of the city. The new buildings, in the early decorated English Gothic style, are ample and imposing; they have a front of 270 feet, and the northern wing extends 325 feet westward from the avenue. The library, probably the finest room of the kind in the West, is sixty-seven feet high, amply lighted, and provided with three balconies. The library, which was packed for removal, has over 25,000 volumes, is said to contain many rare and interesting books, and to fairly represent science and literature. Besides this, there are special libraries, open to students, of over 0000 volumes. The museum of the new building is a noble ball, one hundred feet by sixty feet, and fifty-two feet high, without columns, and lighted from above and from the side. The University has a valuable collection of ores and minerals, and other objects of nature and art that will be deposited in this hall, which will also serve as a picture-gallery for the many paintings of historical interest. Philosophical apparatus, a chemical laboratory, and an astronomical observatory are the equipments on the scientific side.

The University has now no dormitories and no boarders. There are twenty-five professors and instructors. The entire course, including the preparatory, is seven years. A glance at the catalogue shows that in the curriculum the institution keeps pace with the demands of the age. Besides the preparatory course (89 pupils), it has a classical course (143 pupils), an English course (82 pupils), and 85 post-graduate students, making a total of 399. Its students form societies for various purposes; one, the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, with distinct organizations in the senior and junior classes, is for the promotion of piety and the practice of devotion towards the Blessed Virgin; another is for training in public speaking and philosophic and literary disputation; there is also a scientific academy, to foster a taste for scientific culture; and there is a student’s library of 4000 volumes, independent of the religious books of the Sodality societies.

In a conversation with the president I learned that the prevailing idea in the courses of study is the gradual and healthy development of the mind. The classes are carefully graded. The classics are favorite branches, but mental philosophy, chemistry, physics, astronomy, are taught with a view to practical application. Much stress is laid upon mathematics. During the whole course of seven years, one hour each day is devoted to this branch. In short, I was impressed with the fact that this is an institution for mental training. Still more was I struck with the prominence in the whole course of ethical and religious culture. On assembling every morning, all the Catholic students hear mass. In every class in every year Christian doctrine has as prominent a place as any branch of study; beginning in the elementary class with the small catechism and practical instructions in the manner of reciting the ordinary prayers, it goes on through the whole range of doctrine—creed, evidences, ritual, ceremonial, mysteries—in the minutest details of theory and practice; ingraining, so far as repeated instruction can, the Catholic faith and pure moral conduct in the character, involving instructions as to what occasions and what amusements are dangerous to a good life, on the reading of good books and the avoiding bad books and bad company.

In the post-graduate course, lectures are given and examinations made in ethics, psychology, anthropology, biology, and physics; and in the published abstracts of lectures for the past two years I find that none of the subjects of modern doubt and speculation are ignored—spiritism, psychical research, the cell theory, the idea of God, socialism, agnosticism, the Noachinn deluge, theories of government, fundamental notions of physical science, unity of the human species, potency of matter, and so on. During the past fifty years this faculty has contained many men famous as pulpit orators and missionaries, and this course of lectures on philosophic and scientific subjects has brought it prominently before the cultivated inhabitants of the town.

Another educational institution of note in St. Louis is the Concordia Seminar of the Old Lutheran, or the Evangelical Lutheran Church. This denomination, which originated in Saxony, and has a large membership in our Western States, adheres strictly to the Augsburg Confession, and is distinguished from the general Lutheran Church by greater strictness of doctrine and practice, or, as may be said, by a return to primitive Lutheranism; that is to say, it grounds itself upon the literal inspiration of the Scriptures, upon salvation by faith alone, and upon individual liberty. This Seminar is one of several related institutions in the Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other States: there is a college at Fort Wayne, Indiana, a Progymnasium at Milwaukee, a Seminar of practical theology at Springfield, Illinois, and this Seminar at St. Louis, which is wholly devoted to theoretical theology. This Church numbers, I believe, about 200,000 members.

The Concordia Seminar is housed in a large, commodious building, effectively set upon high ground in the southern part of the city. It was erected and the institution is sustained by the contributions of the congregations. The interior, roomy, light, and commodious, is plain to barrenness, and has a certain monastic severity, which is matched by the discipline and the fare. In visiting it one takes a step backward into the atmosphere and theology of the sixteenth century. The ministers of the denomination are distinguished for learning and earnest simplicity. The president, a very able man, only thirty-five years of age, is at least two centuries old in his opinions, and wholly undisturbed by any of the doubts which have agitated the Christian world since the Reformation. He holds the faith “once for all” delivered to the saints. The Seminar has a hundred students. It is requisite to admission, said the president, that they be perfect Latin, Greek, and Hebrew scholars. A large proportion of the lectures are given in Latin, the remainder in German and English, and Latin is current in the institution, although German is the familiar speech. The course of study is exacting, the rules are rigid, and the discipline severe. Social intercourse with the other sex is discouraged. The pursuit of love and learning are considered incompatible at the same time; and if a student were inconsiderate enough to become engaged, he would be expelled. Each student from abroad may select or be selected by a family in the communion, at whose house he may visit once a week, which attends to his washing, and supplies to a certain extent the place of a home. The young men are trained in the highest scholarship and the strictest code of morals. I know of no other denomination which holds its members to such primitive theology and such strictness of life. Individual liberty and responsibility are stoutly asserted, without any latitude in belief. It repudiates Prohibition as an infringement of personal liberty, would make the use of wine or beer depend upon the individual conscience, but no member of the communion would be permitted to sell intoxicating liquors, or to go to a beer-garden or a theatre. In regard to the sacrament of communion, there is no authority for altering the plain directions in the Scripture, and communion without wine, or the substitution of any concoction for wine, would be a sin. No member would be permitted to join any labor union or secret society. The sacrament of communion is a mystery. It is neither transubstantiation nor consubstantiation. The president, whose use of English in subtle distinctions is limited, resorted to Latin and German in explanation of the mystery, but left the question of real and actual presence, of spirit and substance, still a matter of terms; one can only say that neither the ordinary Protestant nor the Catholic interpretation is accepted. Conversion is not by any act or ability of man; salvation is by faith alone. As the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures is insisted on in all cases, the world was actually created in six days of twenty-four hours each. When I asked the president what he did with geology, he smiled and simply waved his hand. This communion has thirteen flourishing churches in the city. In a town so largely German, and with so many freethinkers as well as free-livers, I cannot but consider this strict sect, of a simple unquestioning faith and high moral demands, of the highest importance in the future of the city. But one encounters with surprise, in our modern life, this revival of the sixteenth century, which plants itself so squarely against so much that we call “progress.”

As to the institutions of charity, I must content myself with saying that they are many, and worthy of a great and enlightened city. There are of all denominations 211 churches; of these the Catholics lead with 47; the Presbyterians come next with 24; and the Baptists have 22; the Methodists North, 4; and the Methodists South, 8. The most interesting edifices, both for associations and architecture, are the old Cathedral; the old Christ Church (Episcopalian), excellent Gothic; and an exquisite edifice, the Church of the Messiah (Unitarian), in Locust Street.

The city has two excellent libraries. The Public Library, an adjunct of the public-school system, in the Polytechnic Building, has an annual appropriation of about $14,000 from the School Board, and receives about $5000 more from membership and other sources. It contains about 67,000 volumes, and is admirably managed. The Mercantile Library is in process of removal into a magnificent six-story building on Broadway and Locust Street. It is a solid and imposing structure, the first story of red granite, and the others of brick and terra-cotta. The library and reading-rooms are on the fifth story, the rest of the building is rented. This association, which is forty-two years old, has 3500 members, and had an income in 1887 of $120,000, nearly all from membership. In January, 1888, it had 68,732 volumes, and in a circulation of over 168,000 in the year, it had the unparalleled distinction of reducing the fiction given out to 41.95 per cent. Both these libraries have many treasures interesting to a book-lover, and though neither is free, the liberal, intelligent management of each has been such as to make it a most beneficent institution for the city.

There are many handsome and stately buildings in the city, the recent erections showing growth in wealth and taste. The Chamber of Commerce, which is conspicuous for solid elegance, cost a million and a half dollars. There are 3295 members of the Merchants’ Exchange. The Court-house, with its noble dome, is as well proportioned a building as can be found in the country. A good deal may be said for the size and effect of the Exposition Building, which covers what was once a pretty park at the foot of Lucas Place, and cost 6750,000. There are clubs many and flourishing. The St. Louis Club (social) has the finest building, an exceedingly tasteful piece of Romanesque architecture on Twenty-ninth Street. The University Club, which is like its namesake in other cities, has a charming old-fashioned house and grounds on Pine Street. The Commercial Club, an organization limited in its membership to sixty, has no club-house, but, like its namesake in Chicago, is a controlling influence in the prosperity of the city. Representing all the leading occupations, it is a body of men who, by character, intellect, and wealth, can carry through any project for the public good, and which is animated by the highest public spirit.

Of the social life of the town one is permitted to speak only in general terms. It has many elements to make it delightful—long use in social civilities, interest in letters and in education, the cultivation of travel, traditions, and the refinement of intellectual pursuits. The town has no academy of music, but there is a good deal of musical feeling and cultivation; there is a very good orchestra, one of the very best choruses in the country, and Verdi’s “Requiem” was recently given splendidly. I am told by men and women of rare and special cultivation that the city is a most satisfactory one to live in, and certainly to the stranger its society is charming. The city has, however, the Mississippi Valley climate—extreme heat in the summer, and trying winters.

There is no more interesting industrial establishment in the West than the plate-glass works at Crystal City, thirty miles south on the river. It was built up after repeated failures and reverses—for the business, like any other, had to be learned. The plant is very extensive, the buildings are of the best, the machinery is that most approved, and the whole represents a cash investment of $1,500,000. The location of the works at this point was determined by the existence of a mountain of sand which is quarried out like rock, and is the finest and cleanest silica known in the country. The production is confined entirety to plate-glass, which is cast in great slabs, twelve feet by twelve and a half in size, each of which weighs, before it is reduced half in thickness by grinding, smoothing, and polishing, about 750 pounds. The product for 1887 was 1,200,000 feet. The coal used in the furnaces is converted into gas, which is found to be the most economical and most easily regulated fuel. This industry has drawn together a population of about 1500. I was interested to learn that labor in the production of this glass is paid twice as much as similar labor in England, and from three to four times as much as similar labor in France and Belgium. As the materials used in making plate-glass are inexpensive, the main cost, after the plant, is in labor. Since plate-glass was first made in this country, eighteen years ago, the price of it in the foreign market has been continually forced down, until now it costs the American consumer only half what it cost him before, and the jobber gets it at an average cost of 75 cents a foot, as against the $1.50 a foot which we paid the foreign manufacturer before the establishment of American factories. And in these eighteen years the Government has had from this source a revenue of over seventeen millions, at an average duty, on all sizes, of less than 59 per cent.

Missouri is one of the greatest of our States in resources and in promise, and it is conspicuous in the West for its variety and capacity of interesting development. The northern portion rivals Iowa in beautiful rolling prairie, with high divides and park-like forests; its water communication is unsurpassed; its mineral resources are immense; it has noble mountains as well as fine uplands and fertile valleys, and it never impresses the traveller as monotonous. So attractive is it in both scenery and resources that it seems unaccountable that so many settlers have passed it by. But, first slavery, and then a rural population disinclined to change, have stayed its development. This state of things, however, is changing, has changed marvellously within a few years in the northern portion, in the iron regions, and especially in larger cities of the west, St. Joseph and Kansas City. The State deserves a study by itself, for it is on the way to be a great empire of most varied interests. I can only mention here one indication of its moral progress. It has adopted a high license and local option law. Under this the saloons are closed in nearly all the smaller villages and country towns. A shaded map shows more than three-fourths of the area of the State, including three-fifths of the population, free from liquor-selling. The county court may grant a license to sell liquor to a person of good moral character on the signed petition of a majority of the taxpaying citizens of a township or of a city block; it must grant it on the petition of two-thirds of the citizens. Thus positive action is required to establish a saloon. On the map there are 76 white counties free of saloons, 14 counties In which there are from one to three saloons only, and 24 shaded counties which have altogether 2263 saloons, of which 1450 are in St. Louis and 520 in Kansas City. The revenue from the saloons in St. Louis is about 8800,000, in Kansas City about 8375,000, annually. The heavily shaded portions of the map are on the great rivers.

Of all the wonderful towns in the West, none has attracted more attention in the East than Kansas City. I think I am not wrong in saying that it is largely the product of Eastern energy and capital, and that its closest relations have been with Boston. I doubt if ever a new town was from the start built up so solidly or has grown more substantially. The situation, at the point where the Missouri River makes a sharp bend to the east, and the Kansas River enters it, was long ago pointed out as the natural centre of a great trade. Long before it started on its present career it was the great receiving and distributing point of South-western commerce, which left the Missouri River at this point for Santa Fé and other trading marts in the South-west. Aside from this river advantage, if one studies the course of streams and the incline of the land in a wide circle to the westward, he is impressed with the fact that the natural business drainage of a vast area is Kansas City. The city was therefore not fortuitously located, and when the railways centred there, they obeyed an inevitable law. Here nature intended, in the development of the country, a great city. Where the next one will be in the South-west is not likely to be determined until the Indian Territory is open to settlement. To the north, Omaha, with reference to Nebraska and the West, possesses many similar advantages, and is likewise growing with great vigor and solidity. Its situation on a slope rising from the river is commanding and beautiful, and its splendid business houses, handsome private residences, and fine public schools give ample evidence of the intelligent enterprise that is directing its rapid growth.

It is difficult to analyze the impression Kansas City first makes upon the Eastern stranger. It is usually that of immense movement, much of it crude, all of it full of purpose. At the Union Station, at the time of the arrival and departure of trains, the whole world seems afloat; one is in the midst of a continental movement of most varied populations. I remember that the first time I saw it in passing, the detail that most impressed me was the racks and rows of baggage checks; it did not seem to me that the whole travelling world could need so many. At that time a drive through the city revealed a chaos of enterprise—deep cuts for streets, cable roads in process of construction over the sharp ridges, new buildings, hills shaved down, houses perched high up on slashed knolls, streets swarming with traffic and roaring with speculation. A little more than a year later the change towards order was marvellous: the cable roads were running in all directions; gigantic buildings rising upon enormous blocks of stone gave distinction to the principal streets; the great residence avenues have been beautified, and showed all over the hills stately and picturesque houses. And it is worthy of remark that while the “boom” of speculation in lots had subsided, there was no slacking in building, and the reports showed a steady increase in legitimate business. I was confirmed in my theory that a city is likely to be most attractive when it has had to struggle heroically against natural obstacles in the building.

I am not going to describe the city. The reader knows that it lies south of the river Missouri, at the bend, and that the notable portion of it is built upon a series of sharp hills. The hill portion is already a beautiful city; the flat part, which contains the railway depot and yards, a considerable portion of the manufactories and wholesale houses, and much refuse and squatting population (white and black), is unattractive in a high degree. The Kaw, or Kansas, River would seem to be the natural western boundary, but it is not the boundary; the city and State line runs at some distance east of Kansas River, leaving a considerable portion of low ground in Kansas City, Kansas, which contains the larger number of the great packing-houses and the great stock-yards. This identity of names is confusing. Kansas City (Kansas), Wyandotte, Armourdale, Armstrong, and Riverview (all in the State of Kansas) have been recently consolidated under the name of Kansas City, Kansas. It is to be regretted that this thriving town of Kansas, which already claims a population of 40,000, did not take the name of Wyandotte. In its boundaries are the second largest stock-yards in the country, which received last year 670,000 cattle, nearly 2,500,000 hogs, and 210,000 sheep, estimated worth 851,000,000. There also are half a dozen large packing-houses, one of them ranking with the biggest in the country, which last year slaughtered 195,933 cattle, and 1,907,104 hogs. The great elevated railway, a wonderful structure, which connects Kansas City, Missouri, with Wyandotte, is owned and managed by men of Kansas City, Kansas. The city in Kansas has a great area of level ground for the accommodation of manufacturing enterprises, and I noticed a good deal of speculative feeling in regard to this territory. The Kansas side has fine elevated situations for residences, but Wyandotte itself does not compare in attractiveness with the Missouri city, and I fancy that the controlling impetus and capital will long remain with the city that has so much the start.

Looking about for the specialty which I have learned to expect in every great Western city, I was struck by the number of warehouses for the sale of agricultural implements on the flats, and I was told that Kansas City excels all others in the amount of sales of farming implements. The sale is put down at 815,000,000 for the year 1887—a fourth of the entire reported product manufactured in the United States. Looking for the explanation of this, one largely accounts for the growth of Kansas City, namely, the vast rich agricultural regions to the west and southwest, the development of Missouri itself, and the facilities of distribution. It is a general belief that settlement is gradually pushing the rainy belt farther and farther westward over the prairies and plains, that the breaking up of the sod by the plough and the tilling have increased evaporation and consequently rainfall. I find this questioned by competent observers, who say that the observation of ten years is not enough to settle the fact of a change of climate, and that, as not a tenth part of the area under consideration has been broken by the plough, there is not cause enough for the alleged effect, and that we do not yet know the cycle of years of drought and years of rain. However this may be, there is no doubt of the vast agricultural yield of these new States and Territories, nor of the quantities of improved machinery they use. As to facility of distribution, the railways are in evidence. I need not name them, but I believe I counted fifteen lines and systems centring there. In 1887, 4565 miles of railway were added to the facilities of Kansas City, stretching out in every direction. The development of one is notable as peculiar and far-sighted, the Fort Scott and Gulf, which is grasping the East as well as the South-west; turning eastward from Fort Scott, it already reaches the iron industries of Birmingham, pushes on to Atlanta, and seeks the seaboard. I do not think I over-estimate the importance of this quite direct connection of Kansas City with the Atlantic.

The population of Kansas City, according to the statistics of the Board of Trade, increased from 41,786 in 1877 to 165,924 in 1887, the assessed valuation from $9,370,287 in 1877 to $53,017,290 in 1887, and the rate of taxation was reduced in the same period from about 22 mills to 14. I notice also that the banking capital increased in a year—1886 to 1887—from $3,873,000 to $6,950,000, and the Clearing-house transactions in the same year from $251,963,441 to $353,895,458. This, with other figures which might be given, sustains the assertion that while real-estate speculation has decreased in the current year, there was a substantial increase of business. During the year ending June 30, 1886, there were built 4054 new houses, costing $10,393,207; during the year ending June 30, 1887, 5889, costing $12,839,808. An important feature of the business of Kansas City is in the investment and loan and trust companies, which are many, and aggregate a capital of $7,773,000. Loans are made on farms in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa, and also for city improvements.

Details of business might be multiplied, but enough have been given to illustrate the material prosperity of the city. I might add a note of the enterprise which last year paved (mainly with cedar blocks on concrete) thirteen miles of the city; the very handsome churches in process of erection, and one or two (of the many) already built, admirable in plan and appearance; the really magnificent building of the Board of Trade—a palace, in fact; and other handsome, costly structures on every hand. There are thirty-five miles of cable road. I am not sure but these cable roads are the most interesting—certainly the most exciting—feature of the city to a stranger. They climb such steeps, they plunge down such grades, they penetrate and whiz through such crowded, lively thoroughfares, their trains go so rapidly, that the rider is in a perpetual exhilaration. I know no other locomotion more exciting and agreeable. Life seems a sort of holiday when one whizzes through the crowded city, up and down and around amid the tall buildings, and then launches off in any direction into the suburbs, which are alive with new buildings. Independence avenue is shown as one of the finest avenues, and very handsome it and that part of the town are, but I fancied I could detect a movement of fashion and preference to the hills southward.

In the midst of such a material expansion one has learned to expect fine houses, but I was surprised to find three very good book-stores (as I remember, St. Louis has not one so good), and a very good start for a public library, consisting of about 16,000 well-arranged and classified books. Members pay $2 a year, and the library receives only about $2500 a year from the city. The citizens could make no better-paying investment than to raise this library to the first rank. There is also the beginning of an art school in some pretty rooms, furnished with casts and autotypes, where pupils practise drawing under direction of local artiste. There are two social clubs—the University, which occupies pleasant apartments, and the Kansas City Club, which has just erected a handsome club-house. In these respects, and in a hundred refinements of living, the town, which has so largely drawn its young, enterprising population from the extreme East, has little the appearance of a frontier place; it is the push, the public spirit, the mixture of fashion and slouching negligence in street attire, the mingling of Eastern smartness with border emancipation in manner, and the general restlessness of movement, that proclaim the newness. It seems to me that the incessant stir, and especially the clatter, whir, and rapidity of the cable ears, must have a decided effect on the nerves of the whole population. The appearance is certainly that of an entire population incessantly in motion.

I have spoken of the public spirit. Besides the Board of Trade there is a Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Bureau, which works vigorously to bring to the city and establish mercantile and manufacturing enterprises. The same spirit is shown in the public schools. The expenditures in 1887 were, for school purposes, $226,923; for interest on bonds, $18,408; for grounds and buildings, $110,087; in all, $355,418. The total of children of school age was, white, 31,667; colored, 4204. Of these in attendance at school were, white, 12,933; colored, 1975. There were 25 school-houses and 212 teachers. The schools which I saw—one large grammar-school, a colored school, and the High-school of over 600 pupils—were good all through, full of intelligent emulation, the teachers alert and well equipped, and the attention to literature, to the science of government, to what, in short, goes to make intelligent citizens, highly commendable. I find the annual reports, under Prof. J. M. Greenwood, most interesting reading. Topics are taken up and investigations made of great public interest. These topics relate to the even physical and mental development of the young in distinction from the effort merely to stuff them with information. There is a most intelligent attempt to remedy defective eyesight. Twenty per cent, of school children have some anomaly of refraction or accommodation which should be recognized and corrected early; girls have a larger per cent, of anomalies than boys. Irish, Swedish, and German children have the highest percentage of affections of the eyes; English, French, Scotch, and Americans the lowest. Scientific observations of the eyes are made in the Kansas City schools, with a view to remedy defects. Another curious topic is the investigation of the Contents of Children’s Minds—that is, what very small children know about common things. Prof. Stanley Hall published recently the result of examinations made of very little folks in Boston schools. Professor Greenwood made similar investigations among the lowest grade of pupils in the Kansas City schools, and a table of comparisons is printed. The per cent, of children ignorant of common things is astonishingly less in Kansas City schools than in the Boston; even the colored children of the Western city made a much better showing. Another subject of investigation is the alleged physical deterioration in this country. Examinations were made of hundreds of school children from the age of ten to fifteen, and comparisons taken with the tables in Mulhal’s “Dictionary of Statistics,” London, 1884. It turns out that the Kansas City children are taller, taking sex into account, than the average English child at the age of either ten or fifteen, weigh a fraction less at ten, but upwards of four pounds more at fifteen, while the average Belgian boy and girl compare favorably with American children two years younger. The tabulated statistics show two facts, that the average Kansas child stands fully as tall as the tallest, and that in weight he tips the beam against an older child on the other side of the Atlantic. With this showing, we trust that our American experiment will be permitted to go on.

In reaching the necessary limit of a paper too short for its subject, I can only express my admiration of the indomitable energy and spirit of that portion of the West which Kansas City represents, and congratulate it upon so many indications of attention to the higher civilization, without which its material prosperity will be wonderful but not attractive.

XV.—KENTUCKY

All Kentucky, like Gaul, is divided into three parts. This division, which may not be sustained by the geologists or the geographers, perhaps not even by the ethnologists, is, in my mind, one of character: the east and south-east mountainous part, the central blue-grass region, and the great western portion, thrifty in both agriculture and manufactures. It is a great self-sustaining empire, lying midway in the Union, and between the North and the South (never having yet exactly made up its mind whether it is North or South), extending over more than seven degrees of longitude. Its greatest length east and west is 410 miles; its greatest breadth, 178 miles. Its area by latest surveys, and larger than formerly estimated, is 42,283 square miles. Within this area prodigal nature has brought together nearly everything that a highly civilized society needs: the most fertile soil, capable of producing almost every variety of product for food or for textile fabrics; mountains of coals and iron ores and limestone; streams and springs everywhere; almost all sorts of hard-wood timber in abundance. Nearly half the State is still virgin forest of the noblest trees, oaks, sugar-maple, ash, poplar, black-walnut, linn, elm, hickory, beech, chestnut, red cedar. The climate may honestly be called temperate: its inhabitants do not need to live in cellars in the summer, nor burn up their fences and furniture in the winter.

Kentucky is loved of its rivers. It can be seen by their excessively zigzag courses how reluctant they are to leave the State, and if they do leave it they are certain to return. The Kentucky and the Green wander about in the most uncertain way before they go to the Ohio, and the Licking and Big Sandy exhibit only a little less reluctance. The Cumberland, after a wide detour in Tennessee, returns; and Powell’s River, joining the Clinch and entering the Tennessee, finally persuades that river, after it has looked about the State of Tennessee and gladdened northern Alabama, to return to Kentucky.

Kentucky is an old State, with an old civilization. It was the pioneer in the great western movement of population after the Revolution. Although it was first explored in 1770, and the Boone trail through the wilderness of Cumberland Gap was not marked till 1775, a settlement had been made in Frankfort in 1774, and in 1790 the Territory had a population of 79,077. This was a marvellous growth, considering the isolation by hundreds of miles of wilderness from Eastern communities, and the savage opposition of the Indians, who selw fifteen hundred whilc settlers from 1783 to 1790. Kentucky was the home of no Indian tribe, but it was the favorite hunting and fighting ground of those north of the Ohio and south of the Cumberland, and they united to resent white interference. When the State came into the Union in 1792—the second admitted—it was the equal in population and agricultural wealth of some of the original States that had been settled a hundred and fifty years, and in 1800 could boast 220,750 inhabitants, and in 1810, 400,511.

At the time of the settlement, New York west of the Hudson, western Pennsylvania, and western Virginia were almost unoccupied except by hostile Indians; there was only chance and dangerous navigation down the Ohio from Pittsburg, and it was nearly eight hundred miles of a wilderness road, which was nothing but a bridle-path, from Philadelphia by way of the Cumberland Gap to central Kentucky. The majority of emigrants came this toilsome way, which was, after all, preferable to the river route, and all passengers and produce went that way eastward, for the steamboat bad not yet made the ascent of the Ohio feasible. In 1779 Virginia resolved to construct a wagon-road through the wilderness, but no road was made for many years afterwards, and indeed no vehicle of any sort passed over it till a road was built by action of the Kentucky Legislature in 1700. I hope it was better then than the portion of it I travelled from Pineville to the Gap in 1888.

Civilization made a great leap over nearly a thousand miles into the open garden-spot of central Kentucky, and the exploit is a unique chapter in our frontier development. Either no other land ever lent itself so easily to civilization as the blue-grass region, or it was exceptionally fortunate in its occupants. They formed almost immediately a society distinguished for its amenities, for its political influence, prosperous beyond precedent in farming, venturesome and active in trade, developing large manufactures, especially from hemp, of such articles as could be transported by river, and sending annually through the wilderness road to the East and South immense droves of cattle, horses, and swine. In the first necessity, and the best indication of superior civilization, good roads for transportation, Kentucky was conspicuous in comparison with the rest of the country. As early as 1825 macadam roads were projected, the turnpike from. Lexington to Maysville on the Ohio was built in 1829, and the work went on by State and county co-operation until the central region had a system of splendid roads, unexcelled in any part of the Union. In 1830 one of the earliest railways in the United States, that from Lexington to Frankfort, was begun; two years later seven miles were constructed, and in 1835 the first locomotive and train of cars ran on it to Frankfort, twenty-seven miles, in two hours and twenty-nine minutes. The structure was composed of stone sills, in which grooves were cut to receive the iron bars. These stone blocks can still be seen along the line of the road, now a part of the Louisville and Nashville system. In all internal improvements the State was very energetic. The canal around the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville was opened in 1831, with some aid from the General Government. The State expended a great deal in improving the navigation of the Kentucky, the Green, and other rivers in its borders by an expensive system of locks and dams; in 1837 it paid $19,500 to engineers engaged in turnpike and river improvement, and in 1839 $31,075 for the same purpose.

The story of early Kentucky reads like a romance. By 1820 it counted a population of over 510,000, and still it had scarcely wagon-road communication with the East. Here was a singular phenomenon, a prosperous community, as one might say a garden in the wilderness, separated by natural barriers from the great life of the East, which pushed out north of it a connected, continuous development; a community almost self-sustaining, having for his centre the loveliest agricultural region in the Union, and evolving a unique social state so gracious and attractive that it was thought necessary to call in the effect of the blue-grass to explain it, unaided human nature being inadequate, it was thought, to such a result. Almost from the beginning fine houses attested the taste and prosperity of the settlers; by 1792 the blue-grass region was dotted with neat and commodious dwellings, fruit orchards and gardens, sugar groves, and clusters of villages; while, a little later, rose, in the midst of broad plantations and park-like forests, lands luxuriant with wheat and clover and corn and hemp and tobacco, the manorial dwellings of the colonial period, like the stately homes planted by the Holland Land Company along the Hudson and the Mohawk and in the fair Genesee, like the pillared structures on the James and the Staunton, and like the solid square mansions of old New England. A type of some of them stands in Frankfort now, a house which was planned by Thomas Jefferson and built in 1796, spacious, permanent, elegant in the low relief of its chaste ornamentation. For comfort, for the purposes of hospitality, for the quiet and rest of the mind, there is still nothing so good as the colonial house, with the slight modifications required by our changed conditions.

From 1820 onward the State grew by a natural increment of population, but without much aid from native or foreign emigration. In 1860 its population was only about 919,000 whites, with some 225,000 slaves and over 10,000 free colored persons. It had no city of the first class, nor any villages specially thriving. Louisville numbered only about 68,000, Lexington less than 15,000, and Frankfort, the capital, a little over 5000. It retained the lead in hemp and a leading position in tobacco; but it had fallen away behind its much younger rivals in manufactures and the building of railways, and only feeble efforts had been made in the development of its extraordinary mineral resources.

How is this arrest of development accounted for? I know that a short way of accounting for it has been the presence of slavery. I would not underestimate this. Free labor would not go where it had to compete with slave labor; white labor now does not like to come into relations with black labor; and capital also was shy of investment in a State where both political economy and social life were disturbed by a color line. But this does not wholly account for the position of Kentucky as to development at the close of the war. So attractive is the State in most respects, in climate, soil, and the possibilities of great wealth by manufactures, that I doubt not the State would have been forced into the line of Western progress and slavery become an unimportant factor long ago, but for certain natural obstacles and artificial influences.

Let the reader look on the map, at the ranges of mountains running from the north-east to the southwest—the Blue Ridge, the Alleghanies, the Cumberland, and Pine mountains, continuous rocky ridges, with scarcely a water gap, and only at long intervals a passable mountain gap—and notice how these would both hinder and deflect the tide of emigration. With such barriers the early development of Kentucky becomes ten times a wonder. But about 1825 an event occurred that placed her at a greater disadvantage in the competition. The Erie Canal was opened. This made New York, and not Virginia, the great commercial highway. The railway development followed. It was easy to build roads north of Kentucky, and the tide of settlement followed the roads, which were mostly aided by land grants; and in order to utilize the land grants the railways stimulated emigration by extensive advertising. Capital and population passed Kentucky by on the north. To the south somewhat similar conditions prevailed. Comparatively cheap roads could be built along the eastern slope of the Alleghanies, following the great valley from Pennsylvania to Alabama; and these south-westwardly roads were also aided by the General Government. The North and South Railway of Alabama, and the Alabama and Great Southern, which cross at Birmingham, were land-grant roads. The roads which left the Atlantic seaboard passed naturally northward and southward of Kentucky, and left an immense area in the centre of the Union—all of western and southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky—without transportation facilities. Until 1880 here was the largest area east of the Mississippi impenetrated by railways.

The war removed one obstacle to the free movement of men desiring work and seeking agreeable homes, a movement marked in the great increase of the industrial population of Louisville and the awakening to varied industries and trade in western Kentucky. The offer of cheap land, which would reward skilful farming In agreeable climatic conditions, has attracted foreign settlers to the plateau south of the blue-grass region; and scientific investigation has made the mountain district in the south-east the object of the eager competition of both domestic and foreign capital. Kentucky, therefore, is entering upon a new era of development. Two phases of it, the Swiss colonies, and the opening of the coal, iron, and timber resources, present special points of interest.

This Incoming of the commercial spirit will change Kentucky for the better and for the worse, will change even the tone of the blue-grass country, and perhaps take away something of that charm about which so much has been written. So thoroughly has this region been set forth by the pen and the pencil and the lens that I am relieved of the necessity of describing it. But I must confess that all I had read of it, all the pictures I had seen, gave me an inadequate idea of its beauty and richness. So far as I know, there is nothing like it in the world. Comparison of it with England is often made in the use of the words “garden” and “park.” The landscape is as unlike the finer parts of Old England as it is unlike the most carefully tended parts of New England. It has neither the intense green, the subdivisions in hedges, the bosky lanes, the picturesque cottages, the niceness of minute garden-culture, of England, nor the broken, mixed lawn gardening and neglected pastures and highways, with the sweet wild hills, of the Berkshire region. It is an open, elevated, rolling land, giving the traveller often the most extended views over wheat and clover, hemp and tobacco fields, forests and blue-grass pastures. One may drive for a hundred miles north and south over the splendid macadam turnpikes, behind blooded roadsters, at an easy ten-mile gait, and see always the same sight—a smiling agricultural paradise, with scarcely a foot, in fence corners, by the road-side, or in low grounds, of uncultivated, uncared-for land. The open country is more pleasing than the small villages, which have not the tidiness of the New England small villages; the houses are for the most part plain; here and there is a negro cabin, or a cluster of them, apt to be unsightly, but always in view somewhere is a plantation-house, more or less pretentious, generally old-fashioned and with the colonial charm. These are frequently off the main thoroughfare, approached by a private road winding through oaks and ash-trees, seated on some gentle knoll or slope, maybe with a small flower-garden, but probably with the old sentimental blooms that smell good and have reminiscences, in the midst of waving fields of grain, blue-grass pastures, and open forest glades watered by a dear stream. There seems to be infinite peace in a house so surrounded. The house may have pillars, probably a colonial porch and door-way with earving in bass-relief, a wide hall, large square rooms, low studded, and a general air of comfort. What is new in it in the way of art, furniture, or bric-à-brac may not be in the best taste, and may “swear” at the old furniture and the delightful old portraits. For almost always will be found some portraits of the post-Revolutionary period, having a traditional and family interest, by Copley or Jouett, perhaps a Stuart, maybe by some artist who evidently did not paint for fame, which carry the observer back to the colonial society in Virginia, Philadelphia, and New York. In a country house and in Lexington I saw portraits, life-size and miniature, of Rebecca Gratz, whose loveliness of person and character is still a tender recollection of persons living. She was a great beauty and toast in her day. It was at her house in Philadelphia, a centre of wit and gayety, that Washington Irving and Henry Brevoort and Gulian C. Verplanck often visited. She shone not less in New York society, and was the most intimate friend of Matilda Hoffman, who was betrothed to Irving; indeed, it was in her arms that Matilda died, fadeless always to us as she was to Irving, in the loveliness of her eighteenth year. The well-founded tradition is that Irving, on his first visit to Abbotsford, told Scott of his own loss, and made him acquainted with the beauty and grace of Rebecca Gratz, and that Scott, wanting at the moment to vindicate a race that was aspersed, used her as a model for Rebecca in “Ivanhoe.”

One distinction of the blue-grass region is the forests, largely of gigantic oaks, free of all undergrowth, carpeted with the close-set, luscious, nutritive blue-grass, which remains green all the season when it is cropped by feeding. The blue-grass thrives elsewhere, notably in the upper Shenandoah Valley, where somewhat similar limestone conditions prevail; but this is its natural habitat. On all this elevated rolling plateau the limestone is near the surface. This grass blooms towards the middle of June in a bluish, almost a peacock blue, blossom, which gives to the fields an exquisite hue. By the end of the month the seed ripens into a yellowish color, and while the grass is still green and lush underneath, the surface presents much the appearance of a high New England pasture in August. When it is ripe, the top is cut for the seed. The limestone and the blue-grass together determine the agricultural pre-eminence of the region, and account for the fine breeding of the horses, the excellence of the cattle, the stature of the men, and the beauty of the women; but they have social and moral influence also. It could not well be otherwise, considering the relation of the physical condition to disposition and character. We should be surprised if a rich agricultural region, healthful at the same time, where there is abundance of food, and wholesome cooking is the rule, did not affect the tone of social life. And I am almost prepared to go further, and think that blue-grass is a specific for physical beauty and a certain graciousness of life. I have been told that there is a natural relation between Presbyterianism and blue-grass, and am pointed to the Shenandoah and to Kentucky as evidence of it. Perhaps Presbyterians naturally seek a limestone country. But the relation, if it exists, is too subtle and the facts are too few to build a theory on. Still, I have no doubt there is a distinct variety of woman known as the blue-grass girl. A geologist told me that once when he was footing it over the State with a geologist from another State, as they approached the blue-grass region from the southward they were carefully examining the rock formation and studying the surface indications, which are usually marked on the border line, to determine exactly where the peculiar limestone formation began. Indications, however, were wanting. Suddenly my geologist looked up the road and exclaimed:

“We are in the blue-grass region now.”

“How do you know?” asked the other.

“Why, there is a blue-grass girl.”