Chicago lies almost 1000 miles due west of New York.  A traveller leaving the latter city, let us say on Monday morning, finds himself on Tuesday at eight o’clock in the evening in Chicago-one thousand miles in thirty-four hours.  In the meantime he will have eaten three meals and slept soundly “on board” his palace-car, if he is so minded.  For many hundred miles during the latter portion of his journey he will have noticed great tracts of swamp and forest, with towns and cities and settlements interspersed between; and then, when these tracts of swamp and unreclaimed forest seem to be increasing instead of diminishing, he comes all of a sudden upon a vast, full-grown, bustling city, with tall chimneys sending out much smoke, with heavy horses dragging great:  drays of bulky freight through thronged and busy streets, and with tall-masted ships and whole fleets of steamers lying packed against the crowded quays.  He has begun to dream himself in the West, and lo! there rises up a great city.  “But is not this the West?” will ask the new-comer from the Atlantic states.  “Upon your own showing we are here 1000 miles from New York, by water 1500 miles to Quebec; surely this must be the West?” No; for in this New World the West is ever on the move.  Twenty years ago Chicago was West; ten years ago it was Omaha; then it was Salt Lake City, and now it is San Francisco on the Pacific Ocean.

This big city, with its monster hotels and teeming traffic, was no new scene to me, for I had spent pleasant days in it three years before.  An American in America is a very pleasant fellow.  It is true that on many social points and habits his views may differ from ours in a manner very shocking to our prejudices, insular or insolent, as these prejudices of ours too frequently are; but meet him with fair allowance for the fact that there may be two sides to a question, and that a man may not tub every morning and yet be a good fellow, and in nine cases of ten you will find him most agreeable, a little inquisitive perhaps to know your peculiar belongings, but equally ready to impart to you the details of every item connected with his business—­altogether a very jolly every-day companion when met on even basis.  If you happen to be a military man, he will call you Colonel or General, and expect similar recognition:  of rank by virtue of his volunteer services in the 44th:  Illinois, or 55th Missourian.  At present, and for many years to come, it is and will be a safe method of beginning any observation to a Western American with “I say, General,” and on no account ever to get below the rank of field officer when addressing anybody holding a socially smaller position than that of bar-keeper.  Indeed major-generals were as plentiful in the United States at the termination of the great rebellion as brevet-majors were in the British service at the close of the Crimean campaign.  It was at Plymouth, I think, that a grievance was established by a youngster on the score that he really could not