spit out of his own window without hitting a brevet major outside; and it was in a Western city that the man threw his stick at a dog across the road, “missed that dawg, sir, but hit five major-generals on t’other side, and ’twasn’t a good day for major-generals either, sir.”  Not less necessary than knowledge of social position is knowledge of the political institutions and characters of the West.  Not to know Rufus P. W. Smidge, or Ossian W. Dodge of Minnesota, is simply to argue yourself utterly unknown.  My first experience of Chicago fully impressed me with this fact.  I had made the acquaintance of an American gentleman “on board” the train, and as we approached the city along the sandy margin of Lake Michigan he kindly pointed out the buildings and public institutions of the neighbourhood.

“There, sir,” he finally said, “there is our new monument to Stephen B. Douglas.”

I looked in the direction indicated, and beheld some blocks of granite in course of erection into a pedestal.  I confess to having been entirely ignorant at the time as to what claim Stephen B. Douglas may have had to this public recognition of his worth, but the tone of my informant’s voice was sufficient to warn me that everybody knew Stephen B. Douglas, and that ignorance of his career might prove hurtful to the feelings of my new acquaintance, so I carefully refrained from showing by word or look the drawback under which I laboured.  There was with me, however, a travelling companion who, to an ignorance of Stephen B. D. fully equal to mine own, added a truly British indignation that monumental honours should be bestowed upon one whose fame was still faint across the Atlantic.  Looking partly at the monument, partly at our American informant, and partly at me, he hastily ejaculated, “Who the devil was Stephen B. Douglas?”

Alas! the murder was out, and out in its most aggravating form.  I hastily attempted a rescue.  “Not know who Stephen B. Douglas was?” I exclaimed, in a tone of mingled reproof and surprise.  “Is it possible you don’t know who Stephen B. Douglas was?”

Nothing cowed by the assumption of knowledge implied by my question, my fellow-traveller was not to be done.  “All deuced fine,” he went on, “I’ll bet you a fiver you don’t know who he was either!”

I kicked at him under the seat of the carriage, but it was of no use, he persisted in his reckless offers of “laying fivers,” and our united ignorance stood fatally revealed.

Round the city of Chicago stretches upon three sides a vast level prairie, a meadow larger than the area of England and Wales, and as fertile as the luxuriant vegetation of thousands of years decaying under a semi-tropic sun could make it.  Illinois is in round numbers 400 miles from north to south, its greatest breadth being about 200 miles.  The Mississippi, running in vast curves along the entire length of its western frontier for 700 miles, bears away to southern ports the rich burden of wheat and Indian corn.