of dollars.  But when the success comes, when the happy hit has been made, and the ways of commerce have been truly foreseen with a cunning eye, then a great and prosperous city springs up, ready made as it were, from the earth.  Such a town is Milwaukee, now containing 45,000 inhabitants, but with room apparently for double that number; with room for four times that number, were men packed as closely there as they are with us.

In the principal business streets of all these towns one sees vast buildings.  They are usually called blocks, and are often so denominated in large letters on their front, as Portland Block, Devereux Block, Buel’s Block.  Such a block may face to two, three, or even four streets, and, as I presume, has generally been a matter of one special speculation.  It may be divided into separate houses, or kept for a single purpose, such as that of a hotel, or grouped into shops below, and into various sets of chambers above.  I have had occasion in various towns to mount the stairs within these blocks, and have generally found some portion of them vacant—­ have sometimes found the greater portion of them vacant.  Men build on an enormous scale, three times, ten times as much as is wanted.  The only measure of size is an increase on what men have built before.  Monroe P. Jones, the speculator, is very probably ruined, and then begins the world again nothing daunted.  But Jones’s block remains, and gives to the city in its aggregate a certain amount of wealth.  Or the block becomes at once of service and finds tenants.  In which case Jones probably sells it, and immediately builds two others twice as big.  That Monroe P. Jones will encounter ruin is almost a matter of course; but then he is none the worse for being ruined.  It hardly makes him unhappy.  He is greedy of dollars with a terrible covetousness; but he is greedy in order that he may speculate more widely.  He would sooner have built Jones’s tenth block, with a prospect of completing a twentieth, than settle himself down at rest for life as the owner of a Chatsworth or a Woburn.  As for his children, he has no desire of leaving them money.  Let the girls marry.  And for the boys—­for them it will be good to begin as he begun.  If they cannot build blocks for themselves, let them earn their bread in the blocks of other men.  So Monroe P. Jones, with his million of dollars accomplished, advances on to a new frontier, goes to work again on a new city, and loses it all.  As an individual I differ very much from Monroe P. Jones.  The first block accomplished, with an adequate rent accruing to me as the builder, I fancy that I should never try a second.  But Jones is undoubtedly the man for the West.  It is that love of money to come, joined to a strong disregard for money made, which constitutes the vigorous frontier mind, the true pioneering organization.  Monroe P. Jones would be a great man to all posterity if only he had a poet to sing of his valor.