man to the actual truth.

Yet there was no exaggeration whatever in the reply, as the experienced
traveler knows well. Neither Chicago nor St. Louis are really in the
West, so far as points of the compass are concerned, both of these
cities being hundreds of miles east of the geographical center of the
United States. But they are both spoken of as "out West," and are
included in the territory in which the extreme Eastern man is apt to
think people live on the coarsest fare, and clothe themselves in the
roughest possible manner. Yet the impartial and disinterested New York
or Boston man who visits either of these cities speedily admits that he
frequently finds it difficult to believe that he is not in his own much
loved city, so close is the resemblance in many respects between the
business houses and the method of doing business. Denver is looked upon
by the average Easterner almost in the light of a frontier city, away
out in the Rockies, surrounded by awe-inspiring scenery, no doubt, but
also by grizzly bears and ferocious Indians. San Francisco is too far
away to be thought very intelligently, but a great many people regard
that home of wealth and elegance as another extreme Western
die-in-your-boots, rough-and-tumble city.

This ignorance, for it is ignorance rather than prejudice, results from
the mania for European travel, which was formerly a characteristic of
the Atlantic States, but which of recent years has, like civilization,
traveled West. The Eastern man who has made money is much more likely to
take his family on a European tour than on a trip through his native
country. He incurs more expense by crossing the Atlantic, and although
he adds to his store of knowledge by traveling, he does not learn matter
of equal importance to him as if he had crossed the American continent
and enlightened himself as to the men and manners in its different