pleasant mixture, that is, of stained shingles, hooded dormer-windows,
cunning verandas, and recessed doors. Seeing these things, one begins to
understand why the Americans visiting England are impressed with the old
and not with the new. He is not much more than a hundred years ahead of
the English in design, comfort, and economy, and (this is most
important) labour-saving appliances in his house. From Newport to San
Diego you will find the same thing to-day.

Last tribute of respect and admiration. One little brown house at the
end of an avenue is shuttered down, and a doctor's buggy stands before
it. On the door a large blue and white label says--' Scarlet Fever.' Oh,
most excellent municipality of St. Paul. It is because of these little
things, and not by rowdying and racketing in public places, that a
nation becomes great and free and honoured. In the cars to-night they
will be talking wheat, girding at Minneapolis, and sneering at Duluth's
demand for twenty feet of water from Duluth to the Atlantic--matters of
no great moment compared with those streets and that label.


_A day later_.

'Five days ago there wasn't a foot of earth to see. It was just
naturally covered with snow,' says the conductor standing in the rear
car of the Great Northern train. He speaks as though the snow had hidden
something priceless. Here is the view: One railway track and a line of
staggering telegraph poles ending in a dot and a blur on the horizon. To
the left and right, a sweep as it were of the sea, one huge plain of
corn land waiting for the spring, dotted at rare intervals with wooden
farmhouses, patent self-reapers and binders almost as big as the houses,
ricks left over from last year's abundant harvest, and mottled here and