various conflicting races of the Old World into the great American
people. Assuredly the world has never witnessed any experiment of so
gigantic a nature as this immense fusion of the Caucasian race now going
on before our eyes in North America. One asks oneself, with feelings of
dread, what is to be the result? Is it to eliminate from the human race
the evil habits of each nationality, and to preserve in the new one the
noble characteristics of all? I say one asks the question with a feeling
of dread, for it is the question of the well-being, of the whole human
family of the future, the question of the advance or retrogression of the
human race. No man living can answer that question. Time alone can solve
it; but one thing is certain-so far the experiment bodes ill for success.
Too often the best and noblest attributes of the people wither and die
out by the process of transplanting. The German preserves inviolate his
love of lager, and leaves behind him his love of Fatherland. The Celt,
Scotch or Irish, appears to eliminate from his nature many of those
traits of humour of which their native lands are so pregnant. It may be
that this is only the beginning, that a national decomposition of the old
distinctions must occur before the new elements can arise, and that from
it all will come in the fulness of time a regenerated society:--

"Sin itself be found,
A cloudy porch oft opening on the sun."

But at present, looking abroad over the great seething mass of American
society, there seems little reason to hope for required alteration. The
dollar must cease to be the only God, and that old, old proverb that
"honesty is the best policy" must once more come into fashion.

Four hundred and six miles intervene between Milwaukie, in the State of
Wisconsin, and St. Paul, the capital and principal city of the State of