When New England people believed there would never be anything worth
having west of the Connecticut River, what if some seer had prophesied
that in nineteen hundred there would be a city on Manhattan Island
named New York that would rival London, two southwest, Baltimore and
Washington to equal Venice, Philadelphia to match Liverpool, Pittsburg
and Buffalo to surpass Birmingham, and beyond these a city called
Chicago, which in grit and growth would beat anything the old world
ever dreamt of; while on still farther west, would be a State named
Iowa, in which in nineteen hundred and fourteen, would be produced
enough cattle to beef England, enough potatoes to feed Ireland and
hogs to "beat the Jews."

What if he had continued; that in the libraries of the barren waste,
there would be ten million more books, than in the combined libraries
of Europe; that its college students would outnumber the college
students of England, France and Germany combined; that its wealth
would be great enough to purchase the empires of Russia and Turkey,
the kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland, with South
Africa and all her diamond mines thrown in, and then have enough left
to buy a dozen archipelagoes at twenty millions each, and still have
the wealth of the republic growing at the rate of five millions of
dollars every twenty-four hours. What a land in which to live! Think
of it; less than a century and a half ago, Liberty and England's
runaway daughter, Columbia, took each other "for better or for worse,
forever and for aye" and started down time's rugged stream of years.
George Washington, then Chief Magistrate, performed the ceremony, and
what he joined together time has not put asunder. It was not a wedding
in high life, such as shakes the foundation of fashionable society
today, but rather more like the swearing away of a verdant country
couple, in some Gretna Green, with no other capital than youth, health