was built to
last a thousand years. The bronze girder that supports the staircase is
strong enough to hold up a locomotive.

The house is nearly two hundred feet long, but looks proportionate, from
the Art-Gallery with its fine pictures and pipe-organ at one end, to its
rich leather-finished dining-room at the other. It is of brownstone--the
real Fifth Avenue stuff. Fond du Lac stone is cheaper and perhaps just
as good, but it has the objectionable light-colored spots.

Nothing but the best will do for Hill. The tallest flagpole that can
pass the curves of the mountains between Puget Sound and Saint Paul
graces the yard. The kitchen is lined with glazed brick, so that a hose
could be turned on the walls; the laundry-room has immense drawers for
indoor drying of clothes; no need to open a single window for
ventilation, as air from above is forced inside over ice-chambers in
Summer and over hot-water pipes in Winter.

Mr. Hill is a rare judge of art, and has the best collection of
"Barbizons" in America. Any one can get from his private secretary,
J. J. Toomey, a card of admission. As early as Eighteen Hundred Eighty-one,
Mr. Hill had in his modest home on Ninth Street, Saint Paul, several
"Corots." Mr. Hill is fond of good horses, and has a hundred or so of
them on his farm of three thousand acres, ten miles north of Saint Paul.

Some years ago, while President of the Great Northern Railway, he drove
night and morning in Summertime to and from his farm to his office. He
very often walks to his house on Summit Avenue or takes a street-car. He
is thoroughly democratic, and may be seen almost any day walking from
the Great Northern Railway office engaged in conversation with one or
more; and no matter how deeply engrossed or how important the subject in
hand, he never fails to greet with a nod or a smile an acquaintance. He
knows everybody, and sees everything.

Mr. Hill knows more about farming than any other man I ever met. He
raises hogs and cattle, has taken prizes for fat cattle at the Chicago
show, and knows more than anybody else today as to the food-supply of
the world--yes, and of the coal and timber supply, too. He has formed
public opinion on these matters, and others, by his able contributions
to various magazines.

Seattle has erected a monument to James J. Hill, and Saint Paul and
Minneapolis will, I know, erelong be only too glad to do something in
the same line, only greater.

Just how any man will a