y to ship them; consequently Christmas
trees are not common, and therefore they are the more prized when they
may be had. There are no great rows nor small clusters of inviting shops
filled with suggestive and fascinating contents at attractive prices.
The distances from centres of trade are so great that the things which
may be purchased even in the smallest towns in more favourable
localities for a few cents have there almost a prohibitive price put
upon them. The efforts of the people to give their children a merry
Christmas in the popular sense, however, are strong and sometimes
pitiful.

It must not be forgotten that the West is settled by Eastern people, and
that no very great difference exists between them save for the
advantages presented by life in the West for the higher development of
character. Western people are usually brighter, quicker, more
progressive and less conservative, and more liberal than those from whom
they came. The survival of the fittest is the rule out there and the
qualities of character necessary to that end are brought to the top by
the strenuous life necessitated by the hardships of the frontier. If the
people are not any better than they were, it is because they are still
clinging to the obsolete ideas of the East.

The Eastern point of view always reminds me of the reply of the bishop
to the layman who was deploring the poor quality of the clergy. "Yes,"
said the bishop, "some of them are poor; but consider the stock from
which they come. You see, we have nothing but laymen out of which to
make them."

The East never understands the West--the real West that is, which lies
beyond the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Rocky Mountains. They know
nothing of its ideas, its capacities, its possibilities, its
educational facilities, its culture, its real power, in the East. And
they do not wish to learn, apparently. The Easterners fatuously think,
like Job, that they are the people, and wisdom will die with them. Some
years since an article in the "Forum" on the theme, "Kansas more
civilized than New York" conclusively proved the proposition to the
satisfaction of the present writer at least.

Yet I know numberless dwellers in Gotham whose shibboleth is "nothing
outside of New York City but scenery," and they are a little dubious
about admitting that. When one describes the Grand Canyon or the Royal
Gorge they point to Nassau or Wall Street, and the Woolworth tower
challenges Pike's Pe