d count unmined gold.

*****

To Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

BUFFALO, Aug. 20, 1869.

MY DEAR SISTER,--I have only time to write a line. I got your letter
this morning and mailed it to Livy. She will be expecting me tonight and
I am sorry to disappoint her so, but then I couldn't well get away. I
will go next Saturday.

I have bundled up Livy's picture and will try and recollect to mail it
tomorrow. It is a porcelaintype and I think you will like it.

I am sorry I never got to St. Louis, because I may be too busy to go,
for a long time. But I have been busy all the time and St. Louis is
clear out of the way, and remote from the world and all ordinary routes
of travel. You must not place too much weight upon this idea of moving
the capital from Washington. St. Louis is in some respects a better
place for it than Washington, though there isn't more than a toss-up
between the two after all. One is dead and the other in a trance.
Washington is in the centre of population and business, while St. Louis
is far removed from both. And you know there is no geographical centre
any more. The railroads and telegraph have done away with all that. It
is no longer a matter of sufficient importance to be gravely considered
by thinking men. The only centres, now, are narrowed down to those of
intelligence, capital and population. As I said before Washington is the
nearest to those and you don't have to paddle across a river on ferry
boats of a pattern popular in the dark ages to get to it, nor have to
clamber up vilely paved hills in rascally omnibuses along with a herd
of all sorts of people after you are there. Secondly, the removal of
the capital is one of those old, regular, reliable dodges that are the
bread-and meat of back country congressmen. It is agitated every year.
It always has been, it always will be; It is not new in any respect.
Thirdly. The Capitol has cost $40,000,000 already and lacks a good deal
of being finished, yet. There are single stones in the Treasury building
(and a good many of them) that cost twenty-seven thousand dollars
apiece--and millions were spent in the construction of that and the
Patent Office and the other great government buildings. To move to
St. Louis, the country must throw away a hundred millions of capital
invested in those buildings, and go right to work to spend a hundred
millions on new buildings in St. Louis. Shall we ever have a Cong