n Israel. The total yearly expenses of one of
those western colleges would hardly equal the salary of the chief of a
great university, but presidents of the United States are graduated
there.

The western farmer reads and thinks, and perhaps in that clear western
air, as he ploughs the sod of the prairie, and reaps the harvest on his
rude domain, he sees farther into the future than his brother of the
East. Right or wrong in his political views, he is at any rate honest in
them, and if his convictions seem to partake sometimes of the fervor of
the crusader, it should not be forgotten that the spirit of Ossawattomie
Brown yet lives in the land which he saved for freedom; it should not be
forgotten that nearly every western homestead has its grave in the
battlefields of the war which made us one people forever. Making due
allowance for that good-natured raillery which is one of the spices of
existence, it may be truthfully said that anyone who laughs in earnest at
the West calls attention merely to his own shallow conceit. Intelligent
people in the East are studying, not ridiculing the West.

* * *

The recuperative energy displayed by the Southern people has been even
more wonderful and admirable than that exhibited by France after the
German conquest. France was not denuded, as the South was denuded of all
that represents wealth save a fertile soil and the resolution to rise
from the ashes of the past. And the South has risen. I passed through
North Carolina and Virginia just before the close of the war. Recently I
visited the same States, and South Carolina and Georgia for the first
time since the war. What a transformation! But for the genial climate the
busy factories would have recalled New England, while a keen business air
had taken the place of that old-time lassitude which in ante-bellum days
seemed inseparable from the institution of slavery. The Southern people
have all the acuteness of the Yankee, with a genuine bonhomie which
brightens the most ordinary incidents of life. New conditions have called
into play valuable qualities which were torpid until touched by the wand
of necessity. The old families no longer regard honorable toil with
aversion or disdain; on the contrary they are workers, and work is the
passport to respectable recognition. The Southern whites are getting
along very well with the colored people, and look on them as not only
useful, but indispensa