from the good-nature in every one.

"I found from Nantucket to Chicago more attention than I desired. I had
a short seat in one of the cars, through the night. I did not think it
large enough for two, and so coiled myself up and went to sleep. There
were men standing all around. Once one of them came along and said
something about there being room for him on my seat. Another man said,
'She's asleep, don't disturb her.' I was too selfish to offer the half
of a short seat, and too tired to reason about the man's being,
possibly, more tired than I.

"I was invariably offered the seat near the window that I might lean
against the side of the car, and one gentleman threw his shawl across my
knees to keep me warm (I was suffering with heat at the time!). Another,
seeing me going to Chicago alone, warned me to beware of the impositions
of hack-drivers; telling me that I must pay two dollars if I did not
make a bargain beforehand. I found it true, for I paid one dollar for
going a few steps only.

"One peculiarity in travelling from East to West is, that you lose the
old men. In the cars in New England you see white-headed men, and I kept
one in the train up to New York, and one of grayish-tinted hair as far
as Erie; but after Cleveland, no man was over forty years old.

"For hundreds of miles the prairie land stretches on the Illinois
Central Railroad between Chicago and St. Louis. It may be pleasant in
summer, but it is a dreary waste in winter. The space is too broad and
too uniform to have beauty. The girdle of trees would be pretty,
doubtless, if seen near, but in the distance and in winter it is only a
black border to a brown plain.

"The State of Illinois must be capitally adapted to railroads on account
of this level, and but little danger can threaten a train from running
off of the track, as it might run on the soil nearly as well as on the
rails.

"Our engine was uncoupled, and had gone on for nearly half a mile
without the cars before the conductor perceived it.

"The time from Chicago to St. Louis is called fifteen hours and a
quarter; we made it twenty-three.

"If the prairie land is good farming-land, Illinois is destined to be a
great State. If its people will think less of the dollar and more of the
refinements of social life and the culture of the mind, it may become
the great State of the Union yet.

"March 12. Planter's Hotel, St. Louis. We visited Mercantile Hall and
the Library. The lecture-ro