and had a good visit. He keeps a dairy farm and owns forty
cows besides a wife and three young children; he is doing well. His pa
havin' a horticultural and floral turn of mind, named his two boys Lemon
and Orange. His girls are Lily, Rose and Violet. Lily is dark complected
and so fat that she looks like a pillar with a string tied in the
middle, and Rose and Violet are as humbly as they make but respectable.
Folks ort to be more cautious in namin' children, but they're all
married quite well, and we had a good visit with 'em, stayin' most of
the time at Orange's.

And I see with joy that the shadder on my pardner's face lifted quite a
little durin' our stay there, but of course this belated us and we
didn't git to St. Louis till Saturday late in the afternoon. St. Louis
is a big sizeable place. Mr. Laclede cut the tree for the first
log-house in the forest where St. Louis now stands in 1764. America had
several cities all started at that time, but St. Louis jest put in and
growed, and now it is the fourth city in the United States. It's an
awful worker, why it produces more in its factories than is produced by
the hull of thirty-seven States, jest think on't! And it has thirty-two
million folks to buy the things it produces. Twenty-seven railways run
into it; the city rules itself and leads the world in many manufactures.
They say it is the richest community in the world, and I couldn't
dispute it, for they seemed jest rollin' in riches all the while I wuz
there; wuzn't put to it for a thing so fur as I could see.

It is noted for its charities; it has the biggest Sunday-school in the
world, two thousand three hundred and forty-four children in one
school--jest think on't! Its Union railroad station is the finest in the
Universe, so they say, and jest the buildin' covers twenty acres. And it
has the greatest bridge over the greatest river in the world.

But everything has its drawbacks, the water there hain't like Jonesville
water; I don't say it to twit 'em, but it is a solemn truth, the water
is riley, they can't dispute it. I'd love to hand 'em out a pailful now
and then from our well, and would if I had the chance--how they would
enjoy it.

Blandina and I wanted to go to once to Miss Huff's, a woman we used to
know in Jonesville who keeps a small boardin' house.

But Josiah, who had seen pictures on't, wanted to go to the Inside Inn.
He said they'd advertised cheap rooms, it would have a stylish sound to
tell