ace with such
wonderful phantasmagoric growth? The two cities are separated by a
distance of about nine miles, but they are every day growing up toward
each other, and to-morrow they will practically have become one.

Nothing is more amusing than the jealousies which exist between the
different large cities of the United States, and when these rival places
are close to each other, the feeling of jealousy is so intensified as to
become highly entertaining.

St. Paul charges Minneapolis with copying into the census names from
tombstones, and it is affirmed that young men living in either one of
the cities will marry girls belonging to the other so as to decrease its
population by one. The story goes that once a preacher having announced,
in a Minneapolis church, that he had taken the text of his sermon from
St. Paul, the congregation walked out _en masse_.

New York despises Philadelphia, and pokes fun at Boston. On the other
hand, Boston hates Chicago, and _vice versa_. St. Louis has only
contempt for Chicago, and both cities laugh heartily at Detroit and
Milwaukee. San Francisco and Denver are left alone in their prosperity.
They are so far away from the east and north of America, that the
feeling they inspire is only one of indifference.

"Philadelphia is a city of homes, not of lodging-houses," once said a
Philadelphian to a New Yorker; "and it spreads over a far greater area
than New York, with less than half the inhabitants." "Ah," replied the
New Yorker, "that's because it has been so much sat upon."

"You are a city of commerce," said a Bostonian to a New York wit;
"Boston is a city of culture." "Yes," replied the New Yorker. "You
spell culture with a big C, and God with a small g."

Of course St. Paul and Minneapolis accuse each other of counting their
respective citizens twice over. All that is diverting in the highest
degree. This feeling does not exist only between the rival cities of the
New World, it exists in the Old. Ask a Glasgow man what he thinks of
Edinburgh, and an Edinburgh man what he thinks of Glasgow!

* * * * *

On account of the intense cold (nearly thirty degrees below zero), I
have not been able to see much either of St. Paul or of Minneapolis, and
I am unable to please or vex either of these cities by pointing out
their beauties and defects. Both are large and substantially built, with
large churches, schools, banks, stores, and all the temples that mode