Everybody has an air-castle, where he will gladly
entertain strangers for a sufficient consideration.
In the town, the whole of which was
offered, less than a dozen years ago, to a
Dutchman for two barrels of whiskey and a
half-barrel of peach-brandy, and refused on
those terms by him, a kennel of a store, rents
at five hundred dollars per annum, and corner-
lots sell at incredible prices.

Such is Saint Paul in summer. During
the long, cold, but dry and healthy winter—
lasting from November to May—navigation
being closed, a stage-coach, plying between
Saint Paul and Prairie du Chien (pronounced
by the natives, Prayree doo Sheen) in
Wisconsin, a distance of three hundred miles,
connects the main body of civilisation with
its pioneer city. Emigration falls off, and
business stagnates. How, under such
circumstances, the Saint Paulese manage to kill
the hours is matter of rumour, which reports
parties and sleigh-rides as the principal
amusements of the place. Whenever there
is snow on the ground, the fast horses, of
which, I can answer for it, there is no lack,
fast men and faster women turn night into
day and day into night, and keep up a
carnival. The fever of pleasure succeeds the
fever of business. Money still changes hands
rapidly at the Apollo and other drinking
saloons. Some of the older hands at business
are laying plans for the coming summer,
preparing their maps and their guide-books,
and laying out the towns that are to be:
others have gone east to spread their nets:
others, becoming weary of dissipation, and
desirous of keeping themselves in practice,
traffic with their neighbours, as the coquette
tries the effect of her graces in the family
circle, when what she considers better game
is not to be had.

I find no difficulty is believing that Saint
Paul bears, as is said by those who have seen
both cities, a close resemblance to San
Francisco; land standing in place of gold as
material to gamble with, and leading to similar
excesses and extravagance. Some call Saint
Paul the more dissipated place of the two,
and say that its citizens live faster, make and
spend more money, and know less of quiet
happiness than those of San Francisco.
However this may be, Saint Paul, like the West,
of which it is an epitome, and the American
nation, of whose characteristics it is one of
the latest manifestations, is an awkward,
overgrown boy, the elements of whose nature,
although beyond question fine and manly,
are not yet worked up into a whole, and
whose mind is in a transitional state. Full of
life and quick of wits, its citizens, inquiring
not so much whither each leads as which
affords most scope for their exuberant power
and spirits, rush into all paths of activity
that present themselves. They do not seek
excitement as an occasional feast, but as their
daily fare. Bluff, outspoken, unrefined, their
hearts on their sleeves for any daw to peck
at, they grasp the stranger by the hand, offer
him everything but their time, on which there
are already too many claims, and make him
feel thoroughly at home. To polish their
manners, to reform their morals, to foster the
fine arts of civilisation, to hang their virtues
upon the silken string of moderation, would
take too much from the day, all of which
they require for more pressing affairs.
Whether with families or without, they have
little home-life. They have not come west to
live, but to stay while amassing a fortune.
Every year these men hope to return East;
every year beholds them embarking in a new
project, and the chances are, that they will
die in the harness. Very few succeed in
making the Western States their India, and
in surprising their native towns by coming
back Nabobs. Others, again, go West in
order to push themselves in politics. They
are confident of being sent to congress within
two or three years. And so many better
men find work nearer home than Washington,
that they often succeed. Others are born
Westerners, who go to Saint Paul's or
Chicago, as young men go up to London, to fight
the battle of life where the press is the
strongest, and most blows are exchanged.
Occasionally a New Englander strikes for
the prairie in hopes of finding there an
Arcadia, where he may bring up his children
in peace and innocence. It would be a curious
question to ask how many found what
they sought. Now and then a Yankee
farmer, finding that he was scarcely wringing
a livelihood out of the rocky acres, which
descended to him from his father, pulls up
stakes, and plants himself in a richer soil.
The want of what is called a good opening,
in the place where many emigrants are born,
accounts for their leaving it. Those who go
West, from pure love of adventure, are much
fewer than the newspapers would have us
suppose. The love of money, or of distinction,
or of the excitement of competition, the
desire of rising in the world in one way or
another, is the real source of almost all the
emigration that flows from the Eastern into
the Western States. Daniel Boone lived a
century ago. Washington Irving's Western
settler is of another generation. You may
find him upon the Neasho in Kansas; you
may find him in Oregon; but you will have
to look long even there for a man who cannot
bear to have neighbours, who is restless when
civilisation is upon his heels, and discontented,
unless his clearing is nearest the setting sun.

The tendency, now-a-days, is towards
aggregation. People live in villages, and only
farm upon compulsion. Farmers who went
West, with the intention of clearing a few
acres and supporting themselves and their
families, with axe, hoe, and rifle, are sucked
into the vortex, and find themselves, of a
sudden, not planting, but gambling in land.
The staid, slow-moving, slow-thinking
countryman soon becomes as much in a hurry,