"HESDEN LE MOYNE."
IV.
While Hesden waited for an answer to this letter, which had been forwarded through Captain Pardee, he received one from Jordan Jackson. It was somewhat badly spelled, but he made it out to be as follows:
"EUPOLIA, KANSAS, Sunday, March 23, 1873.
"MY DEAR LE MOYNE:
"I have been intending to write to you for a long time, but have been too busy. You never saw such a busy country as this. It just took me off my legs when I first came out here. I thought I knew what it meant to 'git up and git.' Nobody ever counted me hard to start or slow to move, down in that country; but here—God bless you, Le Moyne, I found I wasn't half awake! Work? Lord! Lord! how these folks do work and tear around! It don't seem so very hard either, because when they have anything to do they don't do nothing else, and when have nothing to do they make a business of that, too.
"Then, they use all sorts of machinery, and never do anything by hand-power that a horse can be made to do, in any possible way. The horses do all the ploughing, sowing, hoeing, harvesting, and, in fact, pretty much all the farm-work; while the man sits up on a sulky-seat and fans himself with a palm-leaf hat. So that, according to my reckoning, one man here counts for about as much as four in our country.
"I have moved from where I first settled, which was in a county adjoining this. I found that my notion of just getting a plantation to settle down on, where I could make a living and be out of harm's way, wasn't the thing for this country, nohow. A man who comes here must pitch in and count for all he's worth. It's a regular ground-scuffle, open to all, and everybody choosing his own hold. Morning, noon, and night the world is awake and alive; and if a man isn't awake too, it tramps on right over him and wipes him out, just as a stampeded buffalo herd goes over a hunter's camp.
"Everybody is good-natured and in dead earnest. Every one that comes is welcome, and no questions asked. Kin and kin-in-law don't count worth a cuss. Nobody stops to ask where you come from, what's your politics, or whether you've got any religion. They don't care, if you only mean 'business.' They don't make no fuss over nobody. There ain't much of what we call 'hospitality' at the South, making a grand flourish and a big lay-out over anybody; but they just take it, as a matter of course, that you are all right and square and honest, and as good as anybody till you show up diferent. There ain't any big folks nor any little ones. Of course, there are rich folks and poor ones, but the poor are just as respectable as the rich, feel just as big, and take up just as much of the road. There ain't any crawling nor cringing here. Everybody stands up straight, and don't give nor take any sass from anybody else. The West takes right hold of every one that comes into it and makes him a part of itself, instead of keeping him outside in the cold to all eternity, as the South does the strangers who go there.
"I don't know as you'd like it; but if any one who has been kept down and put on, as poor men are at the South, can muster pluck enough to get away and come here, he'll think he's been born over again, or I'm mistaken. Nobody asks your politics. I don't reckon anybody knew mine for a year. The fact is, we're all too busy to fuss with our neighbors or cuss them about their opinions. I've heard more politics in a country store in Horsford in a day than I've heard here in Eupolia in a year—and we've got ten thousand people here, too. I moved here last year, and am doing well. I wouldn't go back and live in that d—d hornet's nest that I felt so bad about leaving—not for the whole State, with a slice of the next one throwed in.