"Your ancestors, the Dutch," said he, "have been held up to ridicule because they refused to establish a town until they found a place where dykes had to be built to keep out the sea, though there were plenty of dry places available. These settlers are acting just as foolishly. They have been used to grubbing, and they go where grubbing has to be done. Two miles either way is better land ready for the plow! Why can't every one be wise like us?"
"They have to have wood for houses, stables, and fuel," I said. "I hope my land has timber on it."
"The railroads are coming," said he, "and they will bring you coal and wood and everything you want. They are racing for the crossings of the Mississippi. Soon they will reach the Missouri--and some day they will cross the continent to the Pacific. No more Erie Canals; no more Aaron Burr conspiracies for the control of the mouth of the Mississippi. Towns! Cities! Counties! States! We are pioneers; but civilization is treading on our heels. I feel it galling my kibes[8]--and what are a few blisters to me! I see in my own adopted city of Lithopolis, Iowa, a future Sparta or Athens or Rome, or anyhow, a Louisville or Cincinnati or Dubuque--a place in which to achieve greatness--or anyhow, a chance to deal in town lots, defend criminals, or prosecute them, and where the unsettled will have to be settled in the courts as well as on the farm. On to Lithopolis! G'lang, Whiteface, g'lang!"
[8] The editor acknowledges the invaluable assistance of Honorable N.V. Creede in the editing of the proofs of this and a few other passages.--G.v.d.M.
"I thought you were going to Monterey Centre," I said.
"Not if the court knows itself," he said, "and it thinks it does. Lithopolis is the permanent town in Monterey County, and Monterey Centre is the mushroom."
4
Monterey County, like all the eastern counties of Iowa, all the counties along the Missouri, and every other county which was crossed by a considerable river, was dotted with paper towns. We passed many of these staked-out sites on the Old Ridge Road; and we heard of them from buyers of and dealers in their lots.
Lithopolis was laid out by Judge Horace Stone, the great outsider in the affairs of the county until he died. He platted a town in Howard County when the town-lot fever first broke out, at a place called Stone's Ferry, and named it Lithopolis, because his name was Stone, and for the additional reason that there was a stone quarry there. I've been told that the word means Stone City. The people insisted upon calling it Stone's Ferry and would not have the name Lithopolis. Judge Stone raved and tore, but he was voted down, and pulled up stakes in disgust, sold out his interests and went on to Monterey County, where he could establish a new city and name it Lithopolis. He seemed to care more for the name than anything else, and never seemed to see how funny it was that he felt it possible to make a city wherever he decreed. This was a part of the spirit of the time. The prairies were infested with Romuluses and Remuses, flourishing, not on the milk of the wolves, but seemingly on their howls, of which they often gave a pretty fair imitation.