The heart grows sick when the list of commodities ends with the “souls of men.” What were they worth, measured against all that goes before?
A very different impression comes as we read Joaquin Miller’s exultant cry over the West:—
O heart of the world’s heart, West! my West!
Look up! Look out! There are fields of kine,
There are clover fields that are red as wine,
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There are emerald seas of corn and cane,
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There are isles of oak and a harvest plain
Where brown men bend to the bending grain,