Now, to the general reader, everything seems in a hopeless muddle, and he is glad he is not living there. But remember this. It is better than some older settlements, where men had to give eighty bushels of wheat for a pair of stogy boots, as they did in Ohio, and fight the Indian as well as the wolf from the door, or in Kansas forty years ago, where corn brought five cents a bushel, and men had to go a hundred miles to the mill. In order to show the hopeful side, I will give an illustration.
I was to speak at a meeting in Illinois. My way was through Missouri, where spiritual and civilized prosperity has not kept pace with her wealth and opportunities. I was entertained in a mansion built sixty years ago. The city, of sixteen thousand inhabitants, could hardly be matched in New England,—many fine streets, shaded with grand old elms; the roads bricked and well graded; the houses beautiful, artistic, and surrounded with lovely lawns; a college, a ladies' seminary, and many fine schools and churches.
The lady of the house said, "My mother crossed the mountains many times to Washington, to live with her husband, who represented the State there." At last she had to take two carriages and two horses, and it became too hard work, when her husband built the house which is still a beautiful home, with magnificent elms, planted by its original owner, shading it. In that day the rattlesnake glided about the doorway, the Indians roamed everywhere, and the wolves actually licked the frosting off the cakes that were set to cool on the doorstep, while the Indians stole the poor woman's dinner who lived close by. To-day a park adorns the front, given by the generous owner to the city; and where the wolves and the Indians roamed, lives the daughter of Governor Duncan, with her husband and family, in one of the finest cities of its size in the world. Nowhere in all this wide world can the advance of civilization during the last fifty years be found on so large a scale as here on the American frontiers.
XXXII.
THE PIONEER WEDDING.
As one travels over our country to-day, one will see as lowly homes, as acute poverty, and as congested a population, as he can find anywhere in Europe, with this great difference,—our people are filled with hope. There is a buoyancy about American life that is lacking in Europe. It is, as Emerson expressed it, a land of opportunity; and this difference is everything to the immigrant and the native pioneer. And this means much to us. The great majority of immigrants are from the most thrifty of the poor.
I have in mind now a family, who once lived in a large city. It took all the strength of husband and wife to make both ends meet; but by dint of rigid economy, they saved enough to take them across the water in the steerage of a great ship. This couple, with their little ones, found themselves at the end of their journey on a homestead, but with scarcely a cent left. The people around them were very poor, some of them living the first winter on potatoes and salt, not having either bread or milk. But in some way they managed to live, cheered by the hope that any move must be upward, and in the near future comfort, and farther on affluence. The same economy that saved the passage-money kept a little for a rainy day, no matter how hard the times were.
When I became acquainted with them they owned a large farm, a small log house and stable, several cows, horses, pigs, and poultry. Around the house was a neat picket-fence, every picket being cut out and made with axe and jack-knife during the long winter months. The vegetable garden was well-stocked; but what appealed to me most was the richness and the variety of the flower-garden,—roses, pansies, wallflowers, sweet-pease, hollyhocks, and mignonette. It was truly a feast for the eyes. The little house and the milk-room, the latter made of lilliputian logs, were dazzling white by the repeated coats of whitewash. The whole formed a pretty picture; and for so new a country it was more than a picture,—it was an education for every settler near them.