Hilda Rosevelt

“ Here and there, above the purple haze of the violet-covered prairie over which we rode, the stately cone-flowers lifted their golden heads, like glowing suns. This is as it was years ago. Far beyond, the sun sank beneath the horizon, leaving a joy which civilization neither will give nor take away. ”

“ And the Doric pillars which support the roof of its piazza, and testify that a classic architecture has already reached this frontier, stand out like bristling exclamation points, to confront the traveler with such an assurance. The church-spires, a court-house, and school-houses, all add their testimony that the wilderness is beginning to "bloom and blossom," according to the usages of modern civilization. Even the people seem never to be rid of the vague consciousness that they are natural phenomena, from the mere fact of living in a town of such precocious growth. ”

“ The town, in spite of its newness, was rather pretty, and even interesting. It is situated high enough above the current of the Mississippi to keep itself clean from its muddy washings. The bluffs in the background have a protecting aspect, and undoubtedly shelter this embryo city from the violence of the north-west winds., Winona is not without the marked characteristic of new and rapidly growing towns—an air of conscious importance. The hotel bade defiance to criticism, because ten years before the traveler would only have found a wilderness, or an Indian wigwam, in its place. ”

“ In a country characterized by extremes of climate, the things of to-day can not be put off until to-morrow. The houses must not only be well built, but kept in constant repair, to secure the occupant against actual suffering, or even death, from the intense cold. And what he does for himself he is also obliged to do for his cattle, and even for the productions of the soil; in consequence, we see the house of the Minnesota farmer surrounded by well-built barns and many of the appointments of a New England farm, and every thing characterized by the same neatness and thrift. ”

“ Soon, however, we passed the rocky borders, came to the high, level prairie on which Minneapolis is situated, and reached that brightest little city of the North-west in mid-afternoon.
At the east, the great Falls of St. Anthony thundered in our ears; toward the south, the broken bluffs indicated the course of the Mississippi, and toward the north and west, long stretches of grain-covered prairies, varied here and there by clumps and zones of trees, met the horizon. The city itself is substantially built, and has no external appearance of its rapid growth. ”

“ The smooth, green, slightly rolling prairie, across which we were riding, had for its eastern horizon the broken bluffs, and, toward the west, gently sloping, wooded eminences. The towns, too, grew more frequent, and were better built. Indeed, the towns of Minnesota differed in this respect from new towns generally throughout the West. Perhaps this was due as much to climatic influences as to the character of the settlers. To be sure, the country bears a strong impress of New England; for New Englanders form a good proportion of the population ”

“ The verythought of being dependent upon one's own exertions and prudence, au being, at the same time, beyond the pale of recognized social customs, gives at least a marked individuality, and sometimes begets real kindness for others, and always thoughtful prudence for one's self. A thin veneering of civilization, however, dissipates this charm, and we see that vices are more easily cultivated than virtues, even on a virgin soil. ”

“ In your cozy library you read the gigantic figures with a thrill; but often these numerical values have no visible meaning, and from the, top of a respectable hill in New England, not only an infinitely greater variety of country might be seen, but often of a greater extent. ”

“ The winters were bitter-cold, and they often suffered from insufficient supplies. On one occasion, they abandoned the fort entirely, and walked down the river on the ice to Prairie du Chien. There were days and nights of suffering, and they at last arrived at their destination nearly perished with cold and hunger. "Ah!" said the narrator, turning to me, "the telling of these things seems only a summer's-day romance; but, my dear young lady, the actual experience takes much of the romance from frontier life." ”

“ In one place, the cars wound for half a mile around a bluff whose sides seemed a colonnade, in das relief of pale-yellow sandstone. I have never seen in Nature a closer approximation to the artificial. Although it was not difficult to detect the natural causes which had acted upon the soft sandstone, the effect was as ifa Titan colony had fashioned this as a pattern for mortals to copy. Enthusiastic students of Nature have always asserted that Nature furnishes us patterns for every thing, and it is according as we accept or deviate from the model that we fail or succeed. ”

“ One is inclined to laugh, too, when one thinks how the contagion of its merriment and fantasy has led civilized humanity. A year before a romaniic couple, from New England, came and stood beneath the spray while the marriage ceremony was being performed. ”

“ Across the marsh is a long wharf, connecting the town with the river, and at certain, or rather uncertain, times of the day and night there is an appearance of chronic excitement among omnibus-drivers and expressmen, who mercilessly seize the wayfarers ..nd their belongings, assuming an appearance of superior knowledge and power. The traveler yields himself to them with a kind of vague belief that they have, from some inexplicable source, become possessed of his secret designs, and it will be all right in the end. ”

“ These high-pressure steam-whistles found a nerve in my body which had hitherto remained dormant, and fairly indicated to what an unimagined and supreme degree a human being may be capable of being tortured. ”

“ One travels to-day a mathematical automaton, a slave to the moral rectitude of numbers, which happily in my own case usually vanish with the first profound sleep, leaving me the option of utter vacuity or some out-ofdate comparative measurement. ”

“ Public buildings are usually either of pale- yellow brick, or buff-stone from quarries near the city; the factories, which are numerous—supplied by the immense water- power of the falls —are built of the bluish-gray limestone from the bluffs. ”