SOCIETY OF NORTHERN ILLINOIS. 227 



and than you would care to listen to, could I give it the time; did 1 

 think myself capable of properly handling the whole question, 

 which I do not. Even the term, "West," is a relative one — one 

 which has changed materially in that time and, although possibly 

 thirty-two years ago, which is the time I prefer to speak of, Chicago 

 and the State of Uliuois might, perhaps, have been the West, or the 

 focus of the West, at that time; but, is it the West now ? except as 

 we have become accustomed to it from old-time memories ? 



There is a vast stretch of country, now, toward the setting sun, 

 with immense interests, Avhich go to make a country great in reali- 

 ties, actually embracing vast interests, even horticulturally on the 

 shores of the Pacific, that laud, where, when we in our prairie 

 homes are battling — it may be with blizzards — they are enjoying 

 almost a summer temperature, where the vine, the fig, and the 

 orange find a congenial home. That is the West of to-day, and all 

 sprung up long since the period of time we have now under consid- 

 eration. It is within the memor^^ of many an old settler of Illinois, 

 many even, I doubt not pi'esent this evening, when our noble State 

 was still the haunt of the red man; the West of that time, or its 

 main central point, far east of this. 



Why, Mr. Chairman, no longer ago than when I first set foot 

 in Illinois, the year 1857, Cincinnati was considered the Queen City 

 of the West, and for years jealous of every count of heads that 

 tended to take that proud position away from her. Back of her 

 period, farther east still, one had to look for the West, and it is not 

 so very long ago, that out West meant the wilds of Western New 

 York. Take the centers of population as found by the United States 

 census of 1800 near Baltimore; 1820, it had travelled west to Wood- 

 stock, Va., in 1840, Clarksburgh, W. Va., in 1860 it had got into Ohio 

 near Chillicothe, in 1880, near the once proud Queen of the West, 

 Cincinnati. While the chances are, in the coming census of 1890, 

 it will probably be somewhere in our own State, Illinois. 



Let us see for a moment how we were situated thirty-two years 

 ago. This is truly "called the steam or railroad age, and yet it was 

 but about five years before that, the iron horse had reached Chicago, 

 and then took a westerly direction. 



Prophetic of that trite saying, many years before, of " West- 

 ward the star of empire takes its way.'' Only four years before that 

 the first rail connection east had been made — 1854, — the Michigan 

 Central. Prior to that time, and even for some years after I came 

 west, was to be seen the old prairie schooner, as it was called, once 

 the only method of locomotion, slow, but sure; but not much chance 

 for a very v\^de distribution of fruits, flowers and vegetables, that 

 cut such an important figure in the present time and age. 



Even the grain wagons from the surrounding country were 

 plenty enough for a few years, — a sort of forlorn remnant of a once 



