PROLEGOMENON. 37 



statistician will record as a high-water mark of progress, 

 and its achievements the crowning glory of the State, 

 seems now to have become (strangely enough to the ravens 

 who croaked) a steadfast anchor, a haven of safety, in the 

 reign of financial chaos, amidst the down-rushing frag- 

 ments of shivered commercial balloons, exploded paper 

 simulacra, and moribund formulae of the dollar. This benefi- 

 cent monopoly, surely with persistent energy and wisdom, 

 has achieved one of the wonders of its age, perforating and 

 cleaving mountains as by the fabled throes of the Titans, 

 filling and bridging valleys as by the cosmical masonry of 

 the Cyclops, making smooth the rough and straight the 

 crooked ways, carrying that "magician-wand" the rail- 

 road-bar, realized dream of the fires and forges of Yulcan, 

 from the tide of the Atlantic Ocean into the great interior 

 Valley of the Mississippi, by the labor of armies of men 

 and horses and cost of millions of dollars, climbing an 

 accumulated elevation of thousands of feet through an 

 endless range of rugged hills and heights separated by deep- 

 washed ravines and valleys, thus inviting the East and the 

 West to foregather and unite hands in the commercial mar- 

 riage of two sides of a continent on the great culminating- 

 crest of the Appalachian chain. This power, directed by 

 the far-reaching sagacity and transcendent business tact 

 of a distinguished Chief, endorsed by the characteristic 

 philanthropy of the City of Friends, with zeal forever 

 alive and intelligent, has caught the significance of the 

 Alleghany Mountain as the site of an Institution full of 

 promise to suffering man, securing all points of interest 

 and beauty, and representing all elements of life and 

 health, as a great magazine of conservative power antago- 

 nizing the destroying influences of the city and offering 

 bodily renovation and soundness in opposition to disease 

 and death, and promised, with open eye, heart, and hand, 

 TO extend a generous help to the "Mountain Sanitarium," 

 and say to the enemies of Heaven and humanity, in their 



