Herds and Flocks and Horses. 



A MOMENTOUS QUESTION. 



ONE of the great questions that confront this country to- 

 day, and one of vital importance, is that which has to do 

 with the migration of the bone and muscle of young 

 America to the great cities of the country. 



This continuous stream of young countrymen to the great 

 towns and cities of the land, is due in a large measure, to the 

 ''Fairy Tales" of wealth and greatness written in books and 

 periodicals, and stories told around the fireside by some one 

 who has heard what somebody said, and what somebody told 

 somebody else. 



Glowing accounts are unfolded of how a young man fresh 

 from the farm, had worked his way to New York or Chicago, 

 and after endless hardships, arrived at one of these great cities 

 hungry and exhausted; and how, in a fainting condition, he 

 was f(Hind by some benevolent old lady wlio took him to lier 

 home, cared for him, nursed and fed him back to health and 

 strength, and gave him a job watering the flowers in the gar- 

 den, where he met her beautiful niece, heiress to many millions. 

 How he wooed and won her, the magnificence of the wedding, 

 and the flower strewn, sunny path they trod for ever after- 

 wards. 



Another, after the hardest of digging, to earn enough to 

 keep body and soul together ; sleeping in the corners of tumble 

 down buildings and pest ridden and vermin swarmed lodging 

 houses, secures, through the kindly hand of some philanthropic 

 old gentleman, a position as office boy in a bank. Years and 

 years of uphill labor, with never a breath of the prairie air or 

 the sight of a summer country landscape, finds liim seated in the 

 presidential chair. 



So the stories end in the books or by tlie fireside; but the 

 "real thing" reveals a very diff"erent as])ect. 



The former, out of liis element, out of his station in 

 life, out of himself in fact, has cut loose on the "Great White 

 Way." The footlights have allured him, and soft brown eyes 



