PRELIMIXAKY. 11 



ing its way up. The sight of houses rising Phoenix-like from 

 the mud, with the people dwelling therein, living and dying 

 as usual, was an edifying one, but as a canvas of the town 

 showed it could get along without me, I shook the mud afore- 

 said from my boots and left it to its fate; certainly not a luck- 

 less one, with real estate so rising. 



Money being the root of all evil, I felt myself as harmless as 

 Mary's little lamb when preparing to leave what, from a severe 

 strain on the imagination, was called the " Garden City." I was 

 compelled to buy a second-class ticket to Kansas, where destiny 

 and inclination seemed to call me. My departure was in an 

 emigrant car at midnight; my only companions two drunken 

 bandits, armed with guns. The car was dark, and I always 

 hailed the conductor's advent with his lantern, from my place 

 in an unobtrusive corner, with silent orisons. In St. Louis I 

 only stopped long enough to note how similarly the streets 

 w^ere named to those of Philadelphia. I left there at ten 

 o'clock on June 2d, and passing over a country of alternate 

 prairie land and wooded streams, reached Jefferson City late 

 at night, where I boarded the "Polar Star" steamer; the West- 

 ern railroad system then not reaching beyond that town. 



At that time the only railroads reaching beyond the Missis- 

 sippi were the Missouri Pacific and the Hannibal and St. Jo. 

 The latter had not reached the Missouri, so part of the road 

 was made by stage, and consequently was the least popular 

 way to Kansas, as by the former route the whole journey could 

 be made by boat and rail; a great favor in the days of border 

 ruffianism, when Free State emigration by private convey- 

 ance was often checked or turned back by pro-slavery high- 

 waymen. 



Four days I endured the discomforts of deck passage, many 

 and many a time wishing myself an Astor or Girard that I 

 might climb out of it to the beatitude of the cabin above, where 

 amid high living and luxurious surroundings the first-class 



