THE CONQUEST OF ARID AMERICA 



people made the most of the opportunities offered by the 

 association of homes in the village, and organized a 

 variety of social and intellectual diversions. At an early 

 period an irreverent newspaper writer remarked: "The 

 town of Greeley is a delectable arena, for of the entire 

 population three-fourths are members of clubs that are 

 eternally in session. Day may sink into night, flowers 

 may bloom and fade, and the seasons roll round with the 

 year, but Greeley clubs are unchangeable." In one of 

 the letters by which Mr. Meeker kept the readers of the 

 New York Tribune informed of the progress of the com- 

 munity, he spoke of these "overflowing meetings," and 

 said : " In all our experience we have never seen such in- 

 stitutions so well sustained ; and if we wanted to show 

 strangers the best that is to be seen of Greeley we would 

 have them visit the Lyceum." 



David Boyd, who was both a prominent actor in these 

 scenes and the historian of the colony, writes of the same 

 subject, and throws a suggestive side-light on a notable 

 trait of western life when he says: "In coming to a 

 country which offered so many new questions for solution 

 and presented so many new aspects of life, the minds even of 

 those past their prime experienced a sort of rejuvenation. 

 Iking nearly all strangers to one another, each was ambi- 

 tious to begin his new record as well as possible, and so 

 put the best foot foremost." Hero is the explanation of 

 much of the superior energy which marks the life of new 

 communities, and here lies the hope of social progress 

 through colonization. The individuality all but obliter- 

 ated in the great city springs anew and develops into 

 blossom and fruitage in the fresh soil of colonial life. In- 

 stitutions which would be quite impracticable in old and 



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