GENERAL DISCOMFORT — MURDER OE DOW. 101 
the smoke of their mother’s kitchen chimney, go East again with 
direful stories of the dread poison in the Missouri waters, and that 
there is death in the springs of Kansas. Some persons do not 
drink the water clear, but add brandy, or drink Rochelle powders ; 
as if the drink which Grod provided for his creatures was not as 
health-giving as the substitutes of man, making their wisdom 
greater than his! 
It is a fact that in Kansas city, within the short space of two 
hours’ time, ten young men died, — victims to cholera, the papers 
stated. They did not state that they were most dissolute and 
intemperate, ready for the sickle when the reaper came.. 
Many statements have appeared in eastern papers, from the 
pens of some fresh from the counting-rooms of their employers, 
or the school-room, and unfitted either by nature or by habit to 
battle with life in its stern realities. They came to this country, 
dazzled by the lure of their own visionary hopes, which, with many 
people, makes all in the distance look bright and golden, but the 
intervening space passed over has the same dull hue of the last 
stand-point. These statements wear the color of disappointment, 
with a sly vein of revenge upon somebody running through all 
a bitterness, and a general tone of ‘falsehood. The little discom¬ 
forts by the way, of crowded cars and overloaded boats, with per¬ 
haps a bed upon the cabin floor, instead of the private chamber 
with its nice appliances for comfort they have left, cause the 
bright vision to which distance lent enchantment to grow suddenly 
dim. They reach Kansas city, and find the levee a perfect crowd 
of men and horses, Mexican drivers from Santa Ee, with their 
mules half wild, and always headstrong — each man looking out 
for himself, as the one thing especially uppermost in his mind, 
not mindful of the attractions these kid-gloved, gaiter-booted, 
jewelled gentry display. They look upon the brick walls of 
stores and warehouses along the levee, upon which the sun glares 
wildly, and upon the water, where the reflection gleams and glit¬ 
ters, and at length reach the hotel whose rooms are already 
full of wearied mothers and sick children. Where will our dainty 
selves find rest? is a question anxiously asked by them, but unan¬ 
swered. Shall we wonder, then, that they turn a lingering look 
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