102 
KANSAS. 
homeward, unimpressed as they are with the reality, that life’s 
mission is to “ battle and be strong? ” When they find no softly- 
cushioned car ready to transport them to the little town of Law- 
rence, to which distance still lends a charm, and if the stage and 
hacks are full, the emigrant wagons alone affording a passage, 
can we wonder at the lengthening of their wayworn faces ? The 
hill difficulty is to be surmounted, and stands between them and 
the end of their journey, like a towering mountain. Little hearts, 
carried along, until now, upon the smooth travelled paths which 
their fathers have marked out, and buoyed above deep waters 
by encouraging words of doting mammas and flattering friends, and 
lulled into silken dreams by the general consenting voice of society, 
that life has in it nothing “ real,” nothing “ earnest,” save to 
float gayly on its summer tides, — where is your courage now ? 
Where is your hope for success in life ? Where that energy which 
will scale mountains amid winter’s battling snows ? Where, 
with such automatons as you, would have been the world’s great 
men —■ her Howards, her Newtons, her Washingtons, or her 
Napoleons ? 
Some of these poor apologies of humanity leave directly bn the 
next boat, on a home-bound ticket. As an excuse for the shortness 
of their stay, they recapitulate the thousand-and-one stories which 
the Missourians repeat to many emigrants; such as no water, no 
wood, the ground parched, and cracked open in large seams, the 
people dying of starvation, etc. etc. Some others, however, a 
little afraid of the jests which would meet them did they return 
with the old story, “ There are giants in the land,” make a 
prodigious effort, and, upon a springless cart, it may be, reach 
Lawrence. As they approach the little town, with buildings of 
wood and stone erected and being erected, with the pioneer build¬ 
ings thatched (now used as stables) intermingled, how their visions 
fade, and the glittering palaces of their imaginations fall ! The 
town of six months’ existence boasted nothing but bare comforts; 
but these foolish youths write home how they have to sleep upon 
the floor, with a buffalo robe only between them and the cotton¬ 
wood boards, with five or six others in the same room; that the 
windows to the boarding-house are of cloth instead of glass; that 
