together by the horns. The Brigadier hallooed right out, though it was Sabbath, but all the men were away at meeting. Look again, and there was the Vermonter's bull driving his bull back on his haunches. Brigadier Ruggles was a brave man, so he throws open the gate he was leaning over, and lays on to the Vermonter's bull behind with the prong, just as the brute drives down his own bull, and breaks his neck in the corner of the pen. Then the Vermonter's bull turns round on the Brigadier, and after one good look at him, puts down his head with a sort of low whistle, and scrapes with his fore hoof, meaning mischief. The Brigadier didn't wait, but made off for the house, slamming the pen gate and the garden gate behind him. But he hears two crashes, and then the whistle of the Vermonter's bull coming after him, as he reaches his open front door, and bolts through the hall to the kitchen, slamming the second door behind him. 'Perhaps the cuss won't come into the house,' thought the Brigadier, as he stood panting behind. the kitchen door; but next minute he hears the Vermonter's bull stalk into the hall. Then silence for a minute, and then the whistle and scraping again. 'What's he up to now?' thought the Brigadier, as he just peeped through a crack. There stood the bull, right opposite his own image in Madam Ruggles's mirror. A king's arm always hung on the hooks, over the kitchen fireplace, loaded with ball, and Brigadier caught it down, and made two steps across the floor, and right out into the hall, just in time to see the Vermonter's bull down his head and go crash into the mirror. The

the

shock seemed to stagger him, and before he could turn round, the Brigadierthat mad that he would have faced all the bulls of Bashan-steps up to his side, and lets drive just behind his shoulder. The Vermonter's bull goes over amongst the broken glass, the Brigadier stands over him, king's arm still smoking, when the waggon draws up, and Madam Ruggles and the Vermonter

walk into the hall, fresh from meeting, with the doctor from Cambridge. Madam had thought to bring him home to get his dinner with them, and fix up the Brigadier, so as he might be well enough to get to Boston fair next day."

"Not a bad tableau for a Sabbath morning scene in the old Puritan home," said the optimist. "Haven't you got a painter who could do it? But, I say, my belief is, that if you told the whole truth, that Vermonter's bull was English bred."

"No more than I am," said the potentate.

"The Vermonters are mostly smart men," said the President, gravely.

"Right-smart, I guess, many of them," added the Vice, "though if that Vermonter had been right-smart he wouldn't have left the Brigadier behind at meeting-time."

"Now, what's the difference between smart and right-smart?" put in the critically-minded struggler.

"I should say now, the potentate here was a right-smart man," said the optimist; "a kind of fellow who is always catching your fingers in a tree, or dropping you in some hole."

"No, no; I guess I'm too loose in the jaw," said the accused party, "but I'll show you the difference better than you I could touch it off in words in a week. You saw the notices up at Storm Lake there, in the middle of the prairie, that the Ex-M. C. and candidate for the district was coming down to make a speech."

"Yes, and I was glad to see it, as a proof that wild life doesn't take your settlers away from politics."

"I won't say anything about that. Any way the candidates come after them, and it's a caution the sort of stuff they serve out to the sovereign people when they're on the stump in such out-of-theway places. Well, when Illinois was settling up, a candidate came down to just such a wild place as Storm Lake, where I was stopping with the postmaster, who kept the biggest store, and was the boss of the town. The candidate kept on talking for well on to

three hours; and as it was just before our war, and he didn't seem to quite know which way the cat was going to jump, why his talk wasn't altogether meaty-you couldn't get much of a meal off it either side. As we went back we came up with a settler, a pawky, queer old man, crumpled up with the shakes. "Good evening, Uncle Josh,' said my friend. Evenin', Jack,' said the old boy (my friend's name was John). 'Won't

you step in and take a drink, uncle?' Waal, Jack, if ever I do take anythin' it's just at this hour.' 'Come in, then. Now, how'll you have it, uncle? About half-and-half?' " Waal, yes, Jackthat'll du. But ef you du give either on 'em a trifle advantage, let it be the whiskey.' 'And now, uncle,' went on my friend, when he had got the old man's brew to his mind, tell us what you think of the new candidate.' ' Waal, he seemed to get off his talk easy enough. Kep us at it near upon three hours, I reckon. A fair-spoken, leaky kind o' young man ; but, Jack, ef he'd been a smart man he'd hev said all that in five-and-twenty minutes; and ef he'd been a right-smart man, Jack, he wouldn't hev said it at all.""

"Good again," said the optimist, laughing: "you're in undeniable form to-day. But now we must get out, and do Sioux city. I must own my first impressions of the Missouri are not favourable."

So we descended from the platform of the Champaign, and looked about us. We had pulled up in the middle of an open space on the left bank of the river, on to which our line seemed to have strayed by accident, as we had passed what was intended for the terminus some quarter of a mile behind. The other line from the south, which had preceded ours by some months, was the only other occupant of this vacant space at present, and boasted of a considerable temporary station. The potentate and his colleagues were instantly in close and earnest colloquy. It must be a sine qua non, if they were to take to the new line, that their terminus should be brought right down. to the river-bank, so that they could

build wharves. While they hunted up the official representatives of the proposed vendors to lay down their terms, we strolled along the levee of the Missouri. That it is the longest river in the world is a thing that everybody knows, but the geography books omit to add that it is perhaps the ugliest and most depressing. What we saw was a sluggish and unutterably muddy stream, crawling through a channel of some 200 yards across. Black snags

peered up here and there from the yellow current, ugly and dangerous to look at. There were some half-dozen lumber steamers aground under the bank below where we stood, and on the opposite side was a strip of sand-here dry, there quaky—twice the breadth of that part of the bed which was under water. The Missouri has an almost continuous margin of this kind along this part of its course, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other and every now and then, and not unfrequently, takes a caprice to change its bed, and does it almost without notice, and quite without paying the least attention to the interests of the enterprising persons who have settled on its banks. Within the memory of several of the citizens whom we met, the Missouri had flowed half a mile west of the present site of Sioux city, and there seemed no sort of reason why it should not go back to its old bed any day. Meantime, and until they are left high and dry again, the people of Sioux city are eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, pretty much like the folk before the Flood.

Not that I would for a moment suggest that the dwellers on the Upper Missouri are specially like the antediluvians, or indeed worse than their neighbours, or than the ordinary run of folk in the older States, or elsewhere. But their opportunities and temptations have been peculiar; and although I do not believe that they have done more than develop their natural share of the old Adam, I must own they have done this diligently. In a town which has passed its childhood hundreds of miles away from any considerable settlement of human beings,

and indeed never heard the whistle of a locomotive before last year, one might fairly look for some traces of primitiveness and simplicity. Such a search would, I fear, be disappointing. On the other hand, the flashy, devil-maycare life and lawless licence, which Bret Hart describes so vividly in his sketches of outlying Californian mining villages, if it ever existed in any perfection here, has migrated further west, leaving nothing more than a strong taint behind. The place has become a commercial centre-a place of big stores, and banks, and ledgers, and financial persons. Nevertheless, two days before our arrival, a notorious evil-doer had ridden up and down the main streets on his pony, openly defying the authorities to seize him. Fortunately for the law and order party, he took so many straight drinks during his ride, that he was carried to the State prison, in a helpless state, in the course of the evening, where he was waiting his trial. Our informant, a local journalist, who had assisted at the capture, seemed to treat the incident as by no means an unusual one. A safer index, however, of the social condition and prevalent tastes of the city lies in its possessing, to meet the wants of a population of something under 4,000, seventy-three drinking and billiard saloons, and four regular gambling-houses. On the other hand, it possesses two daily and four weekly papers and a magazine, a quite adequate number of places of worship, and a monster free-school, lately finished at an outlay of upwards of 40,000 dollars, towards the cost of which the saloons and gambling-houses had been mulcted heavily.

When we had satisfied ourselves with the inspection of the stranded steamers, and of the few pigs who were rooting about the open space between the river and the town, we turned in pursuit of our friends, whom we ran to ground in a temporary booking office, where the three railway magnates were putting their ideas together as to the conditions upon which they would be prepared to negotiate for the line we had just travelled. The day was hot, and the latter part of our run had been through

light sand, so we found our friends refreshing themselves-washing the dust out of their throats, they called it by courtesy-with draughts of the most repulsive-looking water, straight from the Missouri.

"You don't get at water like this every day," said the potentate, as he finished his draught with apparent zest. "Try it."

I think I should have suspected a practical joke, but that the grave Vice added his testimony to the merits of Missouri water, assuring us that all who lived near the river not only tolerated it for drinking purposes, and found it wholesome, but actually preferred it to any other. Even with this recommendation, appearances remained so strongly against the fluid, and it looked so suggestively like Gregory's mixture, that I could not bring myself to do more than swallow about a mouthful, which I am bound to say had no objectionable taste. It would do well enough for a meal in the dark, to wash down (say) charcoal biscuits.

A lounge through the streets, and a drive in a sort of tilt, called a prairiewaggon, to a bluff overhanging the town, filled up the hours till sundown. For driving across country commend me to the prairie-waggon. It isn't a thing of beauty, exactly, or a thing of comfort, but its power of travelling over any kind of ground at any angle without upsetting is extraordinary. Ours passed safely half-a-dozen times through positions of most unstable equilibrium, as if determined to rival the sure-footedness of the lean, sinewy beasts that drew it. From the bluff there was a fine open view of a long series of wave-like sandhills rolling away to the horizon, and two black dots on a distant ridge, which, in all probability either horses or bullocks, were by common consent set down as buffaloes. For it would never do, of course, to come back from the Far West without having seen a buffalo. Disappointing enough that there is not a single Sioux Indian to be seen in Sioux city, though some painted photographs of rather stagey and overdressed warriors, labelled "Great Elk," "Red

Towards dusk we were all assembled aboard the Champaign, which as usual had been backed into a siding for the night, when suddenly a stranger in seedy black velveteen, and with a suspiciously big note-book in his hand, appeared in the open doorway, and, after a hasty look round, introduced himself with, "Good evening, gentlemen. Would you favour us with the object of this visit?"

As the question was not addressed to anyone in particular, and sounded slightly vague, there was an awkward silence for a minute or so, till the potentate, without removing his cigar, laconically retorted, "Why?"

"Sir, I represent the Sioux City Morning Intelligencer," was the stranger's answer. "So if any gentleman will be so kind as to give me names and descriptions of the party, and your ideas. and intentions relative to our city, I

and he completed the sentence by producing a pencil from his waistcoat pocket and unclasping the big note-book.

It was plain enough what the object of our friend's visit was, at any rate. We were to be "interviewed," and might just as well submit to the operator with a good grace at once. The potentate, however, made one faint effort to divert the attack by inquiring, with an air of interest, "You represent the Morning Intelligencer, did you say? Does this place keep a daily, then?"

"Two, sir-the Intelligencer and the Times. And here's the gentleman who represents the Times coming down the track.-Come up, Charley."

And up came Charley, sure enough, a jolly, round-faced fellow, of easy confidential address, and, with a lift of his hat to the company generally and a nod to his professional rival, took up a masterly strategic position in a vacant arm-chair.

"Well, George?" he began at last, with a familiar nod to the seedy stranger.

"I was just asking these gentlemen their intentions with reference to our city," replied George, with rather an uneasy look at the potentate, who was

"This gentleman," broke in the potentate, with a wave of his arm towards the struggler, "is the Honourable Lord William O'Doodle, native of the Carribee Highlands, in the kingdom of Scotland, and Member of the British Parliament, and this

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Exactly, sir," said Charley, goodhumouredly; and, turning to George, who was still fidgetting on his feet in the background, "Better put it down in that note-book of yours," he suggested, in a tone unmistakeably expressive of half-sarcastic pity for his rival's awkward approaches and rebuff.

I suppose the optimist must have looked more accessible than the rest of us, for, after a short silence, Charley singled him out for his first question. "Well, sir, and what do you think of our city?"

"Covers plenty of ground," said the optimist. "But what struck me as odd this afternoon was, that half the best building plots, right in the heart of the place, and down on the river-bank, have been left to the weeds and the pigs, while further off the houses stand as thick as need be."

“Ah, I'll just tell you how that is. It's near ten years ago now, there was a talk of a railroad being brought through this city, which was in a smallish way of business then. So at once we all reckoned we were bound to be bigger than Chicago in no time, and building lots along all the likeliest streets jumped up to a thousand dollars apiece. Well, the track didn't come, and the settlers who dropped in from the East by stage or prairie - waggon, mostly didn't bring a thousand dollars in their pockets. Somehow, though, the price of lots stuck pretty much where it was-guess I can't tell you just why.'

"The same reason perhaps that keeps your clothes, and wine, and victuals at the prices they rose to in '63-just to spite the political economists," interposed the struggler.

"I don't know about that, sir. We don't take much account of such cusses

"Not exactly. I calculate to lose a matter of three hundred dollars a month by it, more or less; but just let me hold on till the city turns the corner, and it'll be another story. Our people like vim, sir. They're very good about advertising, our people here, and they do their best for George and me; but there's not enough of them just yet, you see; that's about the fact. It's hard work to make out one's dozen or fourteen columns of intelligence, too, for they won't look at it unless it's as spicy as red pepper."

"Does that delectable vegetable flourish in Sioux city?" put in the struggler.

"Never ate them, did you?" said the potentate.

"Haven't I? and I promise you I shan't forget them in a hurry. One day when we were in New York I turned into the Fifth Avenue Hotel, on the prowl for something for my inner man, and, feeling the gregarious instinct strong upon me, went and sat down by the only other occupant of the saloon, a long, cadaverous Yankee, just that sort that Tenniel always puts into his cartoons, with stripy trousers and a starry shirt, to typify Cousin Jonathan. I had come across a good many strange vegetables since we landed in the States, but a dish of reddish somethings, which my gaunt neighbour was devouring with apparent relish, struck me at once as a novelty. May I ask what they are?' 'Red peppers-try them.' Innocently I accepted the invitation, and the moment I bit one of the things, felt-how shall I describe the sensation?-well, as if a red-hot poker had been laid upon my tongue. Luckily, just before screaming out, I caught the eye of my cadaverous enemy fixed upon me with a queer,

amused, half-malicious look, that told its tale in a moment. He was bent on teaching the benighted Britisher a lesson, and it was the benighted Britisher's bounden duty to refuse him that satisfaction. So, by a severe muscular effort, I strangled all outward facial signs of pain, and slowly chewed my agonizing mouthful before my torturer's eyes till it was fairly swallowed. At last he said, rather impatiently, 'How do you find the peppers, sir?' 'A little warm,' I answered, calmly; 'but (forgive me the fib!) a nice kind of vegetable, decidedly.' 'You needn't be afraid of the next world, then,' he jerked out, and, though evidently disappointed, treated me with decided respect from that moment."

By this time Charley was quite at home with all the party aboard the Champaign, and he now offered to escort any of us who would accompany him on an evening stroll through the town, suggesting that he was well known at the "kino" houses.

Our railway friends declined the chance of seeing round Sioux city at night. They had heard of a proposed visit on business from the municipal authorities, and would not risk being out of the way. The optimist sat with his heels up on the platform, in true Yankee fashion, watching the afterglow of the sunset across the Missouri, cigar in mouth and coffee at elbow. He was immovably bent on letting well alone. So the struggler and I started, one on each side of the voluble Charley, on our voyage of observation. A more amusing or hospitable guide I never wish to encounter. His perfect openness, on all subjects connected with the city, and the works and ways of its citizens, relieved us of all embarrassment. We visited first a beer garden, not unlike those at Munich, though of course smaller, where we sat at one of many little tables, under a maple tree, and drank reasonably good beer, served by a very pretty and not particularly forward damsel, one of several who were flitting about on like errands. There were arrangements for musical entertainments, and dancing, and a billiard