Page:Six months in Kansas.djvu/105

Rh We prefer to go into the main street, so. long unseen, and mark the progress of things. Every step or two I stop and take an observation and give vent to an emotion of surprise that so much is doing. A city, just one year old, working up so many nice little stone dwelling-houses and more ambitious stores! A hotel, too, with its windows all glazed, and its black-walnut doors shining with the polish of oil! I have to scramble over great piles of sand, and heaps of the homesick-looking limestone. All sorts of merchantable matters hang and lie about all sorts of curious looking shops. Plenty of Missouri market-wagons stand up and down the street. "Ned," said I, "has anybody dug a well?" "Have n't heard," was the boy's reply. When shall the want of water be met? Will this generation produce no "Jacob," who has philanthropy enough to do so praisworthy an act? I 'm sure he would deserve to have for his epitaph those concise words: "He digged a well."

But here we are at the door of the sick man. He is in the chamber we occupied during our first week in Kansas a thin, woman-