Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/235

Rh clean, were scattered upon the green slopes between the wood and the river. Columns of smoke ascended from their chimneys in the quiet morning, and the sun shone over them and the mirror-like river. “Are you sunflowers?” asked I (of course in petto). “Are the people within you like the inner blossoms of the sunflower, each bearing seed in itself?” Thus, of a certainty, will it become sometime in this country, which raises itself like a giant-sunflower above the waves of the ocean; but the farther I advance into the West, the more clear it becomes to me that, as yet it is not so generally; and that people in the great West are as yet principally occupied in the acquisition of the material portion of life, in a word, by “Business!” People have not as yet time to turn themselves to the sun.

But the churches, the schools, and the asylums which are in progress of erection; and those small houses and homes which are beginning to adorn themselves with flowers, to surround themselves with gardens—they prove that the light-life is struggling into being. First were the Hrimthursar (the giants of frost)—then the giants and dwarfs, to these succeeded the gods and goddesses; thus say the Vala songs.

I wrote to you last from Chicago. From Chicago I went by steamer across Lake Michigan to Millewa n u kee, escorted by a pleasant and warm-hearted young man, Mr. R. The proprietor of the steamer would not allow me to pay for my passage. The voyage was sun-bright and excellent. We lay to at small infant towns on the shore, such as Southbord, Elgin, Racine, all having sprung up within the last seven or eight years, and in a fair way of growing great under the influence of trade and the navigation of the Lake.

I was met at Millewankee by Herr L., a Swedish gentleman resident there as a merchant, who had invited me to his house, and who now conducted me thither,