Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/360

Rh cases. As the brides and handmaidens of Christ, they attain to a higher life, a more expansive consciousness, a greater power. Whether similar religious societies of men are alike necessary and natural as those of women, I will not inquire into, but it seems to me that they are not. Men, it appears to me, are called to an activity of another kind, although for the same ultimate object—the extension of the Kingdom of God upon earth.

Last evening, and the evening before, I made my solitary journeys of discovery both within and without the city.

St. Louis is built on a series of wave-like terraces, considerably elevated above the Mississippi. It seems likely to become an immense city, and has begun to build its suburbs on the plain at great distances apart; but already roads are formed, and even a railroad and streets from one to another. These commencements of suburbs are generally on high ground, and command glorious views over the river and the country. Thick columns of coal-black smoke ascend, curling upwards in the calm air from various distances, betokening the existence of manufactories. It has a fine effect seen against the golden sky of evening, but those black columns send down showers of smuts and ashes over the city, and this has not a fine effect. They are building in the city lofty and vast warehouses, immense shops and houses of business. The position of the city near the junction of the Missouri and the Mississippi, its traffic on the former river, with the whole of the great West, and by the latter with the Northern, Southern and Eastern States, give to St. Louis the means of an almost unlimited increase. Probably a railroad will connect St. Louis with the Pacific Ocean. It is an undertaking which is warmly promoted by a number of active Western men, and this would give a still higher importance to the city. Emigration hither also