The decade from 1868 is in every respect the most vital and significant one in the history of America. The tremendous strides which were then made in the settlement of the West, the enormous increase of railroads and steamships and telegraphs, the organization of nation-wide corporations like those dealing with petroleum and steel and coal--all these we have already mentioned. America had thrown aside its provincialism and had become a great neighborhood, and in 1876 North, South, East, and West gathered in a great family jubilee. _Scribner's Monthly_ in 1875 commented feelingly upon the fact: All the West is coming East.... The Southern States will be similarly moved.... There will be a tremendous shaking up of the people, a great going to and fro in the land.... The nation is to be brought together as it has never been brought before during its history. In one hundred years of intense industry and marvelous development we have been so busy that we never have been able to look one another in the face, except four terrible years of Civil War.... This year around the old family altar at Philadelphia we expect to meet and embrace as brothers.[12] The Centennial quickened in every way the national life. It gave for the first time the feeling of unity, the realization that the vast West, the new South, and the uncouth frontier were a vital part of the family of the States. Lowell, so much of whose early heart and soul had been given to Europe, discovered America in this same Centennial year. In Cincinnati he was profoundly impressed with the "wonderful richness and comfort of the country and with the distinctive Americanism that is molding into one type of feature and habits so many races that had widely diverged from the same original stock.... These immense spaces tremulous with the young grain, trophies of individual, or at any rate unorganized, courage and energy, of the people and not of dynasties, were to me inexpressibly impressive and even touching.... The men who have done and are doing these things know how things should be done.... It was very interesting, also, to meet men from Kansas and Nevada and California, and to see how manly and intelligent they were, and especially what large heads they had. They had not the manners of Vere de Vere, perhaps, but they had an independence and self-respect which are the prime element of fine bearing."[13] A little of a certain Brahmin condescension toward Westerners there may be here, but on the whole it rings true. The East was discovering the West and was respecting it.