Old men and old cities did not enjoy, in their youth, the advantages which are enjoyed to-day by young men and young cities. Life was harder, and precedent, in many lines, was wanting. Excepting in a few rare instances, as, for example, in Detroit and Savannah, the laying out of cities seems to have been taken care of, in the early days, as much by cows as men. Look at Boston, or lower New York, or St. Paul, or St. Louis. How little did the men who founded those cities dream of the proportions to which they would some day attain! With cities which have begun to develop within the last fifty or sixty years, it has been different, for there has been precedent to show them what is possible when an American city really starts to grow. To-day all American cities, even down to the smallest towns, have a sneaking suspicion that they may some day become great, too--great, that is, by comparison with what they are. And those which are not altogether lacking in energy are prepared, at least in a small way, to encounter greatness when, at last, it comes. Baedeker says St. Louis was founded as a fur-trading station by the French in 1756. "All About St. Louis," a publication compiled by the St. Louis Advertising Men's League, gives the date 1764. Pierre Laclede was the founder, and it is interesting to note that some of his descendants still reside there. When Louis XV ceded the territory to the east of the Mississippi to the English, he also ceded the west bank to Spain by secret treaty. Spanish authority was established in St. Louis in 1770, but in 1804 the town became a part of the United States, as a portion of the Louisiana Purchase. [Illustration: The dilapidation of the quarter has continued steadily from Dickens's day to this, and the beauty now to be discovered there is that of decay and ruin] In the old days the city had but three streets: the Rue Royale, one block back from the levee (now Main Street); the Rue de l'Eglise, or Church Street (now Second); and the Rue des Granges, or Barn Street (now Third). Though a few of the old French houses, in a woeful state of dilapidation, may still be seen in this neighborhood, it is now for the most part given over to commission merchants, warehouses, and slums. Charles Dickens, writing of St. Louis in 1842, describes this quarter: