That afternoon Captain Wilde and his daughter sat in a little private sitting-room of the hotel, overlooking the street. Every thing was novel to Alice. This was absolutely her first experience away from her forest home. Yet upon all the busy, bustling scene beneath her she gazed with vacant eyes. About the rapid rise and growth of some of our western cities there is an air peculiar to themselves--an experience unique in the history of civilization. Situated amid scenes of unparalleled beauty, they seem to jar upon and disturb the harmony of their surroundings; brick and plaster, new shingles, and glowing white paint, unsubdued by time, rise up in the midst of fairy-land; rude wharves just over the silver waters where erst the silent canoe of the Indian only glided; wild roses flush the hill-sides crowned with sudden dwellings; stately old forests loom up as backgrounds to the busiest of busy streets. The shrill cry of the steam-whistle startles the dreamy whippoorwill; the paddle-wheel of the intrusive steamboat frightens the indolent salmon from his visions of peace. As the landscape, so the people; curiously mixed of rough and refined. Center City was one of the most picturesque of these young towns; and, at present, one of the most prosperous. Broken-down speculators from the East came thither and renewed their fortunes; and enterprising young men began life with flattering prospects. It was upon the principal street that Alice sat and looked. Streams of people hurried by, like the waves of the river past her cabin in the wood. She saw ladies dressed in a fashion differing widely from her own; across the way, in a suite of parlors in the second story, she saw, through the open blind, a young girl of about her own age sitting at a musical instrument, from which she drew, as if by magic, music that held her listener as by golden chains. New thoughts and aims came into the mind of the raftsman's daughter. Pride was struggling to heal the wounds which love had made. "Father, will you send me to school?" For a long time there was no answer; his head was bent upon his hand. She crept upon his knee, in her little-girl way, and drew away the hand. "It'll be undoin' the work of sixteen year to send you to one of them boarding-schools. They'll learn you plenty of vanity and worse things, my child; they'll make you unfit to be happy and contented with yer plain old father. But that you are already. I've made a failure. You're too good for them that's about you, and not good enough for them you wish to be like. Go to school if you want to, child; go, and learn to put on airs and despise those who would give their heart's blood for ye. I shall make no objections." "Do you think I could learn to be so very bad, father? If you can not trust me, I will not go. So let us say no more about it," and she kissed him.