Buffalo is a large village of a quarter of a million inhabitants, situated on the seashore, which is falsely called Lake Erie. It is a peaceful place, and more like an English county town than most of its friends. Once clear of the main business streets, you launch upon miles and miles of asphalted roads running between cottages and cut-stone residences of those who have money and peace. All the Eastern cities own this fringe of elegance, but except in Chicago nowhere is the fringe deeper or more heavily widened than in Buffalo. The American will go to a bad place because he cannot speak English, and is proud of it; but he knows how to make a home for himself and his mate, knows how to keep the grass green in front of his veranda, and how to fullest use the mechanism of life--hot water, gas, good bell-ropes, telephones, etc. His shops sell him delightful household fitments at very moderate rates, and he is encompassed with all manner of labor-saving appliances. This does not prevent his wife and his daughter working themselves to death over household drudgery; but the intention is good. When you have seen the outside of a few hundred thousand of these homes and the insides of a few score, you begin to understand why the American (the respectable one) does not take a deep interest in what they call “politics,” and why he is so vaguely and generally proud of the country that enables him to be so comfortable. How can the owner of a dainty chalet, with smoked-oak furniture, imitation Venetian tapestry curtains, hot and cold water laid on, a bed of geraniums and hollyhocks, a baby crawling down the veranda, and a self-acting twirly-whirly hose gently hissing over the grass in the balmy dusk of an August evening--how can such a man despair of the Republic, or descend into the streets on voting days and mix cheerfully with “the boys”? No, it is the stranger--the homeless jackal of a stranger--whose interest in the country is limited to his hotel-bill and a railway-ticket, that can run from Dan to Beersheba, crying:--“All is barren!” Every good American wants a home--a pretty house and a little piece of land of his very own; and every other good American seems to get it. It was when my gigantic intellect was grappling with this question that I confirmed a discovery half made in the West. The natives of most classes marry young--absurdly young. One of my informants--not the twenty-two-year-old husband I met on Lake Chautauqua--said that from twenty to twenty-four was about the usual time for this folly. And when I asked whether the practice was confined to the constitutionally improvident classes, he said “No” very quickly. He said it was a general custom, and nobody saw anything wrong with it. “I guess, perhaps, very early marriage may account for a good deal of the divorce,” said he, reflectively.