I take great praise to myself that I was always able to keep my temper, and to abstain from polemics. But argument would have been useless. I had to do with a people who saw the outer world through the spectacles of their journalists, and who would no more admit the imperfections of America than a lover will see a blemish in his mistress. To them America was all in all; and the mightiest countries in Europe were esteemed by them as rotten and worthless, only existing by the sufferance of the Giant Republic. As for my praise of the British Constitution, they simply laughed at it, assuring me that I knew nothing about the matter, and that there could be no liberty where a plain man was not allowed to go to court in his working dress if he chose. But I had not crossed the ocean to argue: I had come to pluck out the heart of the mystery concerning the Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway. And I was very careful at dinner-tables, bars, cafés, and railway cars, to elicit all available information with respect to the resources of the West. What I heard was, of course, vague; but on the whole it contained some comfort. It appeared certain that a great trade was carried on by land and water; that towns started up with incredible quickness in the midst of desolate prairies, or, like Chicago, on piles in a swamp; and that hardy men were taming the wilderness. So far so good. But it did not appear to me that security to life and property went in exactly the same ratio as the increase of wealth. I heard odd stories about regulators, vigilance committees, and Judge Lynch. Mob-law seemed paramount to written statutes; and the fiat of a legal court required to be backed by the good pleasure of a majority before its execution could be guaranteed. Besides, the moral standard of the community did not rank as high as perhaps a very delicate sense of honour required. Commercial tricks were spoken of as “clever,” or “ingenious,” which in other lands would have engaged the serious attention of the law-officers of the Crown; and the most unprincipled ruse was mentioned with laughter and indulgence, if not with approbation. All this augured badly, methought, for the prospects of the Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway. And yet I did not despair, and still less did I drop a hint of my suspicions to any casual acquaintance. It was not for me, a managing director, to denounce the project with which my name was, alas! inextricably linked, until it should be proved a bubble on the very clearest evidence. I reached Fort Madison, the most remote point to which the steam-horse could convey me, and had, at any rate, the satisfaction of knowing that I was within a few miles of Nauvoo. I hired a mule-waggon for the journey, and sitting down to dinner at the public table of the hotel, I inquired what sort of a place Nauvoo might be?