"H'm!" said Philip, "you've the stuff that'll make a successful Westerner of you." "That's what I want to be." "I don't think you'll regret it," said the Doctor; "for much though I sometimes long to return to the East, and plainly though I see the poverty and limitations of this part of the country, the West is the proper starting-place for a young man, unless he chances to have abundant capital. Even then he might do worse; for, of course, the newer the country, the greater the number of natural resources to be discovered and developed. The people, too, are interested in everything new, and stand together, to a degree unknown at the East, in favor of any improvements that are possible. They do their full share of grumbling and complaining, to say nothing of their full share of suffering, but there's scarcely one of them who doesn't secretly hope and expect to become rich some day, or at least to be part of a rich community; and they're not more than half wrong, for railways and manufactures must reach us, in the ordinary course of events, and all our people expect to see them. Let me give you an illustration. A year or two ago I drove out one Sunday to see a family of my acquaintance, living in a specially malarious part of the county, who were out of quinine--a common matter of forgetfulness, strange though it may seem. As I neared the house, I heard singing, of a peculiar, irregular kind. As 'twas Sunday, I supposed a neighborhood meeting was in progress. But there wasn't. One of the hundreds of projected Pacific railways had been surveyed through the farm a few months before. On the day of my call three of the seven members of the family were shaking with chills; so to keep up their spirits they were singing, to the music of a hymn-tune, some verses written and printed in the West long ago, and beginning:-- "'The great Pacific railroad To California, hail! Bring on the locomotive, Lay down the iron rail.' There's Western spirit for you--fighting a chill with hopes of a railway that thus far was only a line of stakes and indefinite promises! Such people are worth tying to; their like cannot be found in any other part of the country."