The railroad facilities of Madison are undoubtedly remarkable for a town of its size; these are attracting wholesale houses and warehousemen, and new factories are talked of. The existing industries employ some fifteen hundred men. The schools, the university, the unusual library facilities and the beauty and healthfulness of the town bring to it an ever-increasing accession of cultured people with moderate fixed incomes. Summer visitors from St. Louis, New Orleans, and other southern cities of the Mississippi Valley are encouraged to come to the Four Lakes. The comfort of the inhabitants is greatly enhanced by a system of macadamized streets which is relatively the best in Wisconsin; and there is also maintained, by popular subscription, a labyrinth of twenty-five miles of suburban drives, enriched by the art of the landscape gardener, and leading to favorite view-points. A "Forty Thousand Club" is strenuously seeking to exploit and double the material interests of the town, within the present decade. But when all is said, Madison's distinguishing characteristics, as well as her neighborhood gossip, will probably long remain such as properly pertain to the political and educational centre of a rapidly developing commonwealth. [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [11] The Indian names now given to the lakes of this region are modern appellations; originally they were numbered First, Second, Third, and Fourth as they progressed towards the source--the order in which they were encountered by the federal surveyors in ascending the Catfish, a branch of Rock River, and the outlet of the lakes. Their present names, adopted in 1856, are Kegonsa, Waubesa, Monona, and Mendota, respectively. [12] The author has, of course, omitted to say what many of his readers understand, that as secretary he has had a large share in giving the Wisconsin Historical Society its conspicuous position in the public mind.--EDITOR. [Illustration] MINNEAPOLIS--ST. PAUL THE TWIN CITIES BY CHARLES B. ELLIOTT "We are citizens of two fair cities," said a Genoese gentleman to a Florentine artist, "and if I were not a Genoese I should wish to be a Florentine." "And I," replied the artist, "if I were not Florentine--" "You would wish to be a Genoese," said the other. "No," replied the artist, "I should wish to be Florentine." Within a circle with a radius of ten miles, enclosing the Falls of St. Anthony, are two modern cities with a population of almost four hundred thousand. The pioneer settler died a few months ago and the first child born there is now but passing middle life. And yet a little more than half a century after the landing of the Pilgrims the cross of Christ and the arms of France were carved on an oak tree which stood on the site of the present city of Minneapolis.