St. Louis is a large and well-built city of about 280,000 inhabitants. In the year 1836 it was only a French village of about 3,000 souls, almost all of whom were Canadians and Canadian half-breeds. In those days the wild Indian was close upon it. Now the French and the Indians are both alike obliterated, and railways reach between five and six hundred miles beyond it. It contains many churches, some of which are built in very good taste and style. I never saw red brick anywhere else used so pleasingly and effectively in pointed architecture, as in the spire of one of the churches in this city. I was also much struck with a stone church, the tower of which was not yet completed. Each window in the side aisles had a second window over it, in the form of a kind of window head or marigold. The main aisle had clerestory windows. All the windows throughout were filled with stained glass. This fine church belonged to the Episcopal communion. There are six Episcopal congregations in St. Louis. I here became acquainted with a clergyman who had just returned from a long tour through Europe and the East. It was strange, on the west bank of the Mississippi, on a spot where red men had sold their furs, and smoked their pipes, in the memory of the speaker himself, to hear expressed the opinion, ‘that a man of culture and thought had not completed his education till he had seen with his own eyes the scenes in which the great events of man’s past history had been enacted.’ [Sidenote: _Thoughts from the Mississippi._] While crossing the Mississippi on the ice, I could not hear unmoved the shoals of skaters cheering, and shouting, and talking merrily in good English, just as if it were all on the Serpentine in the Park; and I thought to myself that that small piece of water in the midst of London does not belong more completely to the English race than the Father of Waters himself does now, and must for ever. CHAPTER XII. INSTANCE OF AMERICAN KINDLINESS—RED-SKINS AND HALF-BREEDS ON THE RAILS—CINCINNATI AND ITS INHABITANTS—WHAT MAY BE MADE OF PIGS—THE INFLUENCE OF ITS PORK CROP—MACHINERY FOR KILLING AND CURING—IMPROVING EFFECT AMERICAN EQUALITY HAS ON THE HIGHEST AND LOWEST CLASS—CHURCHES ONLY UNPROSAIC BUILDINGS IN AMERICAN TOWNS—SCHOOLS—MERITS OF PHILADELPHIAN STYLE OF CITY-BUILDING NOT OBVIOUS—IN WHAT IT CONSISTS—AMERICA HAS BUT ONE CITY—NO. 24, G STREET, CORNER OF 25TH STREET.