The centre of the town, both in position and importance, is "The Square." This is an open space planted thickly with trees, which have now grown to a large size and cast a refreshing shade over the crowd that gathers there in summer to hear political speeches or to celebrate the Fourth of July. It is surrounded by hitching-racks, and on Saturdays and other unusually busy days these racks, on all the four sides of the Square, are so full of teams--generally two-horse farm-wagons--that there is not room for another horse to be tied. Facing the Square and extending a block or two down adjacent streets are the business-houses--stores, banks, express-office, livery-stables, post-office, gas-office, the hotels, the opera-house, newspaper and lawyers' offices. Many of the buildings are of brick, three stories high, faced or trimmed with stone, but the general effect is marred by the contiguity of little wooden shanties used as barber-shops and meat-markets. Except in the north-east, where the land is rolling and densely wooded, the horizon-line is flat and on a level with our feet. The sun rises from the prairie as he rises from the ocean, and his going down is the same: no far-off line of snowy mountains, no range of green hills nor forest-crest, intercepts his earliest and his latest rays. Over this wide stretch of level land the wind sweeps with unobstructed violence, and more than once in the memory of settlers it has increased to a destructive tornado, carrying buildings, wagons, cattle and human beings like chaff before it. Just now, a sky of heavenly beauty and color bends over it, and through the wide spaces blow delicious airs suggestive of early spring.