St. Paul has the advantage of picturesqueness of situation. The business part of the town lies on a spacious uneven elevation above the river, surrounded by a semicircle of bluffs averaging something like two hundred feet high. Up the sides of these the city climbs, beautifying every vantage-ground with handsome and stately residences. On the north the bluffs maintain their elevation in a splendid plateau, and over this dry and healthful plain the two cities advance to meet each other, and already meet in suburbs, colleges, and various public buildings. Summit avenue curves along the line of the northern bluff, and then turns northward, two hundred feet broad, graded a distance of over two miles, and with a magnificent asphalt road-way for more than a mile. It is almost literally a street of palaces, for although wooden structures alternate with the varied and architecturally interesting mansions of stone and brick on both sides, each house is isolated, with a handsome lawn and ornamental trees, and the total effect is spacious and noble. This avenue commands an almost unequalled view of the sweep of bluffs round to the Indian Mounds, of the city, the winding river, and the town and heights of West St. Paul. It is not easy to recall a street and view anywhere finer than this, and this is only one of the streets on this plateau conspicuous for handsome houses. I see no reason why St. Paul should not become, within a few years, one of the notably most beautiful cities in the world. And it is now wonderfully well advanced in that direction. Of course the reader understands that both these rapidly growing cities are in the process of “making,” and that means cutting and digging and slashing, torn-up streets, shabby structures alternating with gigantic and solid buildings, and the usual unsightliness of transition and growth. Minneapolis has the State University, St. Paul the Capitol, an ordinary building of brick, which will not long, it is safe to say, suit the needs of the pride of the State. I do not set out to describe the city, the churches, big newspaper buildings, great wholesale and ware houses, handsome club-house (the Minnesota Club), stately City Hall, banks, Chamber of Commerce, and so on. I was impressed with the size of the buildings needed to house the great railway offices. Nothing can give one a livelier idea of the growth and grasp of Western business than one of these plain structures, five or six stories high, devoted to the several departments of one road or system of roads, crowded with busy officials and clerks, offices of the president, vice-president, assistant of the president, secretary, treasurer, engineer, general manager, general superintendent, general freight, general traffic, general passenger, perhaps a land officer, and so on—affairs as complicated and vast in organization and extensive in detail as those of a State government.