In some cases the Government had located a county town, and the railway company had chosen another site close by. Then the fight began. The railway at first ignored the Government's site, and ran their trains by; built a station on their own site, and would have no other. Then the people on the Government site tore up the tracks, and incendiarism became so common that the insurance agent came and cancelled all the policies except the church and parsonage where our minute-man stood guard. This was done in several places, and the end is not yet. Now, to the general reader, everything seems in a hopeless muddle, and he is glad he is not living there. But remember this. It is better than some older settlements, where men had to give eighty bushels of wheat for a pair of stogy boots, as they did in Ohio, and fight the Indian as well as the wolf from the door, or in Kansas forty years ago, where corn brought five cents a bushel, and men had to go a hundred miles to the mill. In order to show the hopeful side, I will give an illustration. I was to speak at a meeting in Illinois. My way was through Missouri, where spiritual and civilized prosperity has not kept pace with her wealth and opportunities. I was entertained in a mansion built sixty years ago. The city, of sixteen thousand inhabitants, could hardly be matched in New England,--many fine streets, shaded with grand old elms; the roads bricked and well graded; the houses beautiful, artistic, and surrounded with lovely lawns; a college, a ladies' seminary, and many fine schools and churches. The lady of the house said, "My mother crossed the mountains many times to Washington, to live with her husband, who represented the State there." At last she had to take two carriages and two horses, and it became too hard work, when her husband built the house which is still a beautiful home, with magnificent elms, planted by its original owner, shading it. In that day the rattlesnake glided about the doorway, the Indians roamed everywhere, and the wolves actually licked the frosting off the cakes that were set to cool on the doorstep, while the Indians stole the poor woman's dinner who lived close by. To-day a park adorns the front, given by the generous owner to the city; and where the wolves and the Indians roamed, lives the daughter of Governor Duncan, with her husband and family, in one of the finest cities of its size in the world. Nowhere in all this wide world can the advance of civilization during the last fifty years be found on so large a scale as here on the American frontiers. XXXII. THE PIONEER WEDDING.