Buffalo is not as frivolous as Syracuse. She cares but little for festivals but speaks of herself in the cold commercial terms of success. If you have ever met a man from Buffalo, when you were traveling, and he began to tell you of his town, you will know exactly what we mean. He undoubtedly began by quoting marvelous statistics, some of them concerning the number of trains that arrived and departed from his native heath in the course of twenty-four hours. When he was through, you had a confused idea that Buffalo was some sort of an exaggerated railroad yard, where you changed cars to go from any one corner of the universe to any other corner. When your time came to see Buffalo for yourself, that confused idea returned to you. Your train slipped for miles through an apparently unending wilderness of branching tracks and dusty freight cars, past grimy round-houses and steaming locomotives, until you were ready to believe that any conceivable number of trains arrived at and departed from that busy town within a single calendar day. If you have approached her by water in the summertime you have seen her as a mighty port, her congestion of water traffic suggesting salt water rather than fresh. When we come to visit the neighboring port of Cleveland we shall give heed to the wonderful traffic of the inland seas, but for this moment consider Buffalo as something more than a railroad yard, a busy harbor, or even a melting-pot for the fusing of as large and as difficult a foreign element as is given to any American town to fuse. Consider Buffalo dreaming metropolitan dreams. The dull roar of Niagara, almost infinite in its possibilities of power, is within hearing. That dull roar has been Buffalo's incentive, the lullaby which induced her dreams of industrial as well as of commercial strength. And much has been written of her growing strength in these great lines. To our own minds the real Buffalo is to be found in her typical citizen. If he is really typical of the city at the west gate of the Empire state, you will find him optimistic and energetic to a singular degree, and he needs all his optimism and his energy to combat the problems that come to a town of exceeding growth, just crossing the threshold of metropolitanism. Those problems demand cool heads and stout hearts. Buffalo is just beginning to appreciate that. It is becoming less difficult than of old for them to pull together, to dig deep into their purses if need be, and to plan their city of tomorrow in a generous spirit of coöperation. [Illustration: Rochester is a city of charming homes]