Putting the thing the wrong way about we should say that the typical Rochesterian is pretty near the typical American. And still continuing in the reversed order of things consider, for an instant, the beginnings of Rochester. We have spoken of these three cities of the western end of New York state as the first fruit of the wonderful Erie canal. That is quite true and yet it is also true that before the canal came there was quite a town at the falls of the Genesee, trying in crude fashion to avail itself of the wonderful water-power. And while the canal was still an unfinished ditch, three men rode up from the south--Rochester and Fitzhugh and Carroll--and surveyed a city to replace the straggling town. That little village had, during the ten brief years of its existence, been known as Falls Town. Col. Rochester gave his own name to the city that he foresaw and lived to see it make its definite beginnings. All that was in the third decade of the last century, and Rochester has yet to celebrate her first centenary under her present name. Her career divides itself into three epochs. In the first of these--from the days of her settlement up to the close of the Civil War--she was famed for her flouring-mills. She was known the world over as the Flour City, and she held that title until the great wheat farms of the land were moved far to the west. But they still continued to call her by the same name although they spelled it differently now--the Flower City. For a new industry arose within her. America was awakening to a quickened sense of beauty. Flowers and florists were becoming popular, and a group of shrewd men in and around Rochester made the nursery business into a very great industry. In more recent years the nature of her manufactures has broadened--her camera factory is the most famous in all the world, optical goods, boots and shoes, ready-made clothing, come pouring out of her in a great tidal stream of enterprise. She is an industrial city, definitely and distinctly. Fortunately she is an industrial city employing a high grade of labor almost exclusively, and yet none the less a town devoted to manufacturing. Once again, do not forget that she has not neglected her social life, and you may read this as you please. You may look away from the broadening work of the ward clubs and of the school-houses and demand if there is an aristocracy in Rochester. The resident of the town will lead you over into its Third ward--a compact community almost within stone-throw of the Four Corners, and shut off from the rest of the vulgar world by a river, a canal and a railroad yard. In that compact community, its tree-lined streets suggesting the byways of some tranquil New England community, is the seat of Rochester social government. The residents of the Third ward are a neighborly folk, borrowing things of one another and visiting about with delightful informality among themselves, and yet their rule is undisputed.