No American of taste or appreciation would ever go to Minneapolis and miss one wonderful shop there--no huge box-like structure rearing itself from sidewalk edge and vulgarly proclaiming its wares through the brilliancy of immaculate windows of plate-glass, but a shadowy structure, set in a lawn and giving faint but unmistakable hints of the real treasures that it holds. For it is a rare shop, indeed, and a revelation to folk from the seaboard who may imagine that the interior of the land is an intellectual desolation. It may have been one of these who dined a little time ago at a house in one of these shaded streets of Minneapolis. After dinner the talk drifted without apparent reason to painting, and the man from the seaboard found his host in sharp touch with many of the new pictures. Definitely the talk turned to Walter Graves, London's newest sensation among the portrait painters, and the possibilities of his succeeding Whistler. The Minneapolis man beckoned the guest into the hall, and pointed silently to a picture hung there. It was a splendid portrait of Whistler,[F] painted by Walter Graves. "I never expected to find a picture like that--out here," frankly stammered the man from the seaboard. "You will find many things here that you do not expect," was all that the man from Minneapolis said. [F] Since writing the above we have been led to believe, by a gentleman from Rochester that a picture of Whistler by Graves is no great prize. He says that he can buy them by the dozen at a certain London shop. Because we claim no wit as an art critic we take no sides in this matter. The facts are here. You may choose for yourself. E. H. * * * * * If a town that is scarce forty years old can accomplish these things, how long will it be before the older cities of the land will have to look sharply as to their laurels? The new cities of America are to be a force in her intellectual progress not to be under-estimated or despised. 14 THE GATEWAY OF THE SOUTHWEST There are three great cities, or rather three groups of great cities, along the course of the Mississippi. To the north are St. Paul and Minneapolis, while far to the south is New Orleans, to which we will come in the due order of things. Between these St. Louis stands, close to the business center of the land. For nearly twenty miles she sprawls herself along the west bank of the Mississippi. Throughout her central portion she extends for a dozen miles straight back from her once busy levee. She is a great city, a very great city, in wealth, in industry, in resource. And yet she is a rather unimpressive city to the eye, at first sight and at last.