"The town hall on which I have been at work for more than a year is at last finished. It is built of a white stone"--now a beautiful deep cream--"quarried from a neighboring hill, and easily shaped. The lower apartments are for schools, the hall over them--seventy feet by thirty--is for public assemblies. It is not an edifice that would attract any attention among public buildings in the United States; but in California it is without a rival. It has been erected out of the slender proceeds of town lots, the labor of convicts, taxes on liquor shops, and fines on gamblers. The scheme was regarded with incredulity by many; but the building is finished, and the citizens have assembled in it and christened it with my name, which will go down to posterity with the odor of gamblers, convicts and tipplers. I leave it as an humble evidence of what may be accomplished by rigidly adhering to one purpose, and shrinking from no personal efforts necessary to its achievements. A prison has also been built, and mainly through the labor of convicts. Many a joke the rogues have cracked while constructing their own cage; but have worked so diligently I shall feel constrained to pardon out the less incorrigible." [Illustration: COLTON HALL The Capitol of California in 1849.] [Illustration: THE RIVER ROAD, KEENE VALLEY, NEW YORK] NEIGHBORLINESS AND A COUNTRY COMMUNITY SARAH LOWRIE With the growth of large cities in our country and the desertion of the farms for the town, there has been a less observable but quite as remarkable desertion of the city in favor of the country. One would suppose that these two migrations would so balance each other that neither the town nor the country would suffer by the exchange of citizens. It would be reasonable to hope that going to the country would bring just the right impetus needed by the stay-at-homes of each community to brace them into new life. But the thing has not worked out that way. However much the shops and offices of the cities may have benefited by the advent of the farmers' sons and daughters, and however much the real estate agents and provision merchants of the country may have benefited by the advent of the well-to-do towns-folk, the morale of the country town, the ideals of the country people and the amalgamation of the native men with their new neighbors into a better citizenship have not prospered. Nor have the city institutions been able to replace the men of affairs who, having ceased to use the city except as a means for carrying on their business, have transferred their family and their leisure interests into the country.