A man in Oklahoma City when the day’s work is done has before him a prospect of broad red clayey streets, muddy after rain, bristling with dust after a drought, with the sun setting at one end of them into the prairie. He can go to his cottage, or to “The Turf,” where he can lose some money at faro, or he can sit in one of the hotels, which are the clubs of the city, and talk cattle to strangers and real estate to citizens, or he can join a lodge and talk real estate there. Once or twice a week a “show” makes a one-night stand at the opera-house. The schools are not good for his children as yet, and the society that he is willing his wife should enjoy is limited. On Sunday he goes to church, and eats a large dinner in the middle of the day, and walks up to the top of the hill to look over the prairie where he and many others would like to build, but which must remain empty until the twelve different disputants for each holding have stopped appealing to higher courts. This is actually the case, and the reason the city has not spread as others around it have done. As the Romans shortened their swords to extend their boundaries, so the people of Oklahoma City might cut down some of their higher courts and increase theirs. I have given this sketch of Oklahoma City as it impressed itself on me, because I think any man who can afford a hall bedroom and a gas-stove in New York City is better off than he would be as the owner of one hundred and sixty acres on the prairie, or in one of these small so-called cities. [Illustration: OKLAHOMA CITY TO-DAY--MAIN BROADWAY]