Bedford inquirer. [volume] (Bedford, Pa.) 1857-1884, 1865-02-17
Pa FRIDAY, FEBRUARY II. 1866.
THE GREAT WEST.


Emp re-. fact unaeknowledged at the East.
because the East knows not the West. But an
impartial traveller perceiges that the East is
4 not the country. New York and New ENGLAND
are but the thumb and forefnger the West IS the
rest of the hand.
Western visit In summer is best for seeing the
country ID winter, best for seeing the people =
And are they not the hartiest, friendliest most
hispitable OF the human race? What 'sScotch
welcome may be, we know not; but if better
/ than Western welcome, it is better than plain
man deserves. Jostle Westerner in the street.
and at once you are aequaintances: meet him the
next day, you are old friends. A shake of the
hand N the West has more grip in than between
/ New York and Bangor. Child of the East. the
West is the chief crown of the parent. The uni
| yersal New England element westward is not on
! " the best part of the West but the best part Of
New England for only the courageous, the ener-
| getici and the conquering have had the will to
| quit Eastern homes for Western prairies. Thus
| the early Pilgrims to New England have their
truest sons in the later Pilgrims from New Eng
land. Yankee, therefore, does not come to
his fullest stature in Yankeeland; the grown Yam
| kee is The Westerner At the East he Is gerani-
um IN pot thrifty and prim at the West, a ge-
ranium in garden where he grows rank, exuber-
ant, and generous. New countries greaten men S
souls
Does the West seek heraldic sign? Let If
choose shock of corn. @ bounteous land of
small houses and big barns So fertile is the
| Great Valley that as Jerrold said of Australia,
! Only tickle the earth with hoe and she laughs
with harvest Though beaten down from
their full hight by SHOWS, cornstalks are yet stan
ding In January so high that one riding among
| them on tall horse, and rising in the stirrups.
| cannot touch the tops The prairies- es-common-
place, sad, and sublime-are the garden of the
world May they ever make farmers rich and cat
| tie fat
Trade the marker of cities, has amphibious op-
portunties in the West. The Mississippi and its
tributaries yield fortyeight Thousand miles of wa
ters angered by steamboat wheels channel of
navigation to twice grid the globe Already the
great lakes are partners with the Atlantic in d.
rect trade with Europe The railroads are wear
ing out their tracks with hard work and paying
State debts with their profits. Chicago counts
25Q trains coming and going daily at her depots,
and says to New Yorker, 'Sir, you have not
this wondrous water-liy of Lake Michigan, .All
hail Chicago, bazaar of the West, and miracle
of cities T.
The daily press of New York scatters its leaves
very thiny through the West Mr. Greelys
Weekly Tribune goes everywhere, but the metro
polltan dailies set westward only until like tide
streak, they meet the counter current of the Gin
clnnati press, chiefly the Commercial and the Ga
zee; which, In turn, cover the country as the wa
ters do the sea, till they meet with the wide
spread Chicago Tribune; which in like manner
divides the South west with the St Louis Repu6-
hcaa and the Missouri Democrat All these Jour
nails are able and infuencal-growing rich faster
than their brethren in New York The great in
huence which the New York press undoubtedly
exerts upon the whole country is, in the West, an
Influence not directly upun tho people, but upon
the journals But even this influence is diminish
ing, not increasing. New York perhaps will al
ways remain the metropolis of the Union; but it
can never become like Paris to France
Western churches, Sunday-schoos, and day
schools thrive like sapings. An Eastern man,
hearing habitually of Western churches as fee
bic, seldom hears OF any as being strong And
yet many, like young lions shake their locks for
very strength. In st. Louis, on single Sunday
we saw two church debts killed, each at stroke
"a Methodist church paying $4,000, and a
Presbyterian 100000. Perhaps no other city in
the Union cancelled $45 600 of church debt on
that day. The largest Sunday-school in America
Judged by attendance, not the rol-list is west of
the Mississippi-found by Brig. Gen Fisk, who
equally well commands an army, administers de-
partment or conducts children's meeting In
Chicago, mission-schoo, originating in rail-
road-car, is now larger than any in New York
And the largest depository of Sunday school
books is neither in Philadelphia nor New York,
but Chicago. Of two millions of population in
Illinois. half million are in day schools larger
proportion of school going children than in Con
necticut or Massachusetts But not to color our
picture too highly. we eagerly say that thou
sand, Western churches, and a score of Western
colleges, are piteously pleading to be helped into
strength, and the sooner their plea is needed, the
better for the whole country OF all our strug-
Cling theological seminaries, the one most impor-
tant to be speedily equipped is the Congregational
Seminary at Chicago Nusery of churches shall
itself go unnursed? Looking now like log-cab-
in, who volunteers to build it in marble?
Il Il I q
Illinois is body of finer looking men than the
Legislature of New York-better heads for pho
tograph. And if Washington should be captur-
ed by rebels, the Missouri Constitutional Convea-
ton would be no bad exchange for Congress-for
then we would get the Prohiptory Amendment
without further delay. Throughout the West,
patriotism burns Life a fame-as if it caught ex-
ira FIRE from the sunset We may be pardoned
for mentioning that a good woman now living in
Abraham Lincoln's home at Springfield planted a
handful of morning glory seeds at the foot of a
pillar by the stoop, and was surprised to find
the mass of growing vines Towering into three dis
tinct stripes of color-red, white and blue; pa
triotic freak of nature, made as if to give beau
tiful proof of the Indigenous loyalty of the West
the very soil of the Presidents garden testify
ing what flag ought to wave over the land Rest
ing our feet at the grave of Elijah Lovejoy mar
tyr of liberty and looking forth from that historic
dust mouldering in one of the hundred hi-tops
OF Alton, we gazed on majestic landscape where
in the Mississippi and Missouri join their far-com-
ing foods. These mighty rivers flow in the self
same channels now as when that grave was new
made, but thoughts of mighty people flow in
how changed course since then Twenty-seven
years ago, Illinois and Missouri clasped guilty
hands for that assassination; but new it is no
prophet secret that Illinois, before Washington s
next birthday will blot her Black Laws from the
statute book, and Missouri has already filed the
world with the shout of her freedom
And what of the West beyond the West? The |
Mississippi is the center, not the edge, of the |
country. The map of the Union has an empty |
es Ssa Of mot Of ees m so oFO"f Nsons o
follow the sun, or, ceasing to follow die. The |
Great Republic is on its march across the conti-
nent. Freedom, lover of mountains sits in the |
Sierra Nevadas, uttering the cry of the ages,
Westward HoP' Whereunto God adds his own |
command, Cast up, east up the highway g-The-
y. ,Io,,f