Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1883-10-09
For the SPECTATOR.
A Trip to the Near West-NO. 2.

nience more than we do. In partaking OF
the hospitalities of a dozen different homes
in the hottest days Of summer, scarcely a
sight was had of that most intolerable OF
all pests, the common house-hy. A fine,
almost invisible, wire gauze luckily and
lusciously bars every door and window
against this remorseless and hitherto un-
conquered foe.
Sitting at the home table, in an ordinarily
comfortable dining room, we caught water
running from the spout of pump standing
in very good well.
A largest sized boxed piano was easily
taken by two youths with a simple con-
trivance, that any jack-leg carpenter could
make in half day after being once seen,
from the exhibition-room of D. A. Bald
win & Co., in Indianapolis, and placed in a
wagon, backed up to the curb-stone to re-
ceive it.
So great revolution has taken place out
there in the actual work of farming, that
good old time-honored harvest week has
lost its ancient glory. Now, four stout boys,
with their father and self-feeder, can, in a
single day, shock up the wheat of small
farm.
Some things surprised u.s. While the
cities of the living are more, the cities OF
the dead are less fashionable than they are
in the east. Judging from the beauty OF
the respective cemeteries, it is less luxury
to die in Indianapolis, Ind, than in Rich
mond, Va. Again. the business people of
soundly sleeping Staunton hurry faster over
their pavements than the business men of
wide-awake Richmond, Ind. Still, again,
all the preconceived ideas received in our
early youth about the quaint costume,
strange manners, and odd speech of the
Quakers were dispelled when, in their stead,
were found not only highly educated, but
very fashionable sect Of most worthy men
and women.
We know that every Augusta farmer uses
even more surely his fertilizer to stimulate
his soil than he calls for his coffee to stimu-
late himself, as he sits down to his morn
ing meal; but in speaking to Western
farmer about our fertilizing, one may be
called on to explain what he means by the
term fertilizer as applied to artificial ma
nureS.
An idea of our PROGRESS may be had
when we compare the miniature depot now
going up at the crossing of the Valley and
Chesapeake and Ohio Road, belonging to
one of the wealthiest railroad corporations
in the world, and situated at our own
Queen Mountain City, in the heart of the
far-famed limestone table land of Virginia,
with that at either Columbus, Ohio, or the
one at Richmond, Ind. It's like tolera-
bly, wealthy mans cozy retreat fA q
months vacation at some mountain park
by the side of Victoria's Imperial Windsor
Castle.
1t is hardly hyperbole to say, that money
grows in Indiana. Struggling with every
natural disadvantage, every part Of the
State is as busy at manufacturing as a hive
of bees in building and storing their comb
With little coal, less ore and timber, and
scarcely any water power derived from her
sluggish streams, she furnishes many of
the cars which daily pass our doors, much
of the machinery and many of the imple-
ments used by our farmers, together with
the niuor, but no less necessary, house
hold utensils. Her indomitable energy and
her large capital buy the products of our
mines and forests, transport them into her
own borders, shape them in our own facto-
ries, reship and sell again at a handsome
profit to the original owners of the crude
material. With such people and such an
energy taking hold of our natural advan-
tages, what would not Virginia become in
few short years. Binding together the
soil of her hillsides with blue grass, instead
of washing it away by constant cultivation,
her graziers would, in their myriad lowing
herds and bleating focks, calculate untold
wealth, and laying factory tribute upon her
every rapidly falling stream, which now
unarrested goes rollicking to the sea, it
would only be question of time when the
mother, like her immortal son, would be-
come first among the States, first outside
of the States, and first everywhere.
We heard but little said about the politi-
cal prospects of the two great parties of
our country. II we were allowed to coin
perhaps ungrammatical and illogical
but not altogether unexpressive phrase,
we would say that Hoosier politics
are not so intensely political as Virginia
politics are with us. 1t seemed to us that
every Democrat was sort of halfway
Republican, and, contrawise, every>Repub-
lican was sort of halfway Democrat.
We thought, however, that we discovered
in the distance the first rising of the tenn
perance tidal wave, which next is to sweep
over the land. The sure precursor Of all
great reforms is their exceedingly small
beginnings. But like the streamlet issuing
from its mountain height, it widens deep
ems, and increases in volume until it bears
before it every thing below.
In the West, too as here in Virginia,
railroad monopolies are by the mass of the
people felt and feared. The coarse rum
bling Of the car-wheels, and the harsher
shrek of the whistle, broke upon the SOL
emn stiffness within the walls of the Quaker
church, as we worshiped for the first time, on
the first Sabbath of our arrival, with these
devout people. This, too,' is monopoly
that in some way, sooner or later, must be
checked. Even where the higher motive of
respect for the Sabbath is wanting, to al
low a powerful corporation to make every
Sunday its thousands, and, at the same
time prohibit the poor man from making
cent, is clearly and simply the rankest in
justice.
We heard not word spoken against the
South. In fact, TO one who did not know,
it is difficult to believe that in the late un-
Indiana and Virginia occupied
opposing positions toward each other.
These people are not insensible to nor
elated at the fact that they are the owners
of the great West, which is now the domi-
nant section of this mighty Republic. They
know, too, that the seat and centre of power
in this Government are fast drifting towards
the Father of Rivers, and that Washington
must ere long cease to be the capital of the
United States.
This can excite no envy in the bosom of
any tr-e Virginian, or any patriotic lover
of his country. Indiana is one of the eldest
and fairest of Virginia's daughters. The
child, young, gay, and lovely, has out
grown the mother. But no where does the
Virginian leaving home find more cordial
welcome or truer friendship than he does
among the Hoosiers of this prosperous and
happy State. J. M. S.
A SENSIBLE SUGGEsTIoN.-Store away a
few bushels of dry road dust for the hens
to dust in the next winter. Give them
enough of it and have it entirely dry, so
they can ''make the dust fly all through
the hen house and cover the roosts and fill