River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1911-03-16
FROM DOWN EAST
Providence, R. l., March 7, 1911.

others are the sons or daugh
tiers of those who were born ano
spent their yo1th here. Perhaps
these will find a letter dealing with
conditions in the Eastern states not
uninteresting.
Should one who emigrated to the
great West before the Civil War and
who had resided there until now re-
turn to the haunts of his youth he
will be surprised in a hundred ways.
| The emigrant carried with him inn
pressions of the country as condl-
ton existed when he left. These
| impressions still rem ain fixed in his
recollections. He has carried with
| him, pictured upon his mind, things
| Just as he saw them last. If he
| thinks of playmate whom he has
not seen for half century he has
the image in mind of bright-eyed,
smooth-faced boy. He cannot con-
cieye him otherwise. If he should
meet him he would not know him.
He would see in the old man Moth
ing of the boy he carried in his
mind. He would be equally aston
ished at the apparent change in the
landscape, but in the former case
the change occurred in the boy he
was thinking of, in this the change
is not in the landscape but in his
conceptions. The appearance of
old fields, buildings, rocks, hills
and Valleys distances between diff
ferent places, are all an astonish-
ment to him. They are so different
from his conceptions.
AS the returning emigrant gets off
the train and walks to his old home
he gets there before he expected.
He had in his mind an idea of the
distance between the two points
and he is surprised to find it is not
half as great as he supposed it was.
The width of the roads he finds
seemingly contracted. Where he
pictured them as four rods wide he
finds them not more than twenty or
thirty feet.
The stone walls that fence the
roads, which it seems to him were
as high as he could reach when a
kid, have dwindled down to a mere
ridge of rocks which he can top
with standing jump" Boulders,
which he climbed upon and thought
as big as a house, he finds to have
shrunken into insignificant proper
tions. The distance between his
old home and those of neighbors
has shortened up until his appre
hension of mile has contracted to
forty or fifty rods.
He sees fields, in which as bare
foot boy he hoed corn among stones
and briars. s'recollection is that
the fields were very large and the
rows of corn very long. He would
say as a close guess that one of
these fields contained twenty acres.
He finds it about as large as a barn
yard in Wisconsin.
How can we account for this mis-
conception? This landscape has
not changed in it's contour or out
line. These are the same roads.
The rocks have not perceptibly dis
integrated. The houses stand
where they were built. Yet nothing
was just as you think it was. The
change then must be in us. How
has this change been broug hit
about?
Goethe wrote his impressions OF
his first visit to the Eternal City:
LAS soon as we enter Rome trans
fguration takes place in US and we
feel ourselves great like the objects
which surround US"
One who has been confined within
the circumscribed limits of New
England home, where farms are
small and homes near together
takes with him as he goes West the
impression of things as he has beer
accustomed to see them. Going in
to the great wide West he grow:
up with the country" Distances
there are magnificent" as is saic
of our National Capitol. Roads ar,
four rods wide. Fields conpris
] forty, eighty, one hundred AM
sixty acres. Before the railroad
crossed the country towns were ia
apart and one must go long dis
} tances to markets, and a near neigh
Dor was a mile away. Living i
such an open" country one get
) impressions of surroundi ngs thu
are expansive. These last impress
} sions he brings with him in return
I ing to his old home and compare
: them with those he received i
n