alone till he built it of mud and sticks like all the rest of the

chimneys in this dismal country. Pine forests, wheat land, corn land,

iron, copper, coal-wait till the railroads come, and the steamboats!

We'll never see the day, Nancy--never in the world---never, never, never,

child. We've got to drag along, drag along, and eat crusts in toil and

poverty, all hopeless and forlorn--but they'll ride in coaches, Nancy!

They'll live like the princes of the earth; they'll be courted and

worshiped; their names will be known from ocean to ocean! Ah,

well-a-day! Will they ever come back here, on the railroad and the

steamboat, and say, 'This one little spot shall not be touched--this

hovel shall be sacred--for here our father and our mother suffered for

us, thought for us, laid the foundations of our future as solid as the

hills!'"

"You are a great, good, noble soul, Si Hawkins, and I am an honored woman

to be the wife of such a man"--and the tears stood in her eyes when she

said it. "We will go to Missouri. You are out of your place, here,

among these groping dumb creatures. We will find a higher place, where

you can walk with your own kind, and be understood when you speak--not

stared at as if you were talking some foreign tongue. I would go

anywhere, anywhere in the wide world with you I would rather my body

would starve and die than your mind should hunger and wither away in this

lonely land."

"Spoken like yourself, my child! But we'll not starve, Nancy. Far from

it. I have a letter from Beriah Sellers--just came this day. A letter

The Gilded Age