pure water from a series of wells tapping the great reservoir underlying this region. The streets are paved with granite; there are boulevards lined with trees; and there is a driving park with a mile track.

III.

"A CITY with a great future" is a phrase which has became so common in the West as almost to dismay the traveller. But there has been no "boom" in Sioux Falls. The growth of the city, although rapid, has been steady, and the general feeling of the people is that a boom is the thing most to be avoided. The collapse which has visited so many western cities is the inevitable result of the wild speculations which follow artificial development. The climate of South Dakota has. been greatly maligned in the East. The climate, as a rule, partakes of the character of the land, it is level, even. If it be cold, it is a steady cold, and for three successive winters it has been warm. During February of the present year the writer wrote letters many days beside an open window. Evenness is not the only peculiarity of the climate. There is something in the atmosphere strangely exhilarating.

It is an egregious error to suppose that South Dakota is so arid as to seriously interfere with agricultural pursuits. The normal rainfall is less than in the lower latitudes, but the soil requires much less moisture. It is true that severe droughts have been experienced during the past three seasons. The stories of destitution in the state are not without foundation, but circumstances other than the drought are equally chargeable with the condition of those who have reached the limit of absolute want. The country is new, and a large majority of the tillers of the soil are new-comers, with little or no means, possessing but few of the bare necessities of life. Upon their arrival in their anticipated Eldorado, without experience and with none of the facilities for successful farming, is it any wonder that even a moderately arid season should reduce them to destitution?

I have alluded to the drought from which indirectly this fertile and prosperous valley has been suffering and which

for nearly two years has unquestionably checked immigration. There is a cure for this. It lies in man's power "to make the earth rain when the sky fails"; and with the immense supply of water underlying this country the problem should be solved by artesian irrigation. Some of the government experts who first examined the water brought up by artesian wells in this region entertained an opinion that the alkali in it would poison the ground in a few years and make matters worse than before; but later investigations have shown the erroneousness of this view, and this year will unquestionably see the dawn of a new agricultural era in this country contiguous to the Sioux Valley.

The Dakotans have been pitied for their periodical encounters in the past with the dread blizzard. They have therefore taken a certain grim satisfaction in recent years in their security, while New York and Boston have been disturbed by such storms as that which New England had in January of the present year. It was amusing to pick up at that time the Sioux Falls Press, and read the following sarcastic headlines:

REGULAR THING NOW
The East Visited by Another of
Those Terrible Bliz-
zards.

No doubt at times the climate has been severe, and no doubt in the future there will be some severe seasons, because the comparatively treeless plains of Dakota allow free sweep to the winds; but as the miniature forests that have been set out grow up, and as the face of the country changes from time to time, the climate, like the climate of Utah, will no doubt be much modified.

A most interesting portion of South Dakota, naturally, is that comprising the famous Black Hills. Wilder scenes than those which were constantly occurring there during the gold and Indian excitement, from 1873 to about 1877, weer never experienced. In 1876 the gold fever was at its height, and thousands of men were expending their energies and carrying their lives in their hands while seeking after the coveted treas

season, and when in March spring opens, it is generally without alternate slush and mud. One of the most pleasing features of the climate is the coolness which invariably follows the hottest day of summer.

It is no idle dream that this city, so well equipped with water power, already possessed of important manufacturing plants, and with increasing manufacturing tendencies, should become in the near future a great manufacturing centre of supplies for a vast region. If South Dakota is to have a future, there is only one thing necessary to keep the city of Sioux Falls far in the front of all possible rivals and to make her a city which shall be the pride of the state, and

this is a hearty and continuous co-operation on the part of the leading citizens. If such co-operation is made the watchword for the next few years, I see no reason why Sioux Falls should not begin the next century with a population of fifty thousand. Men have made great towns where there were not half the natural helps one finds here.

While what has been accomplished in the material, religious, educational and social progress of Sioux Falls has been brought about within a comparatively short time, the growth has not been, in

any particular, of a mushroom character. The town, as we have said, never had a "boom." There are, of course, remarkable individual instances, when, by some specially lucky turn, men have made fortunes in two or three years; but much the larger part of the money made has been by the natural, legitimate development of the city. Lots which sold for $125 when the village was plotted have sold recently for $20,000, the purchasers being men who have lived here all the intervening time. Real estate has advanced in value because the growth of the city gave it value. As an index to the growth, the following figures are reproduced, showing the number of inhabitants at successive enumerations:

T

FROM THE SILHOUETTE IN POSSESSION OF HIS

NIECE, MRS. FRENCH, OF CHICAGO.

HE man who, with nothing to gain but the approval of conscience, and everything to lose but honor, stands forth against overwhelming odds in defence of a great and precious principle, and finally lays down his life in that defence, surely deserves from his fellow-men, at least, grateful and everlasting remembrance. In the early days of the AntiSlavery movement it was attempting to stem a torrent to argue for the rights of a common humanity. The man who appealed to the Church and the religious sense of the people was openly reviled as a renegade and sensation-monger, who

tried to bring discredit upon "respectable" religion by this means. The Church was supported by the aristocracy of slaveholders; and cotton, the product of the slave labor, formed the basis of the whole foreign commerce of the country. On the one side was bigotry, prejudice, and the money power of two thousand millions of dollars, as the prices of slaves then ranged; on the other, a comparative handful of hated Abolitionists, whose sole capital was their convictions and their lives. The times were too vehement, and the popular feeling too tense for constitutional law to be much respected. The men with whom principle was stronger than expediency, and who could not be silent, spoke and wrote at the peril of their lives. In the van of every reform are men to whom conviction means action. Such a man so lived and so died fifty-three years ago in Alton, and he is practically forgotten. I purpose, as briefly and accurately as may be, to tell his story.

Elijah Parish Lovejoy was born at Albion, Kennebec County, Me., November 8, 1802. He was the oldest of nine children-seven sons and two daughters. Whether any of them are still living I do not know. His father, Rev. Daniel Lovejoy, was a Congregational minister. His mother, Elizabeth Pattee, was the daughter of respectable parents, in one of the adjoining counties. The early life of young Lovejoy was passed on the parental farm, and marked by nothing beyond the ordinary round of rural New England life.

He seems to have shown, almost from infancy, an earnest desire for knowledge, and at four years of age could read the Bible with perfect ease and correctness. As he grew older, whatever time could be spared from the labors, of which he was required to perform his full share, was employed in study; and, being blessed with talents far above the average and an unusually retentive memory, he made rapid progress in the elementary branches, and, after passing a short season at Monmouth and China academies, he entered the sophomore class at Waterville College in September, 1823, and was graduated with highest honors in 1826. On that occasion he delivered a poem of considerable merit, entitled "Inspirations of the Muse," which, together with other compositions of various kinds in prose and verse found in his memoirs, prove him the possessor of a brilliant fancy, a mind keenly alive to the beauties of nature, and an ardent love for true nobility and manly virtue. For several months after leaving college he taught school in his native state, and then, like thousands of others in that section of the Union, was seized with the mania for emigration, and, abandoning home and kindred for the then comparatively unknown regions of the great valley, turned his face westward, and arrived in St. Louis in the latter part of 1827. He immediately began school teaching; and one at least of his pupils, a lady, still survives. His leisure moments were spent in reading, correspondence, and occasional writing for the press, - for which he seems to have had a natural taste and talent. One of his earliest efforts in the last named direction was a poetic contribution to the Missouri Republican, addressed to his mother, and breathing the tenderest affection for her whom he never ceased to love and reverence while he lived. An anecdote is related of him at this time, which illustrates his phenomenal powers of memory. Returning from church one evening, his companion said to him:

"Well Lovejoy, I don't believe you heard a word of that sermon; you looked as if you were asleep." "Asleep or not," replied Lovejoy, "I think I can repeat everything that was said."

And he did

beginning with text and ending with final paragraph. In 1828 he was connected with the Times newspaper, then advocating the claims of Henry Clay to the presidency. The reputation thus acquired as a journalist made him. popular with the Whig party, and might have procured him material advancement in the political field; but during a religious revival, which occurred in the winter of 1831-32, his feelings and purposes underwent an entire change, and he united with the First Presbyterian Church, then under the pastoral charge of Rev. Dr. W. S. Potts.

Believing it his imperative duty to aid in the promulgation of the faith he had professed, and acting in accordance with the advice of his pastor, he proceeded, in the spring of 1832, to the Theological seminary at Princeton, N. J., and there remained until April, 1833, when he was licensed to preach by the Second Presbytery of Philadelphia. The summer months were spent in temporarily supplying pulpits in New York City and Newport, R. I., but autumn saw him back again in St. Louis, whither he came, at the wish of many friends, to establish a weekly religious newspaper. The necessary capital was furnished by a few individuals, and the whole editorial and business management was placed in his hands. The first number of the St. Louis Observer was published November 22, 1833. In addition to the duties connected with the paper, Mr. Lovejoy was in the habit of visiting various neighborhoods in the vicinity, on week days as well as Sundays, and holding religious services. It was not until the summer of 1834 that he formally announced himself an AntiSlavery man, and thereby began the conflict which at last cost him his life. The editorials on the subject in the Observer, though they then created not a little excitement in the city and state, read exceedingly mild now, and are not particularly remarkable either for novelty of idea or felicity of expression. One point, however, they clearly establish, which has been almost overlooked, or, at least, ignored, and which should have due consideration in estimating the man and his subsequent course.

Lovejoy was not, in