FROM St. Louis northward there are all the enlivening signs ofthe presence of active, energetic, intelligent, prosperous, practicalnineteenth-century populations. The people don't dream, they work.

The happy result is manifest all around in the substantial outsideaspect of things, and the suggestions of wholesome life and comfortthat everywhere appear.

Quincy is a notable example--a brisk, handsome, well-ordered city;and now, as formerly, interested in art, letters, and other high things.

But Marion City is an exception. Marion City has gone backwardsin a most unaccountable way. This metropolis promisedso well that the projectors tacked 'city' to its name in thevery beginning, with full confidence; but it was bad prophecy.

When I first saw Marion City, thirty-five years ago,it contained one street, and nearly or quite six houses.

It contains but one house now, and this one, in a state of ruin,is getting ready to follow the former five into the river.

Doubtless Marion City was too near to Quincy. It hadanother disadvantage: it was situated in a flat mud bottom,below high-water mark, whereas Quincy stands high up on the slopeof a hill.

In the beginning Quincy had the aspect and ways of a model New England town:

and these she has yet: broad, clean streets, trim, neat dwellingsand lawns, fine mansions, stately blocks of commercial buildings.

And there are ample fair-grounds, a well kept park, and manyattractive drives; library, reading-rooms, a couple of colleges,some handsome and costly churches, and a grand court-house, with groundswhich occupy a square. The population of the city is thirty thousand.

There are some large factories here, and manufacturing, of many sorts,is done on a great scale.

La Grange and Canton are growing towns, but I missed Alexandria;was told it was under water, but would come up to blow in the summer.

Keokuk was easily recognizable. I lived there in 1857--an extraordinaryyear there in real-estate matters. The 'boom' was something wonderful.

Everybody bought, everybody sold--except widows and preachers;they always hold on; and when the tide ebbs, they get left.

Anything in the semblance of a town lot, no matter how situated,was salable, and at a figure which would still have been high if the groundhad been sodded with greenbacks.

The town has a population of fifteen thousand now, and is progressing witha healthy growth. It was night, and we could not see details, for which wewere sorry, for Keokuk has the reputation of being a beautiful city.

It was a pleasant one to live in long ago, and doubtless has advanced,not retrograded, in that respect.

A mighty work which was in progress there in my day is finished now.

This is the canal over the Rapids. It is eight miles long,three hundred feet wide, and is in no place less than six feet deep.

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