vision
establishments have been made along their line. Much business of the
kind is now done at Terre Haute and other towns on the Wabash,--at
Madison, Louisville, and other towns on the Ohio,--at Alton and other
places in Illinois.

The farmers of the West are independent in feeling, plain in dress,
simple in manners, frank and hospitable in their dwellings, and soon
acquire a competency by moderate labor. Those from Kentucky, Tennessee,
or other states south of the Ohio river, have large fields, well
cultivated, and enclosed with strong built rail or worm fences, but they
often neglect to provide spacious barns and other outhouses for their
grain, hay and stock. The influence of habit, is powerful. A Kentuckian
would look with contempt upon the low fences of a New-Englander as
indicating thriftless habits, while the latter would point at the
unsheltered stacks of wheat, and dirty threshing floor of the former, as
proof direct of bad economy and wastefulness.

_Population of the Cities and large Towns._ The population of western
towns does not differ essentially from the same class in the Atlantic
states, excepting there is much less division into grades and ranks,
less ignorance, low depravity and squalid poverty amongst the poor, and
less aristocratic feeling amongst the rich. As there is never any lack
of employment for laborers of every description, there is comparatively
no suffering from that cause. And the hospitable habits of the people
provide for the sick, infirm and helpless. Doubtless, our
_circumstances_ more than any thing else, cause these shades of
difference. The common mechanic is on a social equality with the
merchant, the lawyer, the physician, and the minister. They have shared
in the same fatigues and privations, partook of the same homely fare, in
many instances have fought side by side in defence of their homes
against the inroads of savages,--are frequently elected to the same
posts of honor, and have accumulated property simultaneously. Many
mechanics in the western cities and towns, are the owners of their own
dwellings, and of other buildings, which they rent. I have known many a
wealthy merchant, or professional gentleman occupy on rent, a building
worth several thousand dollars, the property of some industrious
mechanic, who, but a few years previous, was an apprentice lad, or
worked at his trade as a journeyman. Any sober, industrious mechanic can
place himself in affluent circumstances