lazy and bored, often
moving from place to place for the sake of change; in the thirty years
that the [western] Pennsylvania neighborhood has been settled, it has
changed owners two or three times. The sight of money will tempt any
American to sell and off he goes to a new country." Foreign observers
of that time constantly allude to this universal and inexplicable
restiveness. It was obviously not laziness, for pioneering was a man's
task; nor boredom, for the frontier was lonely and neighbors were far
apart It was an ever-present dissatisfaction that drove this perpetual
conqueror onward--a mysterious impulse, the urge of vague and
unfulfilled desires. He went forward with a conquering ambition in his
heart; he believed he was the forerunner of a great National Destiny.
Crude rhymes of the day voice this feeling:

So shall the nation's pioneer go joyful on his way,
To wed Penobscot water to San Francisco Bay.
The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall answer sea,
And mountain unto mountain call, praise God, for we are free!

Again a popular chorus of the pathfinder rang:

Then o'er the hills in legions, boys;
Fair freedom's star
Points to the sunset regions, boys,
Ha, Ha, Ha-ha!

Many a New Englander cleared a farm in western New York, Ohio, or
Indiana, before settling finally in Wisconsin, Iowa, or Minnesota,
whence he sent his sons on to Dakota, Montana, Oregon, and California.
From Tennessee and Kentucky large numbers moved into southern Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, and across the river into Missouri, Arkansas,
Louisiana, and Texas. Abraham Lincoln's father was one of these
pioneers and tried his luck in various localities in Kentucky,
Indiana, and Illinois.

Nor had the movement ceased after a century of continental
exploitation. Hamlin Garland in his notable autobiography, _A Son of
the Middle Border_, brings down to our own day the evidence of this
native American restiveness. His parents came of New England
extraction, but settled in Wisconsin. His father, after his return
from the Civil War, moved to Iowa, where he was scarcely ensconced
before an opportunity came to sell his place. The family then pushed
out farther upon the Iowa prairie, where they "broke" a farm from the
primeval turf. Again, in his ripe age, the father found the urge
revive and under this impulse he moved again, this time to Dakota,
where he remained long enough to transform a section of pra