when they had not steam in those days to course their streams and
stalk across their plains with giant tread, eclipsing the old
seven-league boots of their fancy; but the tortoise is a used-up
individual, is short of breath, and it is the passenger that sleeps,
while the hare leaps onward to his covert.

Being thus brought near to you by the swift convoys of science, it will
be evident that we are not so far away as we seem. We do not perpetrate
an Irish bull when we say that the distance _to_ a place is often
greater than the distance in returning. It is, on the contrary, a well
authenticated natural fact--a phenomenon, if you please. And by way of
illustration we may aver that it is a great deal farther from your
metropolis to west of the Mississippi, than from west of the Mississippi
to the metropolis.

You sit in your cosy parlors and offices and think of some friend or
relative, perhaps a son or daughter, in the 'far West.' It seems as if a
sea spread out between you, or at least the better part of a continent.
You think of India and China, perchance, or of England or France, and
you feel as if they were all nearly equidistant with the home of your
beloved ones. It is so far away out to the Father of Waters, and you can
never make up your mind, without great and frequent resolution, to
undertake such a journey as this.

But, my friends, it is not half so far as that, from us to the Atlantic
coast. It is not so far from us to you, as it is to some tardy customer,
whose bills are yet to collect, a hundred miles down the country by a
two-days' stage adventure. Not nearly so far. Why, when we want to go to
New York or Boston, we don't pack our trunks and take a cargo of luggage
on board for a two-months' voyage. We just tumble hurriedly a few things
into a valise or carpet sack before we go to bed, and the next morning
off we start, and after two days of sight-seeing and newspaper reading
along the way, and two nights' comfortable sleeping-car rest, we wake up
at the dawn of the third day to bid you good morning and inquire after
the markets; and that is the end of it.

It isn't so very far, after all. We put off in the morning, bid good
evening to Chicago, good morning to Toledo, a ten-o'clock good night to
Buffalo, and we sit down to a late breakfast with you the following day.

But then if you have never been out here, it's a long, long distance,
and we advise you not to try it all of a sudden, nor to come with