Everybody Understands Everything, And Everybody Intends Sooner Or Later To Do Everything.

All this is very grand; but then there is a terrible drawback.

One hears on every side of intelligence, but one hears also on every side of dishonesty. Talk to whom you will, of whom you will, and you will hear some tale of successful or unsuccessful swindling. It seems to be the recognized rule of commerce in the far West that men shall go into the world's markets prepared to cheat and to be cheated. It may be said that as long as this is acknowledged and understood on all sides, no harm will be done. It is equally fair for all. When I was a child there used to be certain games at which it was agreed in beginning either that there should be cheating or that there should not. It may be said that out there in the Western States, men agree to play the cheating game; and that the cheating game has more of interest in it than the other. Unfortunately, however, they who agree to play this game on a large scale do not keep outsiders altogether out of the playground. Indeed, outsiders become very welcome to them; and then it is not pleasant to hear the tone in which such outsiders speak of the peculiarities of the sport to which they have been introduced. When a beginner in trade finds himself furnished with a barrel of wooden nutmegs, the joke is not so good to him as to the experienced merchant who supplies him. This dealing in wooden nutmegs, this selling of things which do not exist, and buying of goods for which no price is ever to be given, is an institution which is much honored in the West. We call it swindling - and so do they. But it seemed to me that in the Western States the word hardly seemed to leave the same impress on the mind that it does elsewhere.

On our return down the river we passed La Crosse, at which we had embarked, and went down as far as Dubuque in Iowa. On our way down we came to grief and broke one of our paddle-wheels to pieces. We had no special accident. We struck against nothing above or below water. But the wheel went to pieces, and we laid to on the river side for the greater part of a day while the necessary repairs were being made. Delay in traveling is usually an annoyance, because it causes the unsettlement of a settled purpose. But the loss of the day did us no harm, and our accident had happened at a very pretty spot. I climbed up to the top of the nearest bluff, and walked back till I came to the open country, and also went up and down the river banks, visiting the cabins of two settlers who live there by supplying wood to the river steamers. One of these was close to the spot at which we were lying; and yet though most of our passengers came on shore, I was the only one who spoke to the inmates of the cabin. These people must live there almost in desolation from one year's end to another. Once in a fortnight or so they go up to a market town in their small boats, but beyond that they can have little intercourse with their fellow-creatures. Nevertheless none of these dwellers by the river side came out to speak to the men and women who were lounging about from eleven in the morning till four in the afternoon; nor did one of the passengers, except myself, knock at the door or enter the cabin, or exchange a word with those who lived there.

I spoke to the master of the house, whom I met outside, and he at once asked me to come in and sit down. I found his father there and his mother, his wife, his brother, and two young children. The wife, who was cooking, was a very pretty, pale young woman, who, however, could have circulated round her stove more conveniently had her crinoline been of less dimensions. She bade me welcome very prettily, and went on with her cooking, talking the while, as though she were in the habit of entertaining guests in that way daily. The old woman sat in a corner knitting - as old women always do. The old man lounged with a grandchild on his knee, and the master of the house threw himself on the floor while the other child crawled over him. There was no stiffness or uneasiness in their manners, nor was there anything approaching to that republican roughness which so often operates upon a poor, well- intending Englishman like a slap on the cheek. I sat there for about an hour, and when I had discussed with them English politics and the bearing of English politics upon the American war, they told me of their own affairs. Food was very plenty, but life was very hard. Take the year through, each man could not earn above half a dollar a day by cutting wood. This, however, they owned, did not take up all their time. Working on favorable wood on favorable days they could each earn two dollars a day; but these favorable circumstances did not come together very often. They did not deal with the boats themselves, and the profits were eaten up by the middleman. He, the middleman, had a good thing of it, because he could cheat the captains of the boats in the measurement of the wood. The chopper was obliged to supply a genuine cord of logs - true measure. But the man who took it off in the barge to the steamer could so pack it that fifteen true cords would make twenty-two false cords. "It cuts up into a fine trade, you see, sir," said the young man, as he stroked back the little girl's hair from her forehead.

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