CHAPTER III.

IN PICTURESQUE NEW YORK.

Some Local Errors Corrected—­A Trip Down the Hudson River—­The Last of the Mohicans—­The Home of Rip Van Winkle—­The Ladies of Vassar and their Home—­West Point and its History—­Sing Sing Prison—­The Falls of Niagara—­Indians in New York State.

Residents in the older States of the East are frequently twitted with their ignorance concerning the newer States of the West, and of the habits and customs of those who, having taken Horace Greeley’s advice at various times, turned their faces toward the setting sun, determined to take advantage of the fertility of the soil, and grow up with the country of which they knew but little.

It needs but a few days’ sojourn in an Eastern city by a Western man to realize how sublimely ignorant the New Englander is concerning at least three-fourths of his native land.  The writer was, on a recent occasion, asked, in an Eastern city, how he managed to get along without any of the comforts of civilization, and whether he did not find it necessary to order all of his clothing and comforts by mail from the East.  When he replied that in the larger cities, at any rate, of the West, there were retail emporiums fully up to date in all matters of fashion and improvement, and caterers who could supply the latest delicacies in season at reasonable prices, an incredulous smile was the result, and regret was expressed that local prejudice and pride should so blind a man to the actual truth.

Yet there was no exaggeration whatever in the reply, as the experienced traveler knows well.  Neither Chicago nor St. Louis are really in the West, so far as points of the compass are concerned, both of these cities being hundreds of miles east of the geographical center of the United States.  But they are both spoken of as “out West,” and are included in the territory in which the extreme Eastern man is apt to think people live on the coarsest fare, and clothe themselves in the roughest possible manner.  Yet the impartial and disinterested New York or Boston man who visits either of these cities speedily admits that he frequently finds it difficult to believe that he is not in his own much loved city, so close is the resemblance in many respects between the business houses and the method of doing business.  Denver is looked upon by the average Easterner almost in the light of a frontier city, away out in the Rockies, surrounded by awe-inspiring scenery, no doubt, but also by grizzly bears and ferocious Indians.  San Francisco is too far away to be thought very intelligently, but a great many people regard that home of wealth and elegance as another extreme Western die-in-your-boots, rough-and-tumble city.