and All Saints’ Cathedral, there are places of note to be seen, such as Howe’s Cave and Sharon Springs.  By this branch of the “D. & H” system, Cooperstown, rendered famous by James Fenimore Cooper in his works, is reached.  On alighting from the train at Binghamton I was greeted by my old friends, Col.  Arthur MacArthur, the genial and accomplished editor of the Troy Budget, and that witty soul, Rev. Cornelius L. Twing, Rector of Calvary Church, Brooklyn, N.Y., who had come here for the purpose of attending the Annual Conclave of the Grand Commandery of the State of New York.  At Buffalo I had sufficient time, before taking the through sleeping car “Sweden,” on the Erie Railway, to Chicago, to visit the Pan-American Exposition grounds.  The scene, at night, as I approached, was very impressive.  The buildings, illuminated with electricity furnished by the power-house at Niagara’s thundering cataract, looked like palaces of gold.  The flood of light was a brilliant yellow.  The main avenue was broad and attractive.  The tower, with the fountains and cascade, appealed wonderfully to the imagination.  Machinery, Agricultural, and the Electrical buildings, had an air of grandeur.  Music Hall, where the members of Weber’s Orchestra from Cincinnati were giving a concert before an audience of three hundred persons, had a melancholy interest for me.  It was here, only a short time before, that President McKinley, at a public reception, was stricken down by the hand of an assassin; and the exact spot was pointed out to me by a policeman.  In that late hour of the evening, as I stood there rapt in contemplation over the tragic scene which deprived a nation of one of the wisest and best of rulers, I seemed to hear his voice uplifted as in the moment when he was smitten, pleading earnestly with the horrified citizens and officers around him, to have mercy on his murderer,—­“Let no one do him harm!” It was Christian, like the Protomartyr; it was the spirit of the Divine Master, Who teaches us to pray for our persecutors and enemies!  Happy the nation with such an example before it!

In travelling westward one meets now and then with original and striking characters.  They are interesting, too, and you can learn lessons of practical wisdom from them if you will.  They will be friendly and communicative if you encourage them.  Answering this description was a Mr. H.W.  Coffman, a dealer in Short Horn cattle, who was travelling from Buffalo on the Erie road to Chicago.  He lives at Willow Grove Stock Farm, a hundred miles west of Chicago on the Great Western Railway, one mile South of German Valley.  Naturally we talked about cows, and we discussed the different breeds of cattle, especially the Buffalo cows of the present-day Egypt, and the Apis of four thousand years ago, which according to the representations, on the monuments, was more like the Devon breed than the Buffalo.  The names which he gave to his cows were somewhat poetic.  One, for example, was named “Gold Bud;” and