They have dreamed of one thousand acres of land, bought at one dollar and a quarter per acre, that by the magic growth of some Western town becomes worth fifty thousand dollars.
They have dreamed of money invested in mythical towns, which towns are to rival in their growth Toledo, Chicago or St.Louis.The dream is to do nothing and get rich.
Land sharks, speculators, usurers and politicians who aspire to a notoriety they will never win--a station they will never occupy--swarm over the West thicker than frogs in Egypt, and more intrusive than were these squatting, crawling, jumping pests, when evoked from the river's slime by the rod of Moses.
Some men are too old when they come to the West.

They are like a vine whose tendrils are rudely torn from a branch around which they have wound themselves, and are so hardened by time that they can not entwine themselves around another support.

Such men forever worship, looking to the East.

They form no new friendships; engage in no new enterprises; they care for nobody, and nobody cares for them.

They live and die alone.
But there are more sad and gentle notes of sorrow that fall upon our ears.