He lives on venison and quails. I was made much of, as the only
man of the pen within five hundred miles, and by rarity worth
more than venison and quails.
Greeley of the _New York Tribune_ is the right spiritual father
of all this region; he prints and disperses one hundred and ten
thousand newspapers in one day,--multitudes of them in these very
parts. He had preceded me, by a few days, and people had flocked
together, coming thirty and forty miles to hear him speak; as
was right, for he does all their thinking and theory for them,
for two dollars a year. Other than Colonists, I saw no man.
"There are no singing birds in the prairie," I truly heard. All
the life of the land and water had distilled no thought. Younger
and better, I had no doubt been tormented to read and speak their
sense for them. Now I only gazed at them and their boundless land.
One good word closed your letter in September, which ought to
have had an instant reply, namely, that you might come westward
when Frederic was disposed of. Speed Frederic, then, for all
reasons and for this! America is growing furiously, town and
state; new Kansas, new Nebraska looming up in these days,
vicious politicians seething a wretched destiny for them already
at Washington.
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