intelligence, refinement and art, coupled with ever so little but plainly perceptible tinges of circumscribedness of views and habits, a certain over-precision regarding the old ways; a certain timidity -we may safely call it for the most part a sort of conscientious caution in trying new things; just the least little fear lest the venturesome young age may, with too smart a blow of the hammer of enterprise, shatter some choice fossil relic of the past.

The West is characterized by its immensity of comparatively undeveloped resources; by the grand extent of all things in its possession, its territory, rivers, lakes, railroads, telegraph lines, and everything else in proportion; by its ability to do everything it does on a corresponding immense scale; to do farming by hundreds where others do it by acres, and similarly of other things; by its rapidity of growth and development of resources, building large cities, opening, subduing and cultivating large countries, forming large states, stretching out immense lines of commercial land and water communication-all in an unprecedentedly short space of time by its inaugurating new methods, customs, habits, institutions, which, by the past, would have been pronounced impossible; by its trying all manner of hitherto impracticable experiments; by a kind of audacious independence and disregard of all the old land-marks of thought and action, and an off-hand, dashing way of making new ones of its own, and when it has made them and does not like them, of making new ones, and yet again new ones, till it does like them, if that should ever be; and so with all this it is very prominently characterized by a constantly changing, fluctuating, unformed, roughhewn state, which gives many features of Western life the appearance, as much as anything, of a kind of great, impossible, rude phantasmagoria, with a dash of unreality, uncertainty and insecurity,

and an unfinished, unpolished crudeness which is very justly distasteful, if not shocking, to the finer susceptibilities of an older and maturer life.

So the East and the West stand over against each other, not as opposites, not as antagonists, not as rivals even, but as complements of each other; each having what the other lacks and needs; each needing to receive from the other that which will make it more full and perfect. Each has its excellencies by which it may help the other; each has its imperfections that render it dependent upon the good offices of the other. The East has an age and maturity that the West must, for a long time to come, be lacking in. It has, in consequence, acquired a fullness of growth that the West cannot for many years attain. And with its accumulated wealth, comfort and luxury, it has attained to an ease, leisure, culture, and social, literary and artistic finish, and so in the position and power which these things give, has risen to an excellence not yet possible in the young, immature, unfinished West. And it cannot fail to make the influence of this excellence felt in helping the West more rapidly and surely to attain a like excellence. It can send of its abounding wealth and luxuries to the far West; it can give out the influence of its literature and refinement to help to mold the not yet formed elements of the Western mind. It can afford many useful suggestions from its long and mature experience to aid in the working out of the constantly occurring problems which the great, new, untried life of the West presents. And last, not least, it can send out into the great West its men and women, to people its broad acres, to fill them with its strong, intelligent and cultivated life. From all these, and doubtless many other sources, the West is destined to receive, as it already has received, great benefit in the development of its resources. And yet it will not, it cannot take

them in their entirety, unmodified, unchanged. That certain closely defined, and circumscribed precision of thought and action that has grown up in that portion of our country that boasts its "land of steady habits," is all unfitting the great, broad, free West. It is impossible that more broad and liberal forms of thought and action should not grow up more consonant with the breadth and freedom of the wide realm, and the new young age in which the West has grown. The East grew up in a situation, if not less grand and sublime, at least less broad and expansive than the West; but, what is more potent in its effects, nearer the old conservative age, and less under the influence of the young revolutionary age of advancement that is now sweeping all old things away, and "making all things new." So that the East has grown up with some things that pertain to the old, of which the West will be more likely to grow up free and untrammeled. It is highly improbable that any portion of the West can ever grow into that state of things comprehended in the expression, "Land of steady habits;" where everything must be done according to prescribed rules established by ancestral usage and authority; where no doctor can practice unless he comes in the regular succession into the old ancestral stand; and no lawyer can plead, or minister preach, except by permission of the selectmen. The people that are now growing up in the young West will not be likely to do anything because it has been done before and somebody has prescribed that it shall be done. Let one come West, ever so thoroughly imbued with the idea that there is only one precise way that any thing can be thought or done, that he cannot eat with anything but a silver fork without almost committing a crime, and he will soon be likely to conclude that one can use nothing better than cast iron, or even the woodsman's knife

and still be a gentleman; or that he can appear in nothing more a la mode than nature's own covering for the hands, or that a dignified matron can be free enough with the requirements of Dame Fashion to wear a hat instead of the prescribed bonnet, and be a lady still. And in general he will be likely to conclude (somewhat more likely, we think, than he would under more precise Eastern training), that there are several ways in which things may be done, and that as pleasant as certain prescribed modes may be to follow, yet life may exist without them, and be quite good, true and even intelligent and cultivated. Here we are reminded of the remark we lately heard made by one of the most cultivated gentlemen we ever met in the West, himself originally from the East. He said, "Your Eastern material is excellent to send here and bring out." There is a certain bringing out that the contact with the broad, free West can more fully accomplish than anything else we know of, for any mind, from wherever it may come. It is not boastfully, nor with any decrying the inferiority of other sections, but as the plain, simple statement of what must be an acknowledged fact, that we confidently say that the reflex influence of the West upon the East, in enlarging and freeing its character and institutions from a touch of narrowness which has grown up with it from the past, will be as great and as beneficial as the more refining influence which the East exerts upon the West.

From what we think has been made evident of the general characteristics and relations of the East and West we can judge something of their literature. The East has hitherto, with probably greater justice than is always admitted by Western men, held almost a monopoly in the world of letters. And still for a time it would seem that, fairly, the East must hold the preponderance of power in literary matters. The Western

people have not the leisure that those of the East are privileged with. They have their world, the civilized part of it, almost all to make. They must be busy to do it. They have undertaken what few people ever before undertook, in half a century, and as much less as possible, to build a civilized world as grand and perfect, rich and costly as the old world has been able to build in a decade of centuries. And they have done pretty well at it. One would suppose that, centuries ago, Eastern cities had sown seeds all over the West, and young New Yorks and Bostons had sprung up all over the West, and had become about full grown, too. But the people of the West have had to work for this. And they will have to work yet, for a long time, so that there will be fewer in the West that can give their exclusive or even very considerable attention to the finer pursuits that require especial leisure and culture.

A gentleman who has grown up al

most with the West, and has had, perhaps, as large experience and made as true and just observations and conclusions regarding it as any one we know, said, in conversation the other day, "We are too busy for the West to be overstocked very soon with literary men." It is true, and this is the reason, we think, rather than any real lack of talent, that the East has held the balance of literary power. Our Eastern cousins seem to have taken it as a want

of ability, judging by the rather exclusive attention paid to their own talent. But we have faith that the day will come, and has already come, when such enterprises as the WESTERN MONTHLY will call out such talent as will show us that it is here, and only needs encouragement to leave its other busy bustling forms of life for the quieter pursuits of art and letters. We should not at all be surprised to be reminded some fine day, that if the sun does rise in the East, it spends at least half the day in the West.

N 1848 Daniel Scoop was the out

wholesale house of Dryvahed Brothers, dealers in staple dry-goods, then doing business on William street, New York.

The jobbing transactions of that period were conducted upon principles which are now happily considered ruin.ous. The retail dealers of the new West, comprising Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Iowa, purchased large quantities of merchandise from Eastern houses almost wholly upon time, giving notes, without a shadow of security, payable in twelve, eighteen and

twenty-four months. The farmers, settled upon the productive prairies, bought heavily of the country merchants, at a credit of from three to nine monthspaying their hired laborers with goods instead of money, and frequently mortgaging their farms to secure their indebtedness. One firm, who came within my knowledge, held mortgages to the value of sixty thousand dollars upon farms in two contiguous counties.

Sometimes the Western dealer in mixed merchandise, having on his hands. a stock valued at nearly one hundred thousand dollars, for the payment of

which Eastern parties held his unsecured paper for probably ninety thousand, payable at some time between one and two years after date, would manage to dispose of his goods in joblots to the keepers of smaller stores, in newer localities, for cash, at a very material reduction in prices from those in the original invoices. Then, by the day at which his second notes became duehis "first and third unpaid "-he was ready to fail in business and retire to private life with a snug competency, while his Eastern creditors were happy if they succeeded in realizing ten per cent. of their debts by the seizure of his visible assets.

Overdrawn as this statement may ap pear, it is unfortunately verified by the records of harassed and ruined jobbers in the commercial cities of the Atlantic coast, who never recovered from the evils of a system of credit that possessed no virtue beyond its liberality. "Any one," it was said, in those days, "who can afford a clean shirt and a broadcloth coat, if he hails from the West, may buy a stock of goods upon credit in New York or Boston." This expression has an air of exaggeration about it, but it was a just corollary upon the spirit of the times. Overtrading by all classes was the evil of the day. The Eastern markets were glutted with merchandise, and the jobbers exerted themselves to extend their sales into all the towns in the Valley of the Mississippi. Hence, Daniel Scoop and agents of his class became a necessity. Their situations were no sinecures. There was always somebody to look after, to collect from, to close out. And Mr. Scoop was considered an "A No. 1" man in this department of mercantile industry. Shrewd, moral and gentlemanly, he filled a large place in the estimation of his employers.

"Mr. Scoop," said the senior partner of Dryvahed Brothers, one afternoon in November, "you must go West to-night

and close up Billings, at Blandville. His paper is all overdue, and we hear that he manages badly. Honest enough, too, we learn, but embarrassed by the non-payment of heavy debts that are not secured, which are probably dead losses. Still we are in hopes that you will find sufficient stock remaining in his hands to save us, if you start at once."

The first train for the West, that evening, carried Daniel Scoop out of New York, with imperative orders in his pocket to take possession of Billings'

store.

Now Billings, of Blandville, "honest enough," as Mr. Dryvahed had intimated, deserved that character, but his tact was not commensurate with his commercial ambition. While the other merchants of the village kept upon their shelves goods of no better quality or variety, nor sold them cheaper to the farmers, to be paid for "in the fall," they were more careful in obtaining ample security for their accounts, often leaving no indemnity for Billings, and but little prospect of his ever collecting a quarter of his just dues. All of his original capital had been absorbed in this manner, and, although he had an excellent stock remaining, worth at least thirty thousand dollars, appearances seemed to indicate that none of his creditors, except Dryvahed Brothers, would ever recover a penny from him.

One of the most enterprising firms in Blandville, and engaged in the same branch of trade, prospered greatly under the name of Snapp, Ketchum & Prey. Rumor gave them credit, almost as extensive as that given to them by Eastern jobbers, for excessive shrewdness in making bargains, and more, if pos sible, in securing payments from their doubtful customers. They held paper for immense sums, every note covered by a first mortgage, and bought goods upon better terms than any other house

in the county. Men might call them dishonest and there were men who, with unqualified denunciation, did so call them but as long as wealth flowed in, and mortgages upon valuable farms accumulated in their safes, they maintained a fair share of "respectability," and never lacked defenders and advocates. Respectability often means nothing more than respect for money. Snapp belonged to a very respectable orthodox church, owned a pew, and with his family regularly attended the services on Sunday. It is worthy of honorable mention, however, that the church did not always tolerate the grasping propensities of its brother. Once, twice, and again, had Snapp been arraigned at the ecclesiastical bar, to answer for some outrageous speculation whereby a neighbor had suffered. Confession and requital promptly followed; for he could not have prospered so easily outside of the sacred pale, nor could the church forego his occasional contributions to its treasury. Therefore he maintained his membership in the fane where his wife and daughters worshiped with a sincerity that undoubtedly covered many of his misdemeanors in the sight of the congregation. The other partners of the firm were not church-going men. They established themselves upon no assumed virtues, but gloried in their individual sharpness.

About the first man whom Mr. Scoop encountered after reaching Blandville, and before he had time to register his name at the Eagle Hotel, was Snapp. They had met before, during some business operations, in New York City. A mutual, not to say a cordial, recognition resulted in some feverish inquiries, on the part of the agent, as to the apparent soundness of Billings, and his prospects.

Snapp comprehended Scoop's mission at a glance. With singular adroitness he admitted, confidentially, his doubts of the ability of Billings to support his position as a merchant much

longer, but deemed him not altogether in danger of an immediate collapse. At this point in the conversation Scoop confided to Snapp, "to go no further," his orders to close up the business of Billings at once, in the interest of Dryvahed Brothers. Snapp acknowledged the wisdom and safety of such a measure, but, on the score of his friendship for the embarrassed merchant, begged the agent to withhold his papers until Monday. It was then three o'clock on Saturday afternoon. "In the meantime," said Snapp, "come to my house and stay over the Sabbath. My wife and daughters will be glad to have you for their guest, and to-morrow we can promise you such a sermon from our minister as you can't hear every Sunday, even in New York. We shall be pleased to have you with us."

Scoop had no partiality for a lonely Sunday at a country hotel, when so much hospitality, with the society of several young ladies, was so kindly offered to him, and, yielding to the suggestion of the portly Snapp, he decided to leave poor Billings in quietude until Monday, and at once accepted the invitation.

Mrs. Snapp and her daughters received him cordially, and in a few moments he was snugly established as their favored guest. Fortunate Scoop! He felt that he was already compensated for the tedious journey which he had undergone.

Snapp, meanwhile, had excused himself from remaining at the family mansion, owing to the pressure of business, and soon afterward was deep in conference with his partners upon a subject that appeared to absorb all their attention during the brief time that the discussion occupied. At its close Ketchum walked slowly into Billings' store, Snapp went home to entertain his guest, and Prey remained in the counting-room to dispatch the business of the day and finish that of the week.