218

LIFE 0.Y THE MISSISSIPPI.

St. Louis interested herself in such improvements at an earlier day
than did the most of our cities.

The first time I ever saw St. Louis, I could have bought it for
six million dollars, and it was the mistake of my life that I did not
do it. It was bitter now to look abroad over this domed and sbeepled
metropolis, this solid expanse of bricks and mortar stretching away
on every hand into dim, measure-defying distances, and remember
that I had allowed that opportunity to go by. Why I should have
allowed it to go by seems, of course, foolish arid inexplicable to-day,

SOU.XD-AST<EEP STEAMBOATS

&& a first gknce; yet there were reasons at the time to justify this

A Scotchman, Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, writing some
forty-five or fiffey years ago, said—* The streets are narrow, ill paved
and ill lighted,' Those streets are narrow still^ of course; many of
i&em are ill paved yet; but the reproach of ill lighting cannot be
repeated, now. The 'Catholic Few Church7 was the only notable
bmkhng then, and Mr. Minrray "was confidently called upon to admire
xfc, with its * species of Grecian portico, surmounted by a kind of