"Our engine was uncoupled, and had gone on for nearly half a mile
without the cars before the conductor perceived it.
"The time from Chicago to St. Louis is called fifteen hours and a
quarter; we made it twenty-three.
"If the prairie land is good farming-land, Illinois is destined to be a
great State. If its people will think less of the dollar and more of the
refinements of social life and the culture of the mind, it may become
the great State of the Union yet.
"March 12. Planter's Hotel, St. Louis. We visited Mercantile Hall and
the Library. The lecture-room is very spacious and very pretty. No
gallery hides the frescoed walls, and no painful economy has been made
of the space on the floor.
"13th. I begin to perceive the commerce of St. Louis. We went upon the
levee this morning, and for miles the edge was bordered with the pipes
of steamboats, standing like a picket-fence. Then we came to the
wholesale streets, and saw the immense stores for dry-goods and
crockery.
"To-day I have heard of a scientific association called the 'Scientific
Academy of St. Louis,' which is about a year old, and which is about to
publish a volume of transactions, containing an account of an artesian
well, and of some inscriptions just sent home from Nineveh, which Mr.
Gust. Seyffarth has deciphered.
"Mr. Seyffarth must be a remarkable man; he has translated a great many
inscriptions, and is said to surpass Champollion.
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