lecturing, in the spring of 1887, in fifteen Western cities, including
Chicago, St. Louis, and westward to the extreme boundaries of Kansas, I
returned a Westerner to convert the Easterner. In the West they called
this prosperity a boom, but I never liked the word, for a boom having
swung one way is sure to swing the other. It was a revival of
enterprise which, starting in Birmingham, Ala., advanced through
Tennessee, and spread to Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri. My forecast at this
time was that the men who went West then would be the successes in the
next twenty years. The centre of American population, which two years
before had been a little west of Cincinnati, had moved to Kansas, the
heart of the continent. The national Capital should have been midway
between the Atlantic and the Pacific, in which case the great white
buildings in Washington could have been turned into art academies, and
museums and libraries.

Prohibition in Kansas and Iowa was making honest men. I did not see an
intoxicated man in either of these States. All the young men in Kansas
and Iowa were either prohibitionists or loafers. The West had lost the
song plaintive and adopted the song jubilant.

In the spring of this year, 1887, Brooklyn was examined by an
investigating committee. Even when Mayor Low was in power, three years
before, the city was denounced by Democratic critics, so Mayor Whitney,
of course, was the victim of Republican critics. The whole thing was
mere partisan hypocrisy. If anyone asked me whether I was a Republican
or a Democrat, I told them that I had tried both, and got out of them
both. I hope always to vote, but the title of the ticket at the top will
not influence me. Outside of heaven Brooklyn was the quietest place on
Sunday. The Packer and the Polytechnic institutes took care of our boys
and girls. Our judiciary at this time included remarkable men: Judge