The newspapers and magazines of the time, like certain of its books, were salted with little advertisements of religion, and virtue and honesty and thrift.
In those magazines we read of the great West--"the poor man's paradise"-- "the stoneless land of plenty"; of its delightful climate, of the ease with which the farmer prospered on its rich soil.

Uncle Peabody spoke playfully of going West, after that, but Aunt Deel made no answer and concealed her opinion on that subject for a long time.

As for myself, the reading had deepened my interest in east and west and north and south and in the skies above them.

How mysterious and inviting they had become! One evening a neighbor had brought the _Republican_ from the post-office.

I opened it and read aloud these words, in large type at the top of the page: Silas Wright Elected to the U.S.