"You came, like most Eastern people, prepared to find us sitting in the middle of a sandy waste, on cactus pincushions, picking our teeth with bowie-knives, and with no neighbors but Indians and grizzly bears.

Well; sixteen years ago we could have filled the bill pretty well.

Then there was not a single house in St.
Helen's,--not even a tent, and not one of the trees that you see here had been planted.

Now we have three railroads meeting at our depot, a population of nearly seven thousand, electric lights, telephones, a good opera-house, a system of works which brings first-rate spring water into the town from six miles away,--in short, pretty much all the modern conveniences." "But what _has_ made the place grow so fast ?" asked Clover.
"If I may be allowed a professional pun, it is built up on coughings.

It is a town for invalids.