Read "Life on the Mississippi, Part 9" by Mark Twain online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
FROM St. Louis northward there are all the enlivening signs of the presence of active, energetic, intelligent, prosperous, practical nineteenth-century populations. The people don't dream, they work. The happy result is manifest all around in the substantial outside aspect of things, and the suggestions of wholesome life and comfort that everywhere appear.
Quincy is a notable example -- a brisk, handsome, well-ordered city; and now, as formerly, interested in art, letters, and other high things.