Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1885 — The Land of Promise. [ARTICLE]

The Land of Promise.

A rich and largely unoccupied country lying in Northern Nebraska, for hundreds of miles along the Dakota line, and extending through several tiers of counties back from it, is inviting the enterprising settler from the East to come in and till the soil. Nothing finer in the way of a promising agricultural field is to be found anywhere. The soil is extremely fertile, the climate pleasant in summer, and not too rigorous in winter, and facilities for marketing products becoming better and better all the time. Into this region there has been a steady stream of immigration pouring for the past two years, which may now be said to be at its height. The character of this population is the same as of the best agricultural communities of Illinois or Ohio. In fact, it is from these and their adjoining States that this increase of population in the region described is mainly derived. Whole colonies from these older Western States go bodily into this garden of the Missouri Valley and locate their possessions. The present time is most opportune for the purpose, since the railroad which has been pushed forward through this fertile land has now penetrated to the tcwn of Valentine, to which point it is in regular operation, while the grading has been done one hundred miles beyond, and still beyond one hundred and fifty miles more are under contract. In Northwestern Nebraska the road is to turn northward, passing through the Dakota counties of Fall River, Custer, and Pennington, to Rapid City, in the mining country. Through the entire region traversed by this railroad, finished and projected, towns are springing up in that almost magical fashion which is characteristic of Western railroad development. The population is increasing in the same manner, and homes, stores, schools, and churches are going up on every hand. This is the place for the printer who wishes to do something for himself. The people who are going in are a reading people. They have been accustomed to those necessities of civilization, the school, the church, and the newspaper, and they are prepared to welcome and encourage the man who comes among them to give them either. The printer who has toiled for years in an older community, getting little or nothing ahead of the point reached long ago, goes in with the tide, and is soon found enlarging the first plant, increasing the size of the first paper, and likely enough starting another in the new town close by. Shrewd Horace Greeley’s advice is not yet outgrown: “Go West, young man. Go West, and grow up with the country.”— Publishers’ Monthly.

Of *ll sounds, the howl of « dog is the most dismal. Dogs, although frolicsome by nature, are subjected to fits of melancholy. At such times they are acquainted with grief, and regardless pf a good appetite -and superb digestion, a hoarndl will leave -a choice selection of dead horse, ntand on a knoll where moonbeams fall upon him and howl until a person unacquainted with his habits would think lie was pouring out the last wailings of a mashed soul. When a brindle dog howls, it is -a sign that a tall man with -dark hair and ebon sediment under the finger nails is going to die* disagreeable and unsolicited death; but if a yellow dog opens in high note vocalization, the fat man with a perceptible impediment in his locomotion is in danger. Just before the late war, it was observed that the unemployed ■dogs of the country did a great deal of howling:; and itwas afterward observed that quite a number of men had died. If there be an animal that *deserves unconditional extermination, it is the howling dog.— Arkansaw Traveler.