And here, last of all, besides more than a hundred minor industries, is
what is, to my great surprise, said to be the largest toy factory in the
world.
The gift of wagons for the bearing and easing of men's burdens; the gift
of the steel plough that has lifted man from the primitive subsistence of
the hoe; the gift of the shuttle which has released woman from the tyranny
of the needle; the gift of toys to the children of all races; has not this
portage prairie, this meadow of St. Joseph, had some element mixed with
its loam and clay from the spirit of those Gallic precursors of American
energy, something that has given this industry a wider venture, if not
peculiar expression? At any rate, its gifts to its time have been far
beyond common, of the tangible at least; and as to the intangible, the day
that I last spent on this portage an art league was being formed to foster
an interest in art and bring the best examples available to what were, but
a little time ago, dreary meadows half covered with snow and strewn with
skulls and bones of the buffalo.
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