Excerpt from The Kansas: With A. S. Johnson's Complements My dear children - for are we t all children in this matter of pictures? - the pages that have written about Kansas would fill many hundred volumes. Its advantages have been extolled, its drawbacks exaggerated; but praise or abuse long since ceased to affect its prosperity. Its name is probably on the lips of more people to-day than that of any other western state. It has won its place and it will hold it. Its past was tilled with adventure, its present is crowded with great achievements, its future man can foretell. Favored alike by climate, natural resources, and geographical position, it is the wonderland of the West. It has friends innumerable, it makes new friends of all who come within its hospitable borders. Its cornucopia is overflowing with health and blessings. It educates its children in six thousand school houses. Its sturdy people give grateful thanks in a thousand churches. Thirty-nine hundred miles of railway bring comfort to its door and distribute its abundance. Four hundred clattering presses print a record of its growth. But there is a wide world about it which only partially understands how the Kansas of to-day differs from the commonwealth of yesterday. Those who may never visit the Arkansas Valley will, we trust, take some pleasure in this book; those who have doubted peradventure may become interested; those who are t too old or too indolent may be tempted tn turn their faces westward. Having accomplished any one of which results. our end will be achieved. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art techlogy to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.