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One other feature of the villages, towns, and “cities” along the route struck me rather forcibly. Nearly all of them, big and little, have very fine stations—I beg pardon, depôts. In fact, the practice seems to be to build a fine, big depôt and let the city grow up to it. Thus, for instance, at Omaha City, where we had a half-hour’s wait changing horses and looking out for hot boxes, I found the depôt built of grey granite, floored with marble, and entered by two splendid twin staircases curving down through a domed and pillared hall to spacious waiting-rooms and offices opening on to a platform about a quarter of a mile long.

It was the sort of station you would expect to find in a go-ahead English or European city that possessed streets and squares and houses to match. Now Omaha is go-ahead, and big, and busy, but for all you can see of it from the train and station it is scattered promiscuously around hill and dale, and the palatial station itself stands in the midst of a waste of sloppy roads traversed as usual by the hurrying electric trams, and bordered by little, shabby, ill-assorted wooden houses which don’t look worth fifty pounds apiece. For all that, Omaha is one of the busiest and wealthiest cities of the Middle States.