The gossipy telephone is ahead of the street-cars; gas-works supply private consumers, while the citizens wade the unlighted streets by the glimmer of their own lanterns; innumerable cows contest the right of pedestrians to the board footways and what of pavement separates the mud-holes; an ice-manufactory supplies coolness to water peddled about in barrels; the officials outnumber the capacity of the jail; the ferry-facilities vary from an unstable leaky bateau to a dirty, open-decked dynamite steamboat, whose night-service is subject to the lung-capacity of the traveller hallooing for it, and the fares to necessities and circumstances; the fine brick improvements are flanked by frame tinder-boxes; the offal of the city has not a single relieving sewer: yet it is a beautiful, healthy place, and the chief city of the greatest mineral-district in the world.