man in the city find his all swept away from him, and what does he do? He slinks into its alleys and lanes, his pleasant, decent rooms are changed for one foul room in a tenement house, from whence, after a little, charity carries him to a pauper's grave.

We have spoken of the general prosperity of our Catholic settlements in Minnesota, and we have not to travel far from its capital to find some of them—only into the adjoining county, Dakota, one of the very finest in the State.

Fully two-thirds of the lands of the county are owned (mind, owned.) by Catholic settlers, Irish and German.

Some twenty-five years ago, a few poor Irishmen settled in the timber in this county. It was very generally supposed, at that time, that people could not live on a prairie in Minnesota; but by and by, those who had settled in Dakota county found out their mistake, and commenced making claims on the adjoining prairie, Rosemount prairie, to-day the garden of Minnesota.

But not before Hugh Derham, of the County Meath, Ireland, now the Honorable Hugh Derham, came along and put up his shanty on the prairie. "I had seven hundred dollars," he said to us some time ago, "when I came on here; oxen were dear then, and when I had a yoke bought, together with a cow, and my shanty up, I had little or none of the money left. But I went to work, broke up all the land I could, got seed, put in my first crop, and lost every kernel of it."

To-day this man owns four hundred acres of improved land, in a circle round his house. Fifty dollars an acre would be a low value to put on his land. Some four years ago his neighbor, a man of the name of Ennis, bought one hundred and twenty acres of land adjoining, for something like ten thousand dollars.

When Hugh Derham settled here there was not a railroad nearer than two hundred miles of him, now passengers on the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad, passing within half a mile in front of his house, point from the windows of the cars to his place, as a model home of a thrifty farmer.

His handsome, two-story frame house stands embowered in the orchard and shade trees, sturdy Hugh Derham planted with his own hands; his barn alone cost three thousand dollars; he has flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, and horses as he requires them; and he has a good wife, who assisted him in his early struggles, healthy, fresh and handsome still. He has had his eldest daughter at a convent school, and bought for her last year a five hundred dollar piano. It is said that he has some ten thousand dollars loaned out at interest.

Now, is Hugh Derham's an exceptional case?

If you came along, and we were inclined to brag, and show you a specimen of our Catholic farmers in Minnesota, we would bring you direct to Hugh Derham, not for his herds, and stock, and well filled granary—he is surpassed by many of our farmers in all these—but for the look of respectable thriftiness all around him. There is his next neighbor, Wm. Murphy, another well-to-do, respectable farmer, not perhaps as well off as Derham, but still able to bear some time ago a loss of five thousand dollars by fire, and to make no poor mouth about it. Another neighbor, Mich. Johnson, a prosperous man, better still, a high spirited, fine fellow, and an earnest worker in the cause of temperance. Another neighbor, Tom Hiland, as rich a man as Derham. In the next township, the Bennetts—three or four brothers that a poor but good, intelligent, widowed mother, with much struggling, managed to bring West, and locate on government land. These brothers now farm five times as much land as Derham, and raise five times as much wheat.

And as we have been led into giving individual cases of success,—not at first intended, for such cases must be always in certain features more or less exceptional—we will give one more, that of Mich. Whalen of Whalen township, Fillmore county.

His history is a remarkable one, as told by himself to us; remarkable in his brave struggle for independence, his sagacity, and final success. We give some points:

About thirty years ago Mich. Whalen landed from Ireland in New York. He was then forty years of age, and had a wife and eight children—all his wealth.

Yes, his wealth, he thought, if he could but reach with them the broad acres of the West.

So he sawed wood for seventy-five cents a cord in the city of New York: the more he sawed the less he liked the work, and making a brave effort he found himself, with wife and children, squatted on one hundred and sixty acres of government land in Fillmore county, Minnesota.

When the land came into market he was not able to pay the government price, one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre, but Capt. McKenney, the then receiver of the U. S. Land Office, managed to give him time, and the next year's crop enabled him to pay up. At this time John, his eldest of six sons, was sixteen years of age, and able to help his father.

To-day Mich. Whalen is the owner of thirteen hundred acres of land in Fillmore county. The village of Whalen with mills and a fine water power, is on his land: or rather, on the land of his son John, for as the boys get married the old man gives them title to portions of the land, on which they build. There is another mill within a few rods of the old homestead, and there is not less than from six thousand to ten thousand bushels of wheat raised on the farm each year.

"Why, Mr. Whalen," said a friend some time ago, "you got on splendidly; with such a large and almost helpless family at the beginning, I don't see how you could have managed it."

"We put our trust in God, avourneen!" replied the old man, "and we stuck together."

Where were the special advantages in this man's case; which enabled the poor wood-sawyer of New York to become one of the solid men of a rich county?

They are to be found in the fact that he was blessed with good children, who, as they grew up and became able to help him, remained at home and did help—and amply are they rewarded for it to day—

"THEY STUCK TOGETHER."

But it is of the general prosperity of our Catholic settlements in Minnesota that we wish more particularly to speak, for as a general rule there is no business which has not its representative successful men.

Dakota County being close to the capital of the State, (St. Paul,) and possessing the advantage of having, on the Mississippi River, a market for its produce, at a time when there was not a mile of railroad in the State, was settled up at an early day. Among its settlers were Irish and German Catholics. From that period out these settlers have not alone held their own, but, year after year receiving fresh additions to their numbers, they have advanced from township to township, buying improved farms and wild land, until, as we have stated before, two-thirds of the lands of the county belong to them.

Travel which side you will, and you shall find evidence that one "can read as he runs" of their prosperity, intelligence and respectability; handsome houses, good offices, young orchards, ornamental planting, and the grand big wheat fields around, which have supplied the means to build up those pleasant homes.

Traveling along down the Mississippi to the eastern boundary of the State and taking a wide range of country on the Minnesota side of the river, we find many prosperous settlements of our people. Again southwest, up the beautiful valley of the Minnesota River, in Scott, Sibley, Le Sueur, Nicollet and Blue Earth counties, there are numerous Catholic settlements, both in the woods and on the prairie. So, too, in the midland counties of Rice, Steele, Waseca, Olmsted, Dodge and Mower counties, our people are settled, prosperous and happy, their valuable farms giving ample and cheerful