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THE PEEI.STYLE AT THE LAKE FRONT

THE BOOK OF
CHICAGO By
ROBERT SHACKLETON
Author of "Tkz Book of Philadelphia,"
"The Book of New York," "The Book
OF Boston," Etc.

Illustrated with Photographs
and with Drawings by Herbert Pullinger
THE PENN PUBLISHING
COMPANY PHILADELPHIA 1920

COPYRIGHT19 2 0 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHINGCOMPANY

Cf

The Book of Chicago

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I This is Chicago!  1
II A City Without Cobwebs  9
III "We Will Go and Get Them" .... 22
IV The Lake Fbont  38
V OvEB Rush Street Bridge  49
VI The Loop Hounds  67
VII Streets and Ways  84
VIII Clubs are Trumps  101
IX The Passing op Prairie Avenue . . . .114
X Some Books and Writers  131
XI How Art Came to Chicago  155
XII Some Matters of Business  172
XIII A Modern Corsair  188
XIV Traits and Aspects  198
XV Music  214
XVI Where Once was the White City . . . 227
XVII An Oxford of the West  239
XVIII The Dukes of Chicago  256
XIX A Marquette Cross  269
XX Out in the Suburbs  286
XXI The Extraordinary Making op Gary . . 297
XXII The Solitary Dunes  307
XXIII Why Chicago Is!  316
XXIV The Gold Coast  326
XXV A Child and Its A-B-C  339

ILLUSTRATIONS
The Peristyle of the Lake Front .... Frontispiece
The Post-Offitee  Title Page
A Lion of the Boulevard  Opposite Heading PAQB
The Lincoln Monument  (heading) 1
A Boston-like Doorway  (initial) 1
The Heart of Chicago  (facing) 6
The Coliseum  (tailpiece) 8
A Fine Home Type  (initial) 9
Pl-ojected Union Passenger Station . . (tailpiece) 21
The La Salle Statue  (initial) 22
Beauty and Business  (facing) 26
Formal Garden in a Park  (tailpiece) 37
The Houdon Washington  (initial) 38
The Lake Front Glory of Chicago . . (facing) 44
Chicago from the Lake  (tailpiece) 48
The Old Water Tower  (initial) 49
The Vista of Adams Street .... (facing) 58
The Grant Monument  (tailpiece) 66
In the Heart of Business  (initial) 67
Michigan Boulevard at Night . . . (facing) 76
City Hall and County Building . . . (tailpiece) 83
The Fourth Presbyterian Chureh . . (initial) 84
The South Water Street Market . . . (tailpiece) 100
A Boulevard Drive  (initial) 101
The MuUion-Windowed University Club (facing) 104
Clubhouse on the South Shore . . . (tailpiece) 113
The Massacre Monument  (initial) 114

ILLUSTEATIONS
PAQB
Alexander Hamilton  (tailpiece) 130
Interior of Blackstone Library . . . (initial) 131
The Logan Monument  (facing) 134
The Public Library  (tailpiece) 154
An Art Institute Vista  (initial) 155
The Art Institute  (facing) 158
Fountain of the Great Lakes .... (tailpiece) 171
Chicago's "Boul' Mich."  (initial) 172
The WaU Street of Chicago .... (facing) 180
The Freight Subway  (tailpiece) 187
A Lakeside Venetian Home .... (initial) 188
The Great Municipal Pier .... (tailpiece) 197
A Modem Bridge  (initial) 198
The New Field Museum  (facing) 206
The Blackstone Theatre  (tailpiece) 213
Stairway in the Public Library . . . (initial) 214
A Water Garden  (tailpiece) 226
Main Entrance of the University . . (initial) 227
A Beautiful Ruin of the White City . (facing) 232
La Rabida  (tailpiece) 238
The Three Towers  (initial) 239
Some Towers of the University . . . (facing) 248
The University Library  (tailpiece) 255
The Illinois Centennial Monument . . (initial) 256
The Courtyard of Hull House . . . (facing) 262
A Bascule Bridge  (tailpiece) 268
In the Ghetto  (initial) 269
The Marquette Cross  (facing) 278
One of the Great Hospitals . . . "(tailpiece) 285
The Lake Shore of the North Suburbs . (initial) 286
One of the Long Bathing Beaches . . (facing) 294
A North-bound Driveway  (tailpiece) 296
The Gary Tower  (initial) 297
One of the Gary Schools  (tailpiece) 306

ILLUSTEATIONS
PAOB
A Sandhill in the Dunes  (initial) 307
The Dunes of Lake Michigan . . . (facing) 310
Shifting Sands and Dark Trees . . . (tailpiece) 315
A Georgian House on Astor Street . . (initial) 316
Oxford-like Charm, at the University . (facing) 322
Homes of the Lake Shore Drive . . . (tailpiece) 325
Fine Parkside Living  (initial) 326
Along the Shore of Lake Michigan . . (tailpiece) 338
A Garden Gateway  (initial) 339
The Lincoln Monument  (facing) 342
A Lagoon of Lincoln Park .... (tailpiece) 347

•^^Jc (^

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
CHAPTEE I
THIS IS Chicago! HIS is Chicago! The
city looks out upon
Lake Michigan from a
stretch of unbroken
flatness. Her morn
ing face shines brightly
in the sun.
This is Chicago !
An audacious city that
audaciously set herself
in a swamp: but the
swamp long ago was
obliterated and only
the audacity remains.
A city of dreams and with the practical ability to
1

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
make the dreams come true. A city of energy and
strength; of immensity of strength. It was long
ago written that a city set upon a hill cannot be
hid; yet here upon a plain is a city that cannot be
hid. An interesting city, yet with great areas of the un
attractive. An extraordinary city, yet with much
that is extraordinarily ordinary. An amusing city,
yet with a great deal of dullness. An admirable
city, yet in many respects unadmirable in the ex
treme. A beautiful city in long and glorious
stretches, yet in its massing of miseries a terrible
city. A gay yet sober city. A bright dull city. A
happy unhappy city. A light-hearted, buoyant,
vivacious, debonair city, a city with an air ! — in fact,
in another sense, a city with airs that are often very
fierce ones, blowing straight in from the lake, with
drenching rain or pitiless cold.
I shall write of the people as well as of the city for
in a peculiar degree the people have made their city.
I shall write of their character and characteristics. I
shall aim to set forth the city and the spirit of the city.
I shall describe the city in its present seeming and at
times the descriptions of the present will summon up
remembrance of things past.
A city with much of charm, with much of dignity,
with much of beauty. A very human city, with
pleasantly piquant peculiarities. A city of the well-
bred, of people of cultivation, yet also a city of the
contrary of all this. A city all alive, vividly alive.
All this is Chicago. A city, one sees, of contra-
2

THIS IS CHICAGO!
dictions, and of contradictions more than usually
conspicuous. A city to be loved. A city where
people live in careful comfort while their neighbors
live beyond their means — and sometimes, die beyond
their means. A pretentious city; with a vast deal
of unpretentiousness even on the part of such as
might be pardoned personal assertion. Important
city that it is, it is filled with a sense of that import
ance; and its people are naively ready to tell of it
at any time and at any place and to any person. To
the Chicagoan, Chicago is the most important sub
ject in the world, so why should he or she not speak
of it frankly and unabashed ! That Chicago novelist
understood this who described a young woman as "a
true daughter of Chicago; she had rather talk to a
stranger about her own town than about any other
subject," And it is a very old story that tells of a
funeral in New York at which the clergyman, not
having much to say, asked any of those present to
offer a few words about the departed, whereupon
there was silence until a stranger arose and re
marked that, as no one seemed to want to talk of the
deceased, he would take the opportunity to tell them
something of Chicago.
Eeady though Chicago is to exploit herself, even to
vociferation, it is one of the oddest contradictions of
the city that although there is a firm here which
makes a feature of guidebooks for principal Amer
ican cities, it publishes no such book of Chicago ! I
was told that a few years ago a Chicago guide was
published by them, and that it was under considera-
3

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
tion to do so again. And I think it may safely be
said that this is the only opportunity for exploita
tion that has ever been missed.
And after all, I think that Chicago, in the matter
of self-assurance, never really surpassed Boston,
judging by a Boston newspaper reference to one of
its churches, built less than a century ago, as the
"Westminster Abbey of Boston"! And this is re
mindful of an impression which has come more and
more to assert itself ; and that is, that there is much
of essential likeness between Boston and Chicago,
much of likeness in spirit between the old city of the
Atlantic coast and this new city which gazes off, as
if into a glorious future, across the shimmering
sweeps of Lake Michigan. And, evoked by this men
tion of Boston, comes the odd fact that I have seen
more "Boston bags" in Chicago than anywhere else
except in the city which gave that extremely service
able and good-looking leather bag its name.
The old-time Chicagoan who alliteratively ex
pressed his faith in "women, wine, whiskey and
war," spoke, broadly, for his city. And it may well
ask, — leaving out the three last items and taking just
the first — what other city can boast of the contem
porary and diversified activities of three such leaders
as Frances Willard, Jane Addams and Mrs. Potter
Palmer I
In Chicago, money talks. And it was a clever
Chicagoan who observed that when money talks it
talks offensively. And yet, usually, in this unusual
city, there is a disarming frankness, or even child-
4

THIS IS CHICAGO!
likeness, about it. As, just the other day, the son of
a chewing-gum maker, in telling to a newspaper of
his acquisition of a house on the Lake Front, says :
"My father bought it from Brewer Blank, and now
its mine. A gift from my father? No! I paid him
a hundred and twenty-five thousand for it, in good
hard cash. My father's city home will be at the
Hotel So-and-so" (naming the most expensive).
"But he spends most of his summers at Lake Geneva,
and he's got a winter home in Pasadena, and he
ovras all of Catalina Island. ' ' This, you notice, with
wealthy insouciance; rather desirous, one would
gather, of taking the world into his wealthy con
fidence ; and ending with the delightfully unexpected
Catalina touch !
Chicago is a hospitable city. One who comes with
introductions, as the friend of some Chicagoan 's
friend, or who is known, is given a fine and cordial
welcome. And not only is the coming guest wel
comed, but a guest's parting may be unexpectedly
speeded : as, when a man, not with proper credentials
— for he was an absconding bank cashier from New
York — crept with hesitation into the hall where was
in progress a Saturday night meeting conducted by
a Chicagoan who, as the head of an educational insti
tution and as an essentially undenominational
preacher, is in the habit of capturing the hearts of
his hearers. The absconder, deeply moved, sought
a private talk with him at the close of the meeting,
and made confession of his misdeeds. He had left
New York by a Friday evening traia. Not until
5

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Monday morning would there be discovery of his
crime. With a Chicagoan, to think is to act. Con
vinced that the trembling man before him felt
genuine remorse and was of potential honesty of pur
pose, the preacher said : "You will go back to New
York to-night. I will go with you. We will take the
midnight train ; and when the bank opens on Monday
morning you and I will be together there to meet
your directors. ' ' And they were.
The seal of the city mingles the present and the
past. A sheaf of wheat is in the middle ; and, oddly
and of course quite unintentionally, there is some
thing about the way in which it is presented in mid
air, which suggests the idea that it is held on a pair
of hidden horns. There is a ship under full sail
before a brisk northeast wind ; and sailing ships are
now an uncommon sight here in these days of steam.
There are rippling waves represented, and this,
naturally, the city still has in its view; although
many a Chicagoan, some in jest but most of them in
very serious earnest, have lamented the presence of
the lake as something which has prevented the laying
out of streets to the eastward. And you will be told
that thousands and thousands of Chicagoans have
never seen the lake ; this being literally the case, be
cause immense numbers of foreigners, living to the
west of the river, do not readily get to the Lake
Front even if they come to the central business sec
tion. The seal of the city also bears the representation,
au naturel, of a Chicago baby, on a Botticelli half-
6

H 33mXM >Oo s
o >
oo

THIS IS CHICAGO!
shell; and, for contrast, there is a standing Indian,
clad sedately in trousers: and this restraint can
scarcely be credited to modest Victorian influence,
for Chicago received her charter as a city and became
the Queen of the Great Lakes in the very year in
which Victoria became Queen of Great Britain.
That the Indian stands on a bluff seems to be
wrong, for Chicago is too uniformly level to have a
bluff ; and then comes the thought that it is precisely
right after all, for Chicago, from the beginning, has
made bluffs and has successfully stood upon them.
The motto of the city, upon the seal, "Urbs in
horto," seems curiously at variance with the swift
ness of the city's life; but it brings up thoughts of
the charm of the past, when Chicago won the name
of the "Garden City"! And still the influence of
those early days successfully persists, in the con
tinued building of detached homes, instead of houses
built closely one against another. And with that
spirit of charming open living, still so prevalent,
there was a friendliness of life which has had much
to do with the city's progress ; there came a fine sim
plicity, which gave the characteristic first-name in
timacy, and set the ideal of public school education
as co-education. A home city, a garden city — one
sees, again, that this city of gigantic business is a
city of contradictions. And although gardens are
not now common, and although most of the old-time
houses have disappeared, one may come, here and
there, upon some delightful reminder of the "Garden
City" of the past, as when I noticed, well out on
7

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Lincoln Avenue, a spacious old square-front house ;
a house with more than a suggestion of the dilapida
tion that so readily comes with age; with great an
cient hedge of lilac, and, yes ! an ancient garden.
Although Chicagoans speak in superlatives in
praise of their city, there is now and then an excep
tion, who will animadvert upon it with savagery, in
some New York or Boston interview or article; as
for example a poet who, complaining poignantly of
his city, was asked why he continued to live there, to
which he replied, "with a hopeless gesture," and
with modest poetic implication: "Why did Dante
stay in Florence? Because it was his particular
hell. Chicago is mine. "
"And he has really opened up his heart," said
a Cliff Dweller to a Cliff Dweller group, who were
discussing the interview.
"No," countered another, with a smile; "he
merely opened up his spleen."

CHAPTEE II

A CITY WITHOUT COBWEBS

I HE Chicagoan con
siders that his city's
zone of influence is
very wide.- Within a
radius of five hundred
miles, he will tell you,
there live fifty million peo
ple, able to leave their homes
in the evening and breakfast
in Chicago the next moming.
And this to the Chicagoan is
a statement well rounded and complete. That the
fifty million do not all take advantage of the situation
merely means that they do not, all of them, all the
time, rise to their opportunity.
Chicago is "the greatest railway center in the
world. ' ' No Chicagoan asks you to prove this ; they
do not need proof. And Chicago is immensely proud
of the fact that all the trains which enter the city stop
there ; that it is, for all, the terminal.
The first railway timetable of Chicago, so it is still
kept in mind, dates back to 1858 ; and this is remind
ful of other firsts in the career of the city. For, al
though I am writing of the Chicago of today and of
9

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
what I see and hear around me, the spirit of the
present is so closely interwoven with the spirit of the
past that the past, to some extent, cannot but be con
sidered. It was in 1804 that the first white child was born
here ; less than a century and a quarter ago ; and no
one need smile because the firsts of Chicago are
recent. Eather, there should be amazement, that
from such recent beginnings such vast results have
come. Every city must have a beginning. Eomulus
and Eemus and the wolf and the lupine luncheon were
once quite as new as the happenings that have made
Chicago. And as to wolves, their cries were still
heard on the Lake Front, now lined by hotels and
business blocks, little more than a century ago, as
they pawed over the neglected and bleaching bones
of the victims of the massacre by the Indians in the
war with England. And to me it more than any
thing else represents Chicago's youth, that Joseph
Jefferson, the lovable "Joe," so recently dead that
his vivid personality seems still alive, walked this
very Lake Front, as a little boy, with his father who,
gun in hand, hunted for wolf or wild duck.
While hunting was thus possible along the lake,
a near-by section was busy with saws and hammers.
Boy that he was, little Joe was impressed by the
rawness and newness. Everywhere, as he describes
it, boardwalks were going down and frame buildings
were going up; there were wooden houses, wooden
hotels, wooden churches, and a wooden theater in
which the family fortunes were sunk.
10

A CITY WITHOUT COBWEBS
All about were sand dune and morass and swamp
and prairie; and from those early days has come
down the local use of the word "prairie" as mean
ing, not a broadly smiling sweep of grass and flowers,
the picture evolved elsewhere by the word, but grim,
bare, level stretches, or endless miles of scrub
growth, wicked and wet.
What was outwardly but a rough and raw little
place, made formally a city in 1837, as soon as the
necessary handful of population had gathered, did
not choose for its flrst mayor a man of corresponding
roughness of aspect, but one who had just dis
tinguished himself by building the first house in Chi
cago from an architect's plans, and whose thoughts
tumed naturally to culture and art and European
travel. From the first there was a surprising leaven
in^ Chicago's loaf. And tales have come down, al
most mystically vague — for already the rise of Chi
cago seems almost fairy tale — of men and women in
broadcloth and silks and diamonds attending parties
in the hastily put together frame houses such as
those of which Jefferson tells, and of the talk often
turning to the best books and writers.
And the very first book to be printed and bound
and published in Chicago was the city directory!
Could anything be more delightfully characteristic
— publicity for every Chicagoan in the first book !
The first coroner of Chicago, one learns, was a
certain Clark, and his first inquest, as the old record
somewhat tautologically tells, was on "the body of
a dead Indian." Nowadays, one may hear the
11

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
charge — or boast! — that the city, in this twentieth
century, averages a murder a day.
The flrst Sunday liquor law went into force in
1834, and although activity was encouraged by giving
the informer half of the fine, which was five dollars,
there seem to have been no particular results. That
the first steam fire engine was put into use in 1857
under the mayoralty of the redoubtable Long John
Wentworth is still remembered, as is also the fact
that he promptly put it to a use not intended by the
inventor; the literal washing out of an unsavory
settlement just at the edge of the city. For although
Chicago proper was not at that time very large, Chi
cago improper was looked upon as being very much
too large indeed, and so, to the glee of a good share
of the population, or rather of a bad share of
the population, who looked on as at a show, the
fire engine was made to tum its hose on some poor
little shanties, with their women deni2:ens, on the
shore just north of the site of the present great
recreation pier ; and the hose stream drove wreckage
into the lake, while the wretched human wreckage,
drenched and miserable, crept, drenched and miser
able, away.
The first water main was laid in 1836— two miles
of wooden pipes ; but it was not until twenty years
afterwards that the first sewers were laid. And I
place these two facts together because I have just
read the claim that at present the combined water
and sewer mains of the city are longer than the com-
12

A CITY WITHOUT COBWEBS
bined length of the Mississippi, the Ohio and the
Missouri. The first vaccination was in 1848, and it was the
great topic of conversation until 1850, when classical
music, or at least opera, was first presented. That
the town assumed, in 1833, such dignity as attends
the making of a fire warden, does not imply that one
was not needed still earlier ; and it was not till 1841
that it bourgeoned with the greater glory of its first
city marshal.
As the city gives the impression of having an
astonishing number of drug stores, it being really
difficult to get away from the sight of one or more
of them at every moment, it may be remarked that
the first drug store was of 1832 ; though it need not
be supposed that there was any difficulty in getting
terrific boluses or terrific doses of firewater for the
terrific attacks of fever and ague inseparable from a
new settlement in such a wet place.
The year 1833 was notable religiously, for in that
year the earliest Presbyterian church was organized,
the first Baptist church was built, and the first perm
anent Eoman Catholic parish was organized. There
also began, that year, Chicago's first newspaper, a
weekly : and it was in 1839 that a new newspaper an
nounced, with a cheerful earnestness that would not
forego a pleasantly punning expression of it, that
' ' We now launch our bark on the great ocean of the
world, with plenty of sheet, but still with no certainty
of sale. " It was some years after this that the press
13

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
was offered that public subject of discussion, a de
tective department, for not until 1850 did Chicago
have its first detective, which is not to say that many
a wrong-doer was not previously detected ; the first
formal detective being one Allen Pinkerton, after
wards not unknown to fame, particularly for dis
covering the supposed danger which made Lincoln,
on a memorable occasion, turn up his collar and pull
down his hat and make his way into Washington
unobserved. And mention of the emancipator is re
mindful that the first white settler of Chicago, as
distinguished from explorers and temporary abiders,
was, as Chicagoans themselves express it, a black
man ; but just a West Indian negro, as they will ex
plain, after you have been properly surprised.
There is poetic vagueness about what is said to
have been the city's first university; most Chi
cagoans look upon it as a myth if they have heard
of it at all; and if there is to be a city myth it is
certainly a charming imagination to have it a sup
posititious university of "St. Mary's of the Lake."
It is more interesting from its very vagueness than
it would be with date and endowment definitely dis
covered, if it ever really had a date and an endow
ment, or with the idea of its existence definitely
destroyed. Whatever others may think of the city, Chicago
has always prided herself, on the whole, with
efficiency of city government, and this in spite of ter
rific political contests in which the bitterest charges
and countercharges have been made ; and in spite of
14

A CITY WITHOUT COBWEBS
the most extreme statements regarding jobbery and
corruption. But in the matter of street cleaning, or
atmosphere cleaning, no Chicagoan has been harbor
ing prideful feelings. The thick dust, driven in
clouds from uncleaned streets, the thick black smoke
emerging in clouds from myriad chimneys, with
much of it heavily sinking to the level of the pave
ments and swirling in evil blotchings, mark what, as
I write, is the most apparent of the city's dehn-
quencies. Soap is the prime Chicago necessity.
But the people have so triumphed as to keep them
selves a spotless folk, after all, in this so far from
spotless town. And yet Monday morning does not
show a clothes-line aspect, either on the roofs or in
the yards. So sooty is the city that drying must
needs be done in kitchen or basement or attic. The
white waist of an elevator girl lasts for two days'
use. It has been an important factor, in the develop
ment of Chicago, that the business section of the city
is practically where it was a half century ago, or
even a century ago. Where Chicago began, she has
continued. There could be no greater contrast be
tween New York and Chicago in this particular. New
York having swept ceaselessly on for miles and miles
with its constantly shifting merchandizing head
quarters. In the very early days, before Chicago established
herself here, the place was avoided even by the
Indians themselves as a marshy terror, even though
the importance of the Chicago Eiver portage was in
15

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
early days recognized. Yet the site upon which Chi
cago was to arise was claimed by three States : uat-
urally enough, Chicagoans will concede, in view of
the consequence that was to accrue; indeed, they
deem the only matter for surprise to be that Chicago
was not claimed by more than three !
The claim of Virginia was by right of conquest,
George Eogers Clark, a Virginian, having led Vir
ginians in the marvelous campaign which secured the
Northwest Territory for the United States. (Clark
Street is named for him.) Connecticut claimed by
right of its charter, which gave ownership due west
to the Mississippi. New York claimed by conquest ;
but the conquest was quite by indirection. New York
having humbled the Iroquois and claimed rulership
over them, and the Iroquois having previously ex
tended their claims of dominion over the Indians of
the Illinois region. But Virginia, Connecticut and
New York agreed rather gracefully to unite in turn
ing over to the United States Government their
claims to the Illinois country.
But, for a time, this locality was actually governed
as part of Virginia. Delightful old Marietta, in
Ohio, was the seat of the government for a time
under the Ordinance of 1787, for Illinois ; and a little
later Vincennes, in Indiana, became the center of
government for the Chicago region; and the long-
faced, long-headed fighter, William Henry Harrison,
later to be known an "Tippecanoe," and still later
to be President and the grandfather of another
President, was made governor, 16

A CITY WITHOUT COBWEBS
When Illinois took on the dignity of Statehood,
after a probational period as a Territory, Chicago
was almost put into Wisconsin ! For the bill declar
ing Statehood designated a line along the southern
end of Lake Michigan, by which the then village of
Chicago was to be left out of Illinois and put into
Wisconsin! But an Illinois territorial delegate to
Congress succeeded in having the line so altered as
to leave Chicago in Illinois: the delegate being a
certain Nathaniel Pope; who was later to achieve
another kind of fame by becoming the father of the
Civil War soldier, General John Pope.
To name the counties in which the place was lo
cated would surely make Chicago seem a lost sort
of place. For a time it was in Illinois County, later
in Wayne; then, for a few years, in no county at all,
owing to some geographical oversight. Later, Chi
cago became, in turn, in Madison County, in Ed
wards, in Crawford, in Clark, in Pike, in Peoria;
and only after this bewildemg succession of changes
did the city, in 1831, settle into homely Cook.
It has more than once occurred to me that the
names of the counties of Illinois not only represent
the home-loving Americanism of the State, but have
themselves had an influence in encouraging the
admirable homely and patriotic qualities. Cook
County, indeed, is prosaically named; and not far
away is the likewise prosaically named Bureau
County! And glancing further at the map, it will
be noticed that there is profusion of names of homely
and intimate quality, as, Edward County, WiU
17

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
County, Henry, Alexander, Edgar. No wonder that
a flrst-name intimacy is such a common feature, here
beside Lake Michigan. And a further homely touch
comes in the recognition of Mrs. Grundy in Grundy
County !
But patriotism in county names is even more
marked. There are Washington and Jefferson and
Hamilton, Moultrie and Greene, Knox, McDonough
and Madison, Marion and Hancock, Franklin,
Schuyler, Boone and Wayne, Pulaski and Fayette,
Gallatin and Warren and St. Clair and Perry, Ean-
dolph, Marshall, Putnam and Stark, The name of
Burr is intentionally absent; Illinois would have
nothing of him ! But there is, instead, a Jo Daviess
County in honor of the man who, in Kentucky, prose
cuted Burr for treason in the early days of the con
spiracy, when Burr was still in control of wealth and
power, Daviess died at Tippecanoe : a battle which
somehow seems to have furnished a Battle EoU for
Chicago. A Chicago poet who won considerable fame,
Moody, sang of his own city in what was meant to be
swinging phrase :
"Gigantic, willful, young,
Chicago sitteth at the northwest gate,
With restless violent hands and casual tongue,
Molding her mighty fate, ' '
When Joaquin Miller wrote of San Francisco as
being at the western gate it meant something. But
Chicago is not at any particular gate. She is not
18

A CITY WITHOUT COBWEBS
even at the foot of Lake Michigan, where every
easterner thinks she stands, but on the western
shore, some miles above the lower end of the lake,
so that her lake frontage is not to the northward but
altogether to the east. The city is not a gateway,
which implies a place to pass through, but is
markedly a stopping point, as several million folk
have demonstrated,
Chicago is an extremely cosmopolitan city. Both
the Atlantic and Paciflc Oceans are hers. The Chi
cago newspapers advertise, impartially, sailings to
Honolulu or Plymouth, to Japan or France. There
is a sort of insouciance about it. And also there is
insouciance in her evident determination to remain
young no matter how the years are piling up. With
all the intense absorption in work, there goes also
an intense absorption in play; and you will notice
such advertisements as that of the "Fisherman's
Special," whose times are so arranged as to take
Chicagoans, with equipment of dining cars and sleep
ing cars, from Friday night until Monday, on long
trips up among the lakes of Wisconsin.
With all its rush, of work and play, the city is not
too busy to be honest, so one would gather from the
great number of advertisements of purses lost; for
this would seem to indicate a well-founded assump
tion as to the likelihood of recovery. Or is it merely
indicative of a sort of naive trustfulness? — for I
notice very few advertisements of purses found.
And there are so many advertisements of lost dogs
that it must needs be that excellent kind of a city, a
19

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
dog lover's city; even though, in these days of motor
cars, dogs are seldom seen except in the parks.
Pick up any newspaper ; in the first one are adver
tisements for an Airedale named Eip ; for a Pekinese
named Bubbles, light brown with two white front
paws; don't you wish you could find the faithful
Eip, and don't you wish you could restore the white-
pawed Bubbles to his mistress? And in the same
paper I notice that there is a lost "little black and
tan dog, named Daisy." All good homely names,
too; and the naming of dogs is an indication of
character — of the owners, not of the dogs, except in
the sense that dogs usually follow the character of
their owners. I like to think of the names of George
Washington's dogs, such as Juno, Mopsey and True-
love. Chicago is justly known as the Windy City. Great
winds come sweeping from the lake. And Chi
cagoans laugh, and say that they blow cobwebs from
the brain. But even while thus jesting, they never
for a moment believe that Chicago brains have any
cobwebs. And I knew that the Chicagoan who
soberly remarked to me that the winds thus take the
place of vacuum cleaners meant it for humor only.
Constantly, one notices examples of the city's quick
and uncobwebbed thinking. For example, not long
ago a man entered his motor-car with two thousand
dollars that he had just drawn from a bank; three
men boarded his car as he started off, and attacked
him; two of the men dragged him from the wheel,
and held him down, fiercely struggling, while the
20

A CITY WITHOUT COBWEBS
third put the car to top speed. But a man in the
conning tower of a lift bridge saw the approaching
car and saw that there was something very wrong,
so, instantly, one hand reached for the lever that
closed a gate across the roadway and the other hand
instantly set in motion the mechanism that started
the bridge upward, and thus the car, desperately
braked, and skidding, was stopped.
And there comes to mind the homely comment of
a Chicago paragrapher upon a labored editorial of
a famous New York editor, who loves lengthily to
plummet the abstruse ; this editorial he worked out
with more than usual labor and argument to the
triumphant conclusion that ' ' Therefore, the egg came
before the hen or else a miracle happened"; upon
which the uncobwebbed paragraphical comment was
the brief but overwhelming, ' ' No, the egg came after
the hen or else a miracle happened. ' '

21

CHAPTEE III

*'WE WIIiL GO AND GET THEm"

HICAGO cares noth
ing for grandfathers.
It is not a city of an
cestor worship. It is
not a city of descend
ants, for the very idea of
descent is repugnant to all
for which Chicago stands.
A descendant is one who
goes down, and Chicago
ans will not admit the
thought. A descendant is
one who, descending, looks
back at lofty peaks. But
the ascendant — and every Chicagoan is or hopes to
be an ascendant! — ^looks forward, as he climbs, to
brilliant heights — although the literal minded may
object to the use of such terms in regard to this city
of absolute level. And this is one of the delightful
contradictions : that, with every citizen on the same
level, all are* climbing. The vital and important
matter, in regard to any Chicagoan, is not what his
grandfather did, or who his grandfather was, but
what he himself is now doing to advance himself and
22

"WE WILL GO AND GET THEM"
the city — the two interests being deemed to be the
same. But although the present outweighs the past, there
is, -at the same time, an unusual degree of present-
day interest in the events of the past. I do not know
of any other city where the local historical museum
is considered to be a matter of such importance and
worthy the close attention of the most advanced men
and women. And though ancestry is subordinated
to present-day achievement, ancestry combined with
present-day achievement may be highly regarded.
A politician would like, if he could, to claim
descent from the first Irishman of Chicago, who came
in 1830. And any citizen would like, as a matter of
pride and interest, to be able to point to his father's
or grandfather's name on that first formal tax roll
of the little place, of 1825, when the property was
valued at $4707 and the total tax was fixed at $47.07
and apportioned among thirteen taxpayers. And so
recent is that date, that until a few years past a few
Chicagoans could claim a birth-date antecedent to
that of the tax-roll.
One of the most interesting visitors to the World's
Fair, in 1893, was a charming lady, under sixty, who,
her home then being in the South, was the invited
guest of the city because she was a Kinzie, descended
from the earliest and most important of settler
families. She was so closely connected with the past
that when she died, so recently as 1917, and then
only 82 years old, she had for years enjoyed the dis
tinction of being the oldest living white child born
23

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
here. Her face looks out, charming ir its sweetness
and youth, from a portrait of 1856, by Healy, the
painter who put Chicago on canvas. And it is such
dates and the realization of the dates which point
out the extraordinary recentness of old Chicago.
There are a number of Chicagoans, some ten in all,
still alive as I write, who were born here previous
to 1840. There are business houses still in existence
which date back as far as the incorporation of Chi
cago as a city. The yesterday of Chicago is thus
to-day; or, as a practical philosopher put it, to-day is
the to-morrow that we were wondering about yester
day. In an effort to connect Chicago with the men of
the Eevolution some have claimed, and the story is
once in a while repeated, that George Washington
once remarked to Anthony Wayne that at the mouth
of the Chicago was to arise one of the great cities
of the future. Benjamin Franklin really did say
that about the mouth of the Cuyahoga, where Cleve
land has since risen, and he was thoughtful enough
to put it on paper, and Chicago would fain do better
than Cleveland in the way of prophecy. But no
body really believes the Washington tale ; and Chi
cagoans prefer to point out, with a laugh, the place
where Washington would have had his headquarters
had he ever come to Chicago.
Chicago does not need visionary associations with
the past. Not only is there the Battle EoU of Tip
pecanoe — and it is a striking fact that Chicago
names should figure as prominently as they do in
24

"WE WILL GO AND GET THEM"
the story of that brUliantly fought battle of 1811—'
but there was also the little Black Hawk War, which
made Chicago a center of importance for a time, and
which had the participation of many men of future
prominence. All were in Chicago as much as they
could be, for small though it was it was full of life.
And it ought to be remembered that Chicago, though
really but a village, organized and sent out four com
panies to the war.
Among the future great men was Zachary Taylor,
afterwards to be President, and he was in Chicago
as lieutenant-colonel. Abraham Lincoln was here as
captain of volunteers. And Jefferson Davis was in
the war, and in Chicago, as lieutenant in the regular
army. Likely enough, Davis and Lincoln passed
each other on the muddy road beside Fort Dearborn,
which stood near the mouth of the river: and it is
curious to think how little either of them thought of
the conflict, then thirty years away, in which they
were to be opposing leaders and Presidents.
A half century after the Black Hawk War — in
1881, to be precise — Jefferson Davis was again in
Chicago, He was on his way from New Orleans to
Montreal, and stopped over, in Chicago, to see the
Duke of Sutherland, who was passing through : and,
as the English reporter expressed it, in his story
(it was Eussell, of the London Times), Davis sent
word that "he would be glad to pay his respects to
the Duke of Sutherland, if His Grace would receive
him," I should not like to think that an American
who had made, though on the wrong side, a great
25

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
figure in our national life, really sent a message thus
phrased; and, indeed, Eussell as a correspondent
was never to be altogether trusted, especially when
"Your Gracing." But he was probably right when
he described Jefferson Davis as being at this time
almost white-haired, with close-eut beard and
mustache. On the very day of the call of Jefferson
Davis on the duke, Chicagoans were setting in place
a memorial tablet on the site of Fort Dearborn, and
the Times man makes Davis say that he had once
been in command of the fort : a statement which, of
course, Jefferson Davis could not have made, as he
was never in command at Fort Dearborn, but was
for a time in command of another fort, Winnebago,
in Wisconsin.
Another lieutenant who was here, for the Black
Hawk War — ^like Davis, a dapper West Pointer —
was Eobert Anderson; and when, long afterwards,
after his defense of Fort Sumter, he met President
Lincoln, and was asked by him if he remembered
their first meeting, Anderson replied that he did not
remember ever having met him before, whereupon,
slowly, the tall, sad man replied, "Thirty years ago,
you mustered me into service in the Black Hawk
War." How such essences and flavors of history
add delight to a region ! And how whimsically de
Ughtful, among other historical memories, was the
great contrast between Lincoln and Douglas, be
tween the giant Lincoln and the "little giant" Doug
las, between "six feet four and four feet six" as
Chicagoans Uke to express it ; and Lincoln was reallv
26 ^

BEAUTY AND BUSINESS

"WE WILL GO AND GET THEM"
well over six feet and Douglas was barely more than
five. It was in Chicago that Lincoln was nominated for
the first time for the Presidency ; and this is remind
ful of the proud record of Chicago for national po
litical conventions and of the general success of Chi
cago-made candidates. And what, Chicagoans ask,
can New York show, in the matter of such conven
tions, and the national leadership that they
represent? Grover Cleveland was nominated in this city for
the two times that he was successful in the Presi
dential race, leaving to St. Louis the unenviable dis
tinction of nomination for failure. Benjamin Har
rison was nominated here for his winning campaign,
and it was a Minneapolis nomination from which he
went down in defeat. Eoosevelt was nominated
here for victory; and if he was afterwards given a
nomination here for defeat, it was for an election at
which it was another Chicago nominee, Taft, who
won. And this gave Chicago the chance, which it
cheerfully seized, of putting an addendum to a popu
lar pleasantry. For Chicagoans had loved the
simple humor of the story of the two citizens dis
puting as to the merits of the at one time contem
poraneous Illinois Senators, Mason and CuUom; of
CuUom's giving up his seat in a street oar to a lady
and Mason's giving up his seat to two ladies: and
now that Taft had, in an important sense, joined the
Chicago political family, he was made to give up his
seat to three ladies. 27

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
It was here in Chicago that Harding was nomi
nated. Hughes was nominated here for his unsuc
cessful race. Bryan was given his first nomination
here, and here it was that he electrified the country
and leaped to fame as an orator with his perorative
crucifixion and cross of gold. Grant was nominated
in Chicago for his first election; and it was here
that this mighty son of Illinois made the third term
effort which so bitterly aroused national feeUng.
But how superbly the effort was made, with the hold
ing together, throughout two days and thirty-six
ballots, of the unbroken and unbreakable Three
Hundred! The blood stirs with the thrill of that
battle; and those Three Hundred might well be
versified by some American Tennyson, even though
they went down to defeat in a wrong cause, but as
it is, the only verse in connection with it, I believe,
is that which, declaimed by Conkling in his nomi
nating speech, aroused the delegates and spectators
to wild acclaim :
"And when asked what State he hails from,
Our sole reply shall be,
He hails from Appomatox
And its famous apple tree. ' '
Garfield was nominated for a winning election in
Chicago. McKinley received in Chicago the nomi
nation for his first election. And it was in Chicago
that Blaine was nominated, when Eobert G. Inger-
soU, that orator of Illinois, always associated with
Chicago iu the mind of Easterners, won a mag-
28

"WE WILL GO AND GET THEM"
nificent oratorical triumph with the speech in which
the outstanding phrase was that in which Blaine was
personified as the Plumed Knight.
And all at once, at this thought, the misty years
roll away, and the site of the future Chicago is seen,
in the light of two centuries before that speech, as
literally aglow with the armor and glory and cos
tumes and plumes of literal knights.
The word "Chicago," has come down through the
centuries almost unchanged, in the effort to repro
duce Indian pronunciation: "Chicajo," Chacha-
jou," "Chekegou," ' "Chassagoac." The word
meant, in the Indian tongue, "strong"; assuredly
an admirable word to characterize the city that was
to be. The "strong," some have suggested, came
from the prevalent wild onion ; others think it came
from the quite as prevalent swamp-cabbage. It
would seem, more probably, that the word came from
the name of a great Indian chief, if the chief did not
take his name from the locality. "Chicagou" was
an Indian chief who went to Paris in the reign of
Louis the Fifteenth, about 1725, and it was set down
in early annals, by one of the French priests, that
the chief was given a splendid snuff-box by the
Duchess of Orleans; a sufficiently odd feature to be
the outstanding reminiscence of a curious visit.
There was a Chikagou or Chassagoac, a chief on
Lake Michigan, some half a century before that;
and it may be taken as probable that the first chief
of that name was the father of the second, although,
as no ages are mentioned, they may have been one
29

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
and the same; remindful of the two skulls of St.
Peter shown to the tourist in Eome, one of the saint
when he was a young man and one when he was old,
At any rate, the great La Salle, most picturesque,
most daring and most romantic of the wonderful
Frenchmen who plunged far through the Western
wilderness while the English colonists were still hug
ging close to the Atlantic coast, had long conferences
with Chassagoac, as he understood the name, the
then great chief of the Illinois country. He was
known by name quite as early as was the Chicago
Portage ; and it is therefore probable that the local
ity was given its name from him. And the prob
ability is greatly strengthened by the reference, by
Father Marquette, to a chief Chachagwession at the
southern end of Lake Michigan.
La Salle and Chassagoac talked much together, on
the shores of the lake, and together they made the
first trade agreement of Chicago, the scene of what
myriad of trade agreements since! And, indeed,
one sees that romance and trade went hand in hand
in the beginnings of Chicago, just as they have con
tinued to do.
Chassagoac and La Salle agreed together upon the
exchange of furs for merchandise, and La SaUe con
summated the agreement by handing to the Indian
—with such deUghtful detail has the story come
down— some hatchets, some knives, one kettle, one
red blanket. How absolutely deUghtful to know
that it was red ! And the first business agreement
30

"WE WILL GO AND GET THEM"
of Chicago had thus to do with hardware and dry-
goods and furs.
La Salle wrote from here to the Governor-General
of Canada a letter dated, "Du portage de Checagou
4 Juin, 1683. " And in the winter of 1682-3 he buiU
here a log house and a stockade — ^vanished long,
long ago.
Another chief of the Chicago region, or the same
chief with the name somewhat altered by the priestly
chronicler (after all, names were necessarily set
down by sound, and the excellent priest may have
been a little deaf in one ear), declared that in the
course of his life ; a life, as he said, of long wars and
great affairs; he had known but three great cap
tains : Monsieur La Salle, Monsieur de Frontenac
and himself. And never was there a more typical
Chicago declaration!
Naivete is a cheerful characteristic of Chicago,
Turning over the pages of a Chicago book, I noticed
a street view, a view of Monroe Street, with a note
stating that it was from an old engraving, "in the
eighties"! I think that no other city, young or old,
could so naturally refer to the eighties as "old,"
For, of course, being a street scene of Chicago, it
was necessarily to the eighteen eighties that it re
ferred, and not to the seventeen eighties, when
George Eogers Clark had just completed the heroic
campaign that not only gave the Northwest Terri
tory to the United States, but, as another result,
brought about the setting aside of school lands, stiU
31

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
owned by the city of Chicago, from whose rentals
a considerable part of the daily expenses of the
present-day public schools is secured : a most curious
connection with romantic bravery of the past.
Nor did that "old" picture of Chicago mean the
sixteen eighties, the period of the glorious La SaUe,
who first reached Lake Michigan in 1679 and whose
deeds and personality dominated the Chicago and
lUinois region till his death, less than ten years
later, in 1687.
The history of Chicago has a background of proud
memories and picturesque tradition. Nor does this
mean that picturesqueness can belong only to the
distant past. Chicago of the present may at any
moment offer picturesqueness, and the picturesque
ness may be very fine indeed ; as on a day during the
strike of April, 1920, when fifteen hundred striking
carpenters of Chicago marched to Melrose Park, a
suburb that had suffered devastation from a hurri
cane, and worked aU day at building and repairing,
gladly giving their labor free. Those fifteen hun
dred men, marching and working without pomp or
display, make a fine and memorable picture.
This city, young though it is, is also a city of age,
and of pictorial age. Winds come blowing, straight
from the land of romance. One thinks again of the
days of La Salle. What costumes and what finery,
here at the mouth of the Chicago ! The noble ban
ners, the white fleur-de-Us, steel corslets flashing
in the sun, leather jerkins, colorful scarfs, gallant
plumes! And, in picturesque contrast, the priestly
32

"WE WILL GO AND GET THEM"
robes of black or gray. We see La Salle himself,
not like his ineffective statue in Lincoln Park, but
splendid and stern, in steel breastplate and with
belted baldric and sword; we see him in a scarlet
cloak with gold facings, a figure noble and superb ;
we see him, in the pages of another chronicler, in
scarlet cloak thick-edged with gold, a man of scarlet
gorgeousness. And he had a costume of white and
gold which he donned only for occasions of special
impressiveness and display. A stately, command
ing, always effectively clad figure, there in the dis
tant wilderness. La Salle appreciated to the full, as
George Washington later appreciated, the value of
finely-clad dignity.
The purple and gold of chivalry, the strange and
haunting scenes, the devotion of friend to friend, the
magnificent enterprise, the gay bravery, the instant
readiness to engage in either battle or barter, the
personal bravery of those early men, the marvelous
things they attempted and performed !
Near Niagara La Salle built a ship, Le Griffon,
and it was the first to sail into the waters of Lake
Michigan. At Green Bay he loaded it with furs.
It set out upon its Eastward way. And the imagi
nation is instantly aflame with the picture of that
boat, the first sail boat on Lake Michigan, setting out
to return through the profound loneliness.
A Uttle later and La Salle, at the Chicago Portage,
begins to be disquieted from receiving no news of
his vessel, for a great storm had swept the lake
shortly after it set sail. A little later still, he makes
33

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
up his mind that his boat was lost in the storm.
And in an effort to make sure he resorts to a plan
which even now, with all the appliances of these
recent days, with steam and electricity, railroads
and telegraph, would be a difficult plan to carry out.
For, to find if his boat was wrecked, and to find if
survivors needed aid, he had the entire coast line of
Lake Michigan searched! But no wreck or wreck
age was discovered, and the boat was never again
heard of.
The loss of his ship was a great blow to La Salle ;
to his finances as well as to his ambitions. For this
splendid knight, this gallant soldier, was first of aU
a trader. He had been given a trading grant and
privileges by the French govemment, and owned a
trading station on the St. Lawrence, and depended
on his profits in trade. And that represents the
Chicago of to-day: picturesqueness and trade! La
Salle could not have given the locality a better be
ginning. Not, it may be added, that he was con
nected with the Chicago Portage alone, for he was
up and down throughout the entire Illinois country ;
but he was always retuming to the Portage, and
passing through by way of the Portage, and his mind
was a great deal upon the Portage. Business and
imagination was the keynote of the life of Chicago,
as it was the keynote of the life of La Salle : Eene
Eobert Cavalier, Sierr de La Salle — and what a fine
and rolling and satisfactory name it is !
La Salle's greatest friend was an Italian-born
trader, the great Tonti : and a connection altogether
34

"WE WILL GO AND GET THEM"
bizarre links the name with the modem business of
modem days: for Tonti 's father was an insurance
man, who was so clever as to invent, in those far
away times, a form of insurance still known, from
his name, as the Tontine!
When La Salle and Tonti were apart they would
write each other in letters tucked in the crotches of
trees, or left hanging to branches, to be found by
the intended recipient weeks or months afterwards.
While the English were laboriously exploring a
few miles up the Delaware beyond Philadelphia, or
cautiously treading the Bay Path, out toward the
Berkshires, Frenchmen became closely famiUar
with thousands of miles of wilderness from Quebec
to beyond the future Chicago. The name of one of
them, Du Lhut, is retained in the name of the city
at the head of Lake Superior. Marquette and Joliet
are remembered by the cities of those names. Tonti
is kept in memory by a romantic modern little vil
lage, Tontitown, with a romantic history, that I once
came upon, tucked away in the Ozark Mountains.
The name of La Salle is the name of a town not many
miles from Chicago ; but, even more fittingly, man of
adventurous finance that he was, his name has been
given to the street which is the Wall Street of Chi
cago. What journeys those early Frenchmen made!
They would travel thousands of miles, unchecked by
blazing sun or bitter cold, by plumping rains or
sweeping sleet or snow. And how they reveled in
the beauty of long and lovely days ! What delight
35

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
was theirs in the charming sweeps of plain, the dark
solemnity of the forests !
La Salle went on a visit to France ; and at length,
to Tonti, in the Illinois country, came a rumor that
his friend, bound again for America, had been
wrecked on the coast of Florida. Instantly Tonti
prepared to cross the immensity of wilderness that
lay between Lake Michigan and Florida, to seek for
and succor his friend; but, as he was starting — and
the imagination is appalled by the intended effort — -'
there came the news that it was not on the Florida
coast but near the mouth of the Mississippi that
La Salle needed him; and so down the Mississippi
he went, following its bends and sweeps for vast
mileages, and at the river's mouth he sought for
La Salle but sought in vain, and at length he re
turned, heavy-hearted and sorely anxious.
La Salle was really in trouble, on the Mexican
Gulf, but far to the westward of the Mississippi's
mouth; and he started for Illinois and Tonti, with
his party, striking across country, attempting the
impossible. He was slain on the way by a traitor,
and thus came to an end the wonderful friendship of
two wonderful men.
It is weU for Chicagoans to remember La Salle;
every Chicagoan ought by the vision splendid to
be on his way attended. And especially because,
by some miracle of transference, of transmission,
the spell which La Salle cast over the region of
Chicago has outlasted the centuries. La Salle was a
Norman. And the ancient Norman prayer was:
36

"WE WILL GO AND GET THEM"
"Lord, we do not ask thee for the desirable things
of Ufe, but merely to tell us where they are and we
will go and get them." And that ancient Norman
spirit, exemplified so magnificently by La Salle, is
the very spirit of Chicago to-day.

37

CHAPTEE IV

THE LAKE PEONT

^"JftHlilSHlJlS

LMOST alone among great
cities, quite alone among
cities of the first im
portance in size,
Chicago faces directly
out upon a mighty sea
— a sea that is mighty although it
is an inland sea. Homes and busi
ness blocks look off into the blue
and purple distances, across bound
lessness of watery space; and the
water shimmers and swirls and
ripples, or comes thundering in huge breakers,
directly in front of beautiful homes and stately
mercantile structures. From the windows, one may
look out at water and sky of ever-chajiging colors,
at a lake of cold yellow under clouds of purplish
black, at a lake all blue under the bluest of skies,
at a lake of dazzling white and green. The city
faces out right royally. And sunrise is a marvel,
when it suffuses the frontage with showered gold.
Or one watches the evening colorings after the sun
has set, with opalescent blues and steel grays, with
shifting shadowings, weird, uncanny, beautiful, till
38

THE LAKE FEONT
the darkness deepens all into one black mass. Or,
as one of the Chicago poets expresses it,
"The fog comes
On little eat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
-and then moves on."
But it is told in all earnestness, and not in jest,
that a visiting Englishman, looking out over the
view, from his hotel window, on his first moming
here, remarked casually, how odd it was to have a
reservoir in front of a hotel !
Although there is a lake frontage of some twenty-
six miles, the term "Lake Front" is used, by
Chicagoans, as descriptive of about a mile of Michi
gan Avenue; and it is one of the most wonderful
city miles of the world. The mile holds shops and
office buildings, clubs and hotels, built closely and
massively and with splendid effect, and facing out,
across a superb roadway, to the water.
A line of massive buildings ; square-topped, gable-
topped, tower-topped. Buildings of gray and of
ivory-white, of red and brown, in varying shades.
Buildings of twentieth-century design contrasting
with buildings quite as modem but following old-
time appearance. There are little balconies, and
there are human figures in bronze or stone and there
are shields of stone. There are oval windows, stone
garlanded, and there are lions' heads and eagles in
stone. A Diana surmounts a lofty tower: a stone
39

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
owl, gravely apexed, tops a superbly designed club
building, a tall and spacious building, Gothic in
design in infinite detail, with balconies and oriel
windows. Another club building displays, up
under its cornice line, a chariot-race frieze. An
other club building shows the stateliness of tall
Gothic windows.
But not for a moment is it forgotten, that it is
not the buildings alone or the lake alone, but the
combination of the buildings, and the lake and the
boulevarded avenue, and the space between the
avenue and the lake, that makes the magnificence
of this one-sided thoroughfare. For all these busi
ness blocks and club buildings and hotels occupy one
side only of Michigan Avenue ; all face the lake and
the rising sun, across the open space, known as
Grant Park, which is definitely planned not to inter
cept the view but to give it a formal setting and
extension, while at the same time masking the rail
way. One-sided avenues are a feature of beauty, a
feature of distinguished importance, in various
cities of the world. There is remarkable Princes
Street in Edinburgh, looking far across at the line
of the ancient town and the castled rock; there is
Eiva degli Schiavoni, facing out across the water
in still more ancient Venice ; there is the Lungarno,
bordering the yellow river of Florence; there is
Beacon Street, facing with modest pride over Boston
Common; there is Eiverside Drive, with its superb
view of the Hudson; and with all these one-sided
40

THE LAKE FEONT
thoroughfares of beauty, some of them with many
centuries behind them, the new and the noble one-
side avenue of Chicago proudly holds its own.
Nor is it that all the buildings are beautiful, but
that throughout the' Mile the effectiveness is con
tinued and beautiful. There is constant collective
beauty; and some of the buildings are of striking
individual beauty. There is wide variety; and
Chicagoans themselves like to point out, for ex
ample, the Fine Arts Building, and to say that the
first story is of Eoman architecture, the second
Greek, the third Greco-Eoman, and the fourth catch-
as-catch-can. Housed in these buildings are big clubs and little
clubs, and other organizations, largely literary or
musical. One has the hall of the city's orchestra.
There are shops for jewels and laces and furs and
pictures, for fine raiment and fine linen. There are
hotels of world-wide fame. There are business
buildings with mighty and massive pillars. There
are buildings that rise in airy strength. There are
doorways of diversity, including one that is
Egyptian, like a cave. You see long balconies, and
little single-window balconies, and buildings with
no balconies at all. You catch sight, far up, of a
Venetian gable.
Within one of the buildings is a swimming place,
a great pool within surroundings of white marble;
and hard-headed business men order luncheon be
fore their noonday plunge, and have it served, if
they so desire, on little tables beside the pools, and
41

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
feel a restfulness from eating, clad only in breech-
clouts, and in a Uttle while, impeccably dressed,
hurry off to their business again.
The great broad sidewalk, the superb breadth of
the street, the throngs of the well-dressed (for
seldom do the other classes venture upon the Mile),
the constant streams of motor-cars (not trolley-
cars; nothing so common as that!), give an air of
vivid life, as of a city aglow with wealth and happi
ness. At the northern end, in the space between the
driveway and the lake, an imposing peristyle, still
new enough to be almost white, gives dignity and
beauty, like a bit of ancient Greece, with its classic
columns and its sweeping grace and its nobility of
size and proportions.
Set stately between avenue and water 's-edge,
stands the Art Institute, a building of dark-mel
lowed stone, with 'broad-stairwayed entrance and
lions of bronze.
The long terraces, the stone balustrades, the spac
ing and spaciousness, all are part of a splendid
plan, splendidly carried out. But also, between the
avenue and the lake, stretch the sunken tracks of a
railway, out of sight but not out of mind, for there
is constant noise and there are constant clouds of
blackest smoke and blackest soot, shriveling the
grass and shrinking the shrubs that the city bravely
tries to grow.
The space between roadway and water, given
nobility at one end of the Mile by the peristyle,
42

THE LAKE FEONT
and beauty midway by the Art Institute, has at its
southern end the Field Museum of Natural History.
This is of tremendous size, of classic design, with
mighty rows of mighty pillars along the central
fagade and the mighty wings. It is said to be the
largest marble building in the world : seven hundred
and sixty-seven feet long, if one cares precisely to
know, and three hundred and fifty in width. It is
hugely Grecian. It is a royal palace. And yet in
spite of its immensity of perfection, it lacks some
spirit and leaves one rather cold.
The boulevarded Mile of Michigan Avenue — ^the
Chicagoans lovingly call it their "Boul' Mich." — is
as impressive by night as by day; when darkness
comes creeping in from the lake, and the boulevard
lightens and brightens, with the flare of thousands
of motors, with the glow of lighted windows, with
the splendor of lines of illumination from six-
clustered lights on metal poles, when everything is
seen in a glorifled indistinctness, with the beauty of
buildings and roadway idealized, and with a sort of
magic in it all.
Yet it was hard to induce business and buildings
to come here until a few years ago ; and even now,
at the end of the Mile, to the southward, the beauty
ends, and there comes suddenly a garishness, as
of a mining camp, with two-story buildings paltrily
bedizened. The development of the Lake Front in front of
the city's very center has been a proud achieve
ment : and the plans of the city are for further and
43

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
even superb development along a far greater stretch
of water-front. And if one should deem any of the
plans impossible — ^well, Irving Bacheller, in one of
his novels, pictures a visitor to early Chicago listen
ing to the extravagant prophecies of a Chicagoan;
absolute impossibilities! — but the odd thing, con
tinues the novelist, was that within a few years all
the prophecies had come true !
Without control of the important mile of frontage
the city could not even have begun its principal
shore improvement; and there were powerful in
terests ranged against the city; and the able work,
against those interests, of a Chicago lawyer named
Melville Fuller, had much to do with giving him
the acclaim and prominence that led to his being
made Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States. And the Lake Front has become
to Chicago, in its ultimate importance and its vital
representation of the city, much like Boston Com
mon to Boston.
Fuller had also, as a Chicago lawyer, been con
nected importantly with another case of interest to
the people of Chicago and also connected with
Michigan Avenue ; for Fuller was the leading lawyer
for the much-loved and much-honored Episcopalian
rector, Cheney, in his trial for heresy ; Cheney after
wards becoming Bishop Cheney of the church or
ganization named, with breezy superiority, the "Ee-
formed" Episcopal Church. And Bishop Cheney
has but recently died. He almost rounded three
score years of ecclesiastical service in Chicago. He
44

THE LAKESIDE GLORY OF CHICAGO

THE LAKE FEONT
became rector of Christ Church at Michigan Avenue
and Twenty-fourth Street— but it was in 1860, and
Michigan Avenue was then not even a street, but
merely a rough lane, and the vicinity was deemed
quite outside of Chicago, in a cluster of houses of
railwaymen, called ' ' Carville, ' ' with a great unbuilt-
upon region between it and what was then Chicago
proper. Ordained, and ready for his flrst church,
Cheney had come to Chicago to visit his fiancee
and he found a church in "Carville." And, as he
loved to tell, Christ Church needed a rector and he
needed a parish, so he was glad to take the charge,
at a salary of $750 — with the express understanding
that the church must be made to prosper sufficiently,
under his rectorate and Divine Providence, to
justify such a great sum. There were but seven
members when he preached his first sermon ! Year
by year, Christ Church and its rector grew old to
gether, and the growth of Chicago swept over the
locality and far beyond, and the church stood by him
in his trial and followed him into the "Eeformed,"
and when he was made bishop it was stipulated that
he was to remain its rector.
Cheney liked to remember, too, that the Mexican
War had made a deep impression upon "Carville,"
for what was years afterwards to become Twenty-
second Street was Einggold (a little later a name of
the Civil War also), and the future Twenty-third
Street was Palo Alto, and the Twenty-sixth Street
of to-day was Buena Vista.
The streets leading from Michigan Avenue, in the
45

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Mile section, are themselves notable for the care
fully arranged vistas in connection with them and
the Lake Front. And always, with these vistas,
the blue waters of the lake make the final back
ground. Looking down Eandolph Street one sees
the peristyle, and completing the view through
Monroe Street is a sweeping bow of roadway and
on either side a large square-sided shaft of stone;
opposite Adams Street (one notices that the names
here are of early American biography) is the beauti
ful central front of the Art Institute, and looking
down the vista of Madison Street there is a fountain
with admirable stone pillars, topped with round-
balled stone.
Making an impressive ending for the vista of East
Ninth Street is a statue of General Logan, on horse
back, high-mounded, greatly pedestaled, caught in
bronze in 'heroic attitude, the sculptor having at
tempted the difficult task of perpetuating a triumph
ant moment.
St. Gaudens made this Logan. And it was un
veiled on a day of glorious sun and high wind, with
booming cannon and much processioning of soldiers,
most prominent being those who had been General
Logan's own. In the grand-stand, in apparent
amicability, sat the widow, Mrs. Logan, and by her
side the sculptor, St. Gaudens : and few knew that
Mrs. Logan had wished her husband put in bronze
as a statesman instead of as a general, and that
she had argued the matter in vain with St. Gaudens,
and had then sought to have him supplanted, by the
46

THE LAKE FEONT
committee, by another sculptor. All of which
amused St. Gaudens, years afterwards, when he
wrote of how Mrs. Logan and he sat together in
seeming friendliness.
It seems odd to think of setting up "Black Jack"
of Illinois and Chicago as statesman rather than
soldier: and yet, after all, as a Congressman and
Senator he showed much ability ; as in his measured
reply when, the impeachment of President Johnson
being proposed, fear was expressed that it would
lead to a revolution ; whereupon he said, with char
acteristic Chicagoan crushingness : "A country
which in time of war and excitement can stand an
assassination of so good and great a President as
Abraham Lincoln, will stand the impeachment of as
bad a President as Andrew Johnson."
Blaine remarked of Logan that, although there
had been more able American generals, and more
able American statesman, he did not know of any
one else who had so successfully combined the two
careers. Superb though -the Lake Front is, it was amazing
to find at its northern end, at the little railway
station for suburbanites, an eating room such as
one would expect to find only in some little town of
the Western plains : an astonishingly narrow, funny
place of frame; temporary, of course — but the
temporary has lasted for years. Necessarily the
place will some day go: perhaps it has gone even
as I write; but not to be forgotten are the eight
high-revolving chairs, each screwed to the floor, the
47

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
rail for the feet, the triangle of pie under its glass
dome, the doughnuts and sandwiches under their
glass domes, the coffee machines — all perhaps excel
lent enough but amusingly like something very far
away and long ago.
On this splendid Lake Front there comes to mind
a comparison with Boston ; somehow, the two cities
seem naturally to offer themselves for comparison !
each is a city whose people have the highest esteem
for their own — ^Boston, the city that looks so cheer
fully backward to grandparents, and Chicago, the
city that looks so cheerfully forward to grand
children; Boston, the city whose cherished outlook
is the Back Bay, and Chicago, the city whose
cherished outlook is the Lake Front.

^<^'^.h

¦^¦mi^/MM^y^-m-^i^C^

48

CHAPTEE V

OVER BUSH STEEET BEmGE

HE year 1894 saw
the appearance of
"Trilby," in which Du
Maurier, both artist and
novelist that he was,
presented a widespread
British belief in regard to
Chicago. For Du Maurier,
writing of the rich Miss
Lavinia Hunks of Chicago
(and the use of the name
"Hunks" was in itself
deemed a marvelous bit of
humor), described her as "so lamentably, so
pathetically plain that it would be brutal to attempt
the cheap and easy task of describing her. He calls
her "a grotesque little bogey in blue," completing
his description with a picture that makes her the
extreme of unattractive ugliness.
He knew nothing of Chicago, but unfamiliarity
with a subject has never been a bar to our friends
across the water. In fact, Du Maurier himself
pictures his laird as making a pronounced success
with pictures of Spain — until he actually went there.
49

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Poetic justice, literary and artistic justice, came
quickly in regard to Chicago. For "Trilby," with
its description of what English readers might sup
pose to be typical of Chicago womanhood, was not
much more than upon the bookshelves when, in 1895,
'an Englishman of note married a Chicago girl; and
the English learned what "Miss Hunks" was really
like. Her name was Leiter, Mary Victoria Leiter,
and she was wealthy, and she was fine looking, and of
grace and charm and beauty, with a distinguished
air to which the British themselves did honor. And
as the wife of a peer, who became Viceroy of India,
the highest women of the British aristocracy waited
eagerly and often humbly for a word or nod from
her. And what a marvelous transformation it was!
Here in Chicago Mary Leiter lived, in a house over
Eush Street Bridge. And as if by the touch of an
enchanter, she is placed in state as a vicereine, pre
siding over the court of India, with her life a con
tinuous pageant, with guards gorgeous in purple
and gold, with elephants, with the most brilliant
Oriental splendor; and all her honors borne with
unostentatious grace and dignity. The magic tales
of India tell of no more briUiant transformation.
That was "Miss Hunks" of reality. Nor was
Mary Leiter, wife of Viceroy Curzon, the first
American woman to become a vicereine, for Mary
Caton, granddaughter of the highly picturesque
Charles CarroU of CarroUton, had long before mar
ried the brother of the Duke of Wellington, the
50

OVEE EUSH STEEET BEIDGE
Marquis of Wellesley, who had been ruler of India
and was then viceroy, or technically lord-lieutenant,
of Ireland. Mary Caton; or to be precise, Mrs.
Patterson, for she was a widow; was not a
Chicagoan. But quite a number of Chicago young
women have become the wives of Europeans, and a
notable fact is that their husbands, on the average,
much more than foreign husbands of wives from
other American cities, have become men of active
achievement; showing apparently the vigorous
value of the Chicago spirit. One may name, as an
example. Admiral Beatty, so successfully prominent
in the great war, who had married a wife from
Chicago. A large, square-fronted, square-topped house,
four stories in height, with great large square
windows, at the comer of Ontario and Eush Streets,
is the house from which Mary Leiter went forth.
The lower story is classic in design, with fiuted
Doric columns at the windows and a great stone
balustraded balcony. Smooth gray stone for the
lower floor, and for the upper three a reddish-tawny
brick, makes a somewhat odd effect. There are but
two windows to each floor, on the front of the house,
and each of these great windows has but a single
great pane of glass, with no dividing crosspiece.
Near by is the great Cyrus H. McCormick home,
a huge mausoleum — like a pile of brown stone. For
this region, in the latter part of the eighteen hun
dreds, was one of great wealth. It is a small neigh
borhood of large houses. But the importance of
51

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
the vicinity has mostly gone. Eooming houses and
little shops have come near by, and the big houses
themselves have an air of shabbiness, and the
gardens, with their high brick walls, share thff dis
couraged air, in a sort of sooty sadness.
McCormick had his portrait painted by Cabanel;
afterwards, made a member of the Legion of Honor,
and receiving in due course the red ribbon of the
Legion, McCormick wanted it painted on his por
trait, and so the picture was packed up and sent to
France to have the touch of red added by Cabanel
himself. In this immediate vicinity, at Huron and Cass
Streets, is a large church of gray sandstone, with
high-pitched roof of dark slate; it is the Church
of St. James, and was long deemed and seems to be
still deemed the leading Episcopalian church of the
city, for those who wish the mingled odor of society
and sanctity. The houses close by are not quite
of Leiter or McCormick costliness, although large
and comfortable, with grass plots; and it is not
surprising to learn that most of the congregation
nowadays come from a distance. The home- of
Laura, in that famous Chicago novel, "The Pit,"
was cornerwise opposite ; a house built as the church
rectory, and recently torn down ; and she and Jad-
win were married at St. James's.
In spite of social standing, the church has but
ordinary architectural standing; and one fancies
that the square tower, with one toothpick standing
higher than the other three, is a trifle better than the
52

OVEE EUSH STEEET BEIDGE
rest of the church ; and you learn that this may pos
sibly be owing to this part being older, having stood
through the Great Fire, when all the rest of the
structure was destroyed.
For the Great Fire, having leaped across the
river, swept this entire region, and went devastat-
ingly on to the northward. Not a house is now
standing in this part of the city, that stood before
the fire. It is generally said that the Mahlon Ogden
home, which has since been tom down, was the only
house that escaped, and that it was left standing
alone in the midst of smoky desolation. But the
home of a policeman also escaped. And it seems
.as if the story of a dry cistern and the saving of a
house by deluging its roof with cider deserves to be
kept in mind.
After the Great Fire, Chicago must have
presented what seemed a series of Gothic ruins ; for
photographs of the time show church after church
destroyed, except for lonely looking walls, solitary
crocketed-like fragments, hollow-eyed ruins, all
seeming grim and very ancient.
What is practically the Fire Monument of
Chicago is the old water tower, standing in the
Lincoln Parkway. Although this is the only
structure still standing past which the fire swept in
this northern section, there has been persistent ef
fort to have it destroyed, in the alleged interests
of improvement; and determined have been the ef
forts to retain it in place, as an honored memento
of a terrible event ; for in the days after the fire it
53

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
served as a helpful landmark for wandering multi
tudes searching for the spots where stood their
homes. Nor is it without a certain impressiveness.
A tall shaft rises from a cluttered and clustered
base, having twelve towers at varying heights. It
is all white stone, and, pseudo-Gothic though it is,
is effective in its own odd way and looks much
more Uke a Gothic monument than a water tower.
A curious cluster of Moorish-looking buildings at
Cass and Ohio Streets, with onion-domes, crescent-
topped, dominates that vicinity, and one finds it to
be Medinah Temple, of the Masons.
In this same immediate region stands a large and
fortress-like building, heavy and solid and unin
teresting in appearance, but with a great deal of
interest in reality. For this is the building about
which much of the life and interest of the city re
volves; the building of the Historical Society.
Surely no other city, to welcome a distinguished
general as the new commander of the military de
partment, would give him a reception at its histori
cal society rooms and have the best people of the
city present ; but Chicago does things in its own way,
and that is precisely what it did for General Wood.
The activities of the Historical Society are sur
prising in scope. Take any report of a year's do
ings; and it will show what such a society can do
and be. For example, in November the annual
meeting, with distinguished folk a-plenty. On a
December afternoon, three hundred teachers came,
on invitation, to listen to an illustrated lecture on
54

OVEE EUSH STEEET BEIDGE
Chicago history. Isn't that fine! Early in Feb
ruary, a reception and tea with five hundred guests,
the names of the committee who worked to make it
a success including the people of the city most
prominent socially and in wealth. There was old-
fashioned silver on the tea-table, the orchestra
played airs of three-quarters of a century ago, and
there was a costume exhibit, notable from the fine
gowns that were shown, inherited from mothers or
grandmothers. And as a special point there was
present, attired in the gown she had worn at her
wedding, the daughter of the first president of the
Historical Society.
Another time they had a reception with such at
tention to interesting detail as the reproduction, on
the invitations to the reception, of a picture show
ing a reception at the White House in 1865: this
having a local touch because Miss Arnold, one of
those in the receiving line, remembers being at a
White House reception in 1865 with her father, an
Illinois Congressman and a biographer of Lincoln.
Another time, and there is the exhibition of a
collection of pieced quilts and hand-woven cover
lets and old-time home-made agricultural imple
ments, many of them gathered and presented by
Emerson Hough, the Chicago novelist.'
The constant interest in the past, in a city so
markedly a city of the present, is highly interesting.
When the Society makes an acquisition the news
papers treat the matter as news of general interest,
to be prominently featured. And it is astonishing
55

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
what a quantity of interesting material has been
gathered. There is a little old brass-nail-studded
cylindrical hair-trunk, still containing the wedding
dress of Mrs. Eebecca Heald, the wife of Captain
Heald. It was carried on horseback on their wed
ding trip, in 1811, to Fort Dearborn, when he took
command of the post. One pictures the young bride
and this sweet wedding dress in the- wilderness of
that time; and the couple were happy for the brief
period before the outbreak of the war with Eng
land. Then came the attack and massacre ; she was
captured; and this trunk was carried to St. Louis
by one of the Indians. There it was recognized and
ransomed by a friend of Heald 's, who sorrowfully
sent it to the young wife's parents, fully believing
that she must be dead. But to the amazement of
all she was alive, a prisoner, and after a while she
was set free. And this trunk and its contents, with
its strange eventful history, is here. Sir Walter
Scott, had he been a Chicagoan, would have written
a novel around such a relic, with such a series of
happenings! And it would have been one of his
best. And here is a miniature of Captain Wells, who
bravely gave his life on the eventful day of
massacre. And how it brings him actually before
us! — with his high red collar up to his very ears,
and his blue coat and white epaulets and brass
buttons and the black stock under his chin. A blue-
eyed, long-nosed, pleasant-faced young man — and
56

OVEE EUSH STEEET BEIDGE
somehow that distant day of death seems very, very
real and very close.
There is a wide variety of the unexpected here.
And notable is the very last letter that was written
by John Brown. It is to his sister Mary, and is
dated at Charlestown, November 22, 1857. He
knows that certain death is at hand, but he writes
calmly, in kindly comforting fashion. He had
grieved, he said, from fear that they would feel
ashamed because of his death on the scaffold, but
her letter had reassured him, and "Now I have done.
May the God of peace bring us all again from the
dead." And he is "Your affectionate brother, John
Brown." And here is the richly embroidered coat worn by
Colonel Baum, who led the Hessians and British
at the Battle of Bennington, in the Eevolutionary
War. Baum was mortally wounded, and his blood
stained coat was handed to a young American
soldier named Wood; and it remained in family
possession for generations, and was brought by a
Wood to Chicago, and at length found its place here.
The building is crowded with mementoes and por
traits, with letters and documents, but, far more
important than these things, is the spirit in which
the Historical Society is regarded. It stands not
merely for the past, but for what is interesting or
important in the past, and it aids materially in up
holding civic pride. And it has become quite a
habit, in all seriousness and not from humor, when
57

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
any one asks a question which cannot at once be
answered, to refer him to the Historical Society;
and this, even with questions entirely unconnected
with anything connected with history.
This district gives the impression of being a sec
tion set apart, a district by itself, a community
gathered here just over Eush Street Bridge; or at
least, where Eush Street Bridge stood for so many
years. The lake is not far away, and projecting into the
lake is one of the things of which Chicago is most
proud, an immense municipal pier. It is near the
mouth of the river. It is at the end of Grand Ave
nue. Chicago declares it to be the greatest of all
municipal piers, of any city ; it has a length of three
thousand feet and its uses are mainly for public
recreation. A little farther along the shore was "Shanty-
town," ruled over by the "Queen of the Sands"! —
and one sees, that in Chicago even vice is apt to
have a picturesque side, at least in nomenclature.
That the Eush Street Bridge could exist for so
many years after its inadequacy was painfully evi
dent is one of the things which point out the con-
tradictoriness of Chicago. And it not only long
continued its inadequate existence, but Chicagoans
felt a pride in it ! At the northern end of Michigan
Avenue, that wonderful Mile, two immense streams
of traffic merged to cross a rickety, narrow, unsightly
bridge : "the bridge with the greatest traffic of any
bridge in the world," Chicagoans declared, stand-
58

THE VISTA OF ADAMS STREET

OVEE EUSH STEEET BEIDGE
ing ready to give figures regarding vehicles and
pedestrians crossing any bridge in London or Paris
or New York if you would but listen. It seemed
only a busy, overworked little bridge. Yet this in
adequate bridge, that any other city would have
done away with over night, took years and years for
Chicago to replace. And this a city of triumphantly
big things ! A new bridge, no matter how elaborate,
across that narrow stream, could not for a moment
be compared with any one of the majestic bridges
across the East Eiver, in New York, or even with
one of the great high-level bridges of Cleveland;
yet these cities never made the pother and bother
over any one of them that Chicago made over this.
And the standpoint was always so amusing. I re
marked to a Chicago business man, one day, in re
gard to its obvious shortcomings, but he could not
see them, although at that very moment, as we
looked, there was inextricable jamming and locking
of 'buses and motors and vans, and the little old
bridge was shaking like a ship in a storm. "It's
a good bridge," he said, puzzled; "a perfectly good
bridge. Why, that bridge carries more traffic — "
and so on.
But at length the so-long-needed improvement was
got under way, and in 1920 it was completed, and
now a really fine and adequate bridge, a two-story
bridge, connects Michigan Avenue with the splendid
region to the northward, and the advance of business
blocks and apartment houses on the farther side of
the river has received important impetus.
59

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
The abutments of Eush Street Bridge, on the
south bank of the river, marked the center of the
stockade of the long-vanished Fort Dearborn. And
Chicago itself was for quite a while known by the
name of Fort Dearborn.
Every trace of the fort has gone. Indeed, it is
a very literal fact that so far as the city's early
history is concemed the sites alone are the sights.
There are no buildings associated with the men and
the stirring events of even a century ago. There
is no bit of stockade, no doddering house front, no
building incrusted with the literal or figurative
patina of time.
The spot where the beginning of the continuous
settlement of Chicago was made was where, long
afterwards, the Eush Street Bridge touched the
north bank of the river. The man who began the
continuous settlement came here during the Eevolu
tionary War ; a black man from San Domingo, bear
ing the ornate name of Jean Baptiste Point de
Saible. He sold his log house to a trapper French
man, and the Frenchman sold it to John Kinzie,
the first American, the first real settler. It was in
1804 that Kinzie and his family settled here, and
from time to time he so altered and enlarged the
house that its original aspect quite disappeared.
Kinzie was one of the early American silver
smiths. But there were few on Lake Michigan then
to buy silverware: the fort was built in the same
year that Kinzie came, and a few settlers drifted
graduaUy in : and Kinzie, leaving his art largely in
60

OVEE EUSH STEEET BEIDGE
abeyance, became important as an Indian trader,
receiving the boat sent annually by Aster's fur
company and acquiring acquaintance and influence
among the Indians. But he worked somewhat in
silver, and a few old Chicago families treasure ex
amples of his skill.
Fort Dearborn was named after a man who never
came here, never went west of Niagara ; but Chicago
has the right to feel proud that the man whose name
was given to the fort was full of a vital energy that
was quite Chicago-like. He was no office-chair
patriot. When he heard of Lexington he gathered
a company of sixty and led them to the army, march
ing sixty-flve miles a day. He fought at Bunker
Hill. He was not only present at the surrender of
Burgoyne but at that of CornwalUs. He was for
eight years secretary of War under Jefferson. And
it need not be matter of surprise that Dearborn
was an officer in the War of 1812 as well as in the
Eevolution, for, after all, we were fighting the same
King in both wars. And it was only a Uttle while
after the tragic episode of Fort Dearborn, that
Wordsworth wrote sadly of the King whom we
were for the second time fighting, as "deprived of
sight and lamentably wrapped in two-fold night."
Tragedy came to Fort Dearborn through an order
from General Hull directing Captain Heald to evac
uate the fort. This was the same Hull who in
cowardly fashion surrendered Detroit. He was
offered the opportunity to give up both Chicago and
Detroit and actually seized the opportunity!
61

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
It was in the first year of the War of 1812. The
Indians had been promptly let loose against us
along the border. To retreat from Fort Dearborn,
for scores of miles, through the Indian country, with
women and children and baggage (some of the gar
rison had their families with them, and a few scat
tered settlers, with their families, had sought
shelter at the fort), was an impossibility.
It was not a great military happening, compared
with the European events of the period. It was but
an unfortunate tragedy that came from the employ
ment of Indian allies. It was tucked in, as to date,
between Wellington's great battles in Spain and the
overwhelming Battle of Leipzig, when France was
England's bitterest enemy and Germany and
Austria were England's allies. How disconcert
ingly topsy-turvy is history! For in the War of
1812 we fought against England, and immensely
helped France. But only a few years before, Wash
ington was drawn from what he had deemed final
retirement to head the army for expected war with
France. The Chicago Massacre seems very near. Here by
this black and sluggish stream— now black and
always sluggish— the little party of nearly one hun
dred went forth to what they knew was almost
certain death. Captain WeUs, whose gay minia
ture we have just seen over yonder, blackened his
face in Indian fashion, to show the grim despair
of the situation. Near at hand, where now stands
a great department store, the Indians had left their
62

OVEE EUSH STEEET BEIDGE
camp and had gone to the lakeside trail to wait.
In some contemporary account I have read of
this as a "massacree," and I like the word; it
sounds so much more terrible with the double "e."
And it was the terror of this "massacree" which ac
counted in considerable degree for the energy with
which Illinois took part in the Black Hawk War;
poor old Black Hawk being rather puzzled by the
ireful commotion rather unintentionally aroused.
Following the Black Hawk War the Indians were
removed from what they, and their forefathers for
centuries, loved as the Illinois country, and sent to
the other side of the Mississippi. The United
States was not ungenerous, so it would seem, for it
freely handed out, at the last moment, sums of
money to such Indians as claimed rights in land.
And then came more than doubts as to the gener
osity of the government, or at least of its agents:
for the money was handed out, to the total of many
thousands of doUars, all in fifty-cent pieces, and
white men, with great supplies of poor whiskey, stood
by to tempt the red men to buy, and of course civil
ization beat savagery and took away almost all its
silver wealth; it was only because adverse winds
so delayed a ship, loaded with whiskey, that it could
not reach here in time, that the Indians got away
with any money at all. The visible supply of drink
having vanished, the Indians, streaked and daubed
with paint, drunkenly danced and yelled around
what was to be the northem end of Eush Street
Bridge and then, dancing and whooping, yelling,
63

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
gesticulating, brandishing weapons, they circled
about the future city's earliest localities, crossing
the river at the southward and returning toward
the lake along what was in time to be South Water
Street, now a street jammed and crowded and
thronged with wagons and with sellers and buyers
of vegetables, poultry, eggs and butter ; a survival,
this street market, with its bordering commission
houses, of a Chicago almost as old as the time of
the Indians, and now marked, itself, for passing
away in the interests of modern change.
With that wild orgy and wild march the Indians
vanished from Chicago. Old settlers used to tell
that, as they passed the Sauganash Hotel, where
later the Wigwam was to stand, where Lincoln was
to be nominated, a few visitors looked out, fright
ened, the Indians there having an access of wild
fury. The Chicago Eiver is a dark and dismal and
somber stream, over which gulls sweep and dip and
dive and utter their hoarse short cries, just as I
have seen them dip and dive and heard them cry
over some of the most beautiful river mouths in
England ; and gulls must have dived and cried here
when the first explorers came, when Chicago was aU
wilderness ; and so these gulls are probably descend
ants of those that welcomed Joliet and Marquette
and La Salle, and of those that later soared and
swooped and cried on the day of the "massacree."
The gulls of Chicago are of ancient pedigree.
The Chicago poets are, naturally, attracted by
64

OVEE EUSH STEEET BEIDGE
the waterside of the city, and one of them, Edholm,
writes of the river:
"They have bound me with bridges,
With tunnels burrowed under me I
Incessant, unresting,
All day and aU night,
TrafBc roars over me,
And my uplook to the blessed sky
Is barred with girders, cables, stacks. ' '
And to another Chicago poet, Sandburg, it is
a boat seeking the mouth of the river, in a fog, that
appeals, and its sad-sounding whistle
"Calls and eries unendingly,
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor's breast,
And the- harbor's eyes."
Where the Kinzie house once stood, across the
river from Fort Dearborn, a soap factory long ago
arose ; and very recently the factory was torn down,
in making room for the new bridge and its ap
proaches. Prominent on the side of the building,
where countless Chicagoans have seen and read it,
in the course of the years that it was there, was a
huge sign reminiscent of the once familiar and
homely custom of the week-end tub ! I happened to
be passing, one day in 1919, when the last of the
old sign was actually disappearing; and it showed,
not literaUy the Saturday night bath as a custom,
but as of Sunday morning; perhaps with the idea
65

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
of its interfering less with a business day; at any
rate, the sign, large and plain, read: "Wonderful
Sunday morning bath soap."

66

CHAPTEE VI

THE LOOP HOUNDS

CITY that can designate
a large part of its people
as "Loop Hounds,"
and do it genially and
have it taken good-
naturedly, almost as a compli
ment and assuredly not as a
criticism, must needs be an un
usual city, a city of quality
and of qualities. It is a
pleasant local phrase. It is
used by Chicagoans just as
they use "prairie dogs" to de
scribe the monumental lions in front of the Art In
stitute. They would resent "Loop Hounds" had
the phrase not been made in Chicago.
The myriad whose occupational activities are
centered within the Loop are the Loop Hounds ; and
the term includes the big merchants, both wholesale
and retail, and bankers, and city and county officials
and judges and lawyers and uncounted thousands
of workers in offices and stores. Within the Loop
too, or at its very edge, where the city looks out
over the lake, are almost every club and every hotel.
67

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Never in any city was there such a compact segrega
tion of important interests. The Loop is a parallel
ogram, formed by the Elevated Unes, and including
a limited number of city blocks. The trains come
in from north and south and west and intricately
and noisily box the compass and vanish. In com
mon parlaiice and understanding the Loop reaches
from about Twelfth Street to the river, at the north,
and from the south branch of the river to Grant
Park; thus extending a trifle outside of the Uteral
Elevated restrictions.
It has become the custom in Chicago to decry the
Loop, to criticize it, to try to do away with it be
cause of congestion of business and traffic within its
bounds. And it is amazing to notice how quickly
the influence of the Loop vanishes; how quickly,
leaving its precincts, one comes to raggedness of
building, into the poorly built or even almost squalid
regions. And it seems not much more than a
stone's throw from the City Hall to great spaces
used only as switch yards. The Loop Hounds are
like Brahma chickens in so readily believing them
selves to be held within an imaginary boundary for
their business affairs : what a foot-high wire is to a
Brahma, the Elevated structure is to the Loop
Hound. The Loop, whether or not it has at length passed
its usefuhiess, has been of incalculable benefit to
Chicago. The close centering of every kind of life,
of bankers and shoppers, club men and club women,
public officials and merchants, making them all into
68

THE LOOP HOUNDS
one united family constantly and unavoidably meet
ing one another, has been an immense influence;
and in addition there has been constant mingling,
with all these, of all the many visitors to the city.
With its interests united within the Loop, Chicago has
grown in strength and power. Her business center
stands within two blocks of where it stood in the
earliest days. There has been no constant deser
tion of one business district for another as in New
York, where the shopping has swept from City Hall
almost to Central Park. The women of Chicago
still go shopping within the district that has been
the center from the days when pioneer merchants
built the early shops such as those which Joseph
Jefferson saw as a boy. And this holding to the old
locality has given Chicago much of constancy, of
stability, has made it a city holding fast to tradi
tion. And this steady holding to the Loop district
— beginning many years before the building of Ele
vated tracks made a literal Loop — is the more re
markable when it is realized that the city has been
extended to a length of nearly thirty miles. The
Loop has given the city its homogeneity.
There is dramatic strength in the aspect of the
buildings of the Loop, as seen from the farther side
of the river. The buildings stand in the dignity of
massed compactness, the dignity of strength and
size and solidity. There are not the towering
heights of New York, for the building law forbids ;
and it has been suggested that Chicago put limita
tions on the height of her skyscrapers only when it
69

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
was clear that New York was leaving her hopelessly
behind in the race for height: but such a cynical
thought is not heeded or needed here by the lake!
And Chicago is immensely proud of the fact that it
is the city which first began steel framework con
struction of tall buildings, the factor which makes
the lofty business building possible.
Prominent in the mass, seen from across the river,
is a huge pillared building which loses much of its
impressiveness when seen close at hand. It is the
City Hall and county building, a great structure, oc
cupying the entire square between Washington,
Clark, La Salle and Eandolph Streets. But it
sorely needs an open space about it, to give archi
tectural effect.
In fact what strikes a stranger at once, is the
curious absence of any open square in the business
section. In early days the city had an open public
square; with a jail, in early American fashion,
standing in one corner of it; but it was decided to
utilize the conveniently vacant open space by build
ing the City Hall all over it.
The post-office is a huge building ; a mass of black
ish gray, with the dull green of copper; occupying
the entire block, to the sidewalk lines, between
Clark, Adams and Dearborn Streets and Jackson
Boulevard. A great dome is in the center ; on each
of the four fronts is a great, high-pedimented pil
lared wing; between the wings the spaces are fiUed
with lower masses, topped with openwork balus
trades of stone. And unless very recently changed,
70

THE LOOP HOUNDS
the post-office, exceUent though it is as offering a
sheltered passageway through from street to street,
is most ingeniously planned to cause inconvenience
to those using the buUding as a place to do ordinary
postal business.
I like the Chicago impulse to put itself in print in
regard to its own features: and it is Masters who
versifically says :
"Around the Loop the Elevated crawls,
And giant shadows sink against the walls
Where ten to twenty stories strive to hold
The pale refractions of the sunset's gold."
Yet not everything is precisely what it ought to
be. I went one evening, to where some flve hundred
were gathered in a hall on the top floor of a business
block. There was one single elevator. There was
only one stair, and it was of wood, twisting down
alongside the elevator. I noticed no fire escape and
no "Exit" signs. And men smoked freely.
Naturally, where business of every kind is so nar
rowly compressed, there are often busy street
scenes, and Chicagoans themselves love to point to
the intersection of State and Madison as the most
crowded of all corners; "in the world," of course,
and not merely in Chicago. And they indicate State
Street as the greatest shopping district in the world.
And the visitor, whether hesitant or not as to the
acceptance of the claims, at least sees a great many
people on the streets and sees exceedingly crowded
stores: and often notices highly artistic care and
71

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
effectiveness in window displays, evanescent though
they must necessarily be. And the waiting-rooms
of the big department stores are not filled with
women suburbanites, as in New York, but with
women city dwellers.
Much of the architecture of the Loop is really not
able; some of it is extraordinarily fine. In "The
Common Lot," by the Chicago novelist Herrick, a
Chicago architect, who has been studying in France,
is asked if he does not think a man ought to take
back to his home what he has learned; and he re
plies, "Well, perhaps, if the place weren't just Chi
cago." But one does not see reason for this, for
Chicago has been developing superbly.
There is, indeed, much that is odd or undesirable.
There is a style which I find myself terming dis
tinctly Chicagoan; that of the Masonic Temple, for
example, the skyscraper which everybody used to
go to see as one of the wonders of the world ; and the
Auditorium, a ponderous style, with great heavy
arches; and there are such unusualnesses as the
curves at the bottom of the Monadnock building and
the curve-out at the top of the square Auditorium
tower. But on the whole the average is markedly
high, for beauty and dignity. And with many of the
buildings expense has not been considered.
I entered, one day, one of the twenty-story build
ings, with no expectation of coming upon anything
notable. The entrance-way opened into a great
square-pillared Italian-like enclosed piazza, two
stories high, all in white porcelain, and there was a
72

THE LOOP HOUNDS
glorious stair of white marble, and this costly in
terior court was surrounded by attractive interior
shops, on two separate stories, here around the big
central court, shops of hatters, opticians, tailors,
manicures, shops for the sale of candy or cigars or
flowers, the upper eighteen stories being offices.
Chicago claims to spend more money on its business
buildings than does any other city of the world.
These interior shops suggest a curious develop
ment of business here; for several office buildings
have been quite given over to little shops, of book
sellers, dressmakers, a long variety of occupations,
the offices being made into little shops by putting in
show windows, looking into the corridors. The
reason, of course, is the congestion of the Loop.
Chicago has become quite accustomed to shop in
office buildings: "light shop-keeping," they call it;
and an advertisement of the best-known of these
buildings expresses the claims for this kind of busi
ness. "On a rainy day when the sidewalks are
muddily discouraging, what joy to be able to flnd
just about everything a woman wants, and many
things she had not realized she wanted, right here,
down warm, bright corridors — an indoor city in
itself. We have shops for many needs, and all
purses, with merchandise fresh and ultra-new,
which you will covet." Another point is that such
massing of shopping is a further aid in maintaining
the compactness of the business section.
When a druggist named Schmidt died, in 1918,
the city showed how closely it may continue to keep,
73

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
with particularity, local records of a nature interest
ing to itself ; for it was announced that he had been
one of the "veteran druggists of the city," for
although he was under sixty when he died, he had
been a druggist in the Loop for nearly forty years,
and had opened his store on the second floor of a
building at Madison Street and Fifth Avenue, thus
being "the first druggist to open a store on the
second floor of a business building not only in Chi
cago but in the United States."
Even some of the large banks of the city are on
the second floors, there being such shortage of
ground space within the Loop.
Bank buildings of the city run mainly to solidity
and costliness, with heavy pillars on their fronts.
There is, for example, the Northern Trust, with its
dozen great stone columns rising from the second
story and wreath-topped in stone. There is the
Illinois Trust, in its long low building of gray stone,
with its nine mighty Corinthian pillars in the center
and half a dozen Corinthian pilasters at either side.
And looking down narrow Quincy Street, beside this
building, one sees highset pillars above an open
balustrade of stone, and, towering far above and
behind them, the great dome of the post-office, mak
ing in all an impressive vistaed view. The lofty
Pantheon-like Central Trust is fronted by tall
pillars; the interior is an open skylighted space,
with marble and pilasters, with bronze doors palm-
leaf paneled. There is a floor of black and white
tesselation — one comes to think of the Loop as a
74

THE LOOP HOUNDS
district of black and white marble floors!— and
around the upper part of the interior is a series of
lunettes with paintings representing scenes in the
history of Chicago. And there it is again : always,
the importance of the history of the city; business
of to-day interwoven with that intense feeling for the
city's past. Another of the banks has four bronzes
depicting scenes in the career of Father Marquette,
because that famous man was for a brief space a
Chicagoan. One of the new perils that have come with a new
world was shown, one day, in 1919, when an airplane
dropped through the big skylight of one of these big
flnancial buildings, carrying with it death and de
struction. Another of the bank buildings has entrances of
square patterned bronze, with yellow granite sup
ports to the building and yellow granite pillars ris
ing from the second floor ; and on either side of the
entrance is a bronze entablatured lion, of heroic size.
And that illustrates a cheerful idiosyncrasy of the
city: the representation in bronze or stone of ani
mals and birds. Lions are favorites ; but I remem
ber noticing, twenty stories in air, a row of little
stone owls. Another building has an owl upon the
peak of a Gothic gable. I remember, too, a dome
surrounded by eagles. Another building, not to fol
low tamely, has little stone human figures, far up
aloft, out of sight except from the windows of a
higher adjoining building.
One day I did a little dog hunting within the
75

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Loop ; or, at least, I hunted for a bronze dog. For
I learned that, a good many years ago, while his
name and fame were still to be made, St. Gaudens
modeled a dog as an advertisement, or a sort of
trademark, for one of the big express companies;
and I searched and inquired, thinking that such an
odd thing must by somebody be known about; but
everywhere I met with ignorance of it. There had
been at least one removal of the offices; there had
come indifference. Then, long afterwards, came
the doing away with private management during the
period of public ownership disorganization. The
dog may stUl be trailed and found ; but he is not one
of the Loop Hounds, after all, for he is a Loop Bull
dog. La SaUe Street is the Wall Street of Chicago, and
as with New York, the financial district includes not
only the street that gives name to the district, but
some adjoining streets also.
The Board of Trade building, at the very edge of
La Salle Street, on West Jackson Boulevard, is not
in keeping with the wealth and dignity of the bank
ing and commercial buildings. It is ornate and un-
beautiful, of a mixed style of architecture, with two
tall stone women over the entrance and with a sort
of pointed effect from some little towers that barely
rise higher than the roof. But I tum to a Chicago
publication and find that this building and its hall
are "undoubtedly the grandest of the kind in the
world." However, the wealth of Chicago nowa-
76

THE LOOP HOUNDS
days understands the beauties of architecture, and
a new building is expected to be built.
What makes the Board of Trade building notable
is that it holds the Wheat Pit ; which is not a sunken
amphitheater sort of place, as one might suppose
from the name, but a place far from sunken, reached
by a stairway to the second floor. There one sees
a big open hall, tall-windowed. One sees masses of
excited men. One hears a roar of sound, a rum
bling shouting, strident boom of human voices, ris
ing and falling, sinking in volume only to break into
greater and more vociferous noise. And, intermit
tently, when the tumult and the shouting dies, one
hears the staccato ticking of the rows of telegraph
instruments off at one side.
At regular intervals stand four big platforms,
each three steps up from the floor, and three are de
voted to corn, to grain, to provisions, and the other
is the so-called Wheat Pit. And what gigantic
struggles have centered there !
Unlike other cities, there are few landmarks
noticeable in the business section. The absence of
open squares has much to do with this, the absence
of monuments, the absence of noticeable alternations
of highness and lowness in buildings. There is a
sense of singular compactness and evenness in all
the street scenes in the heart of the city. And ow
ing to the permeative coal smoke, the buildings are
colored to much of uniformity as to black and drab ;
and, more than in most cities, there is frequent
77

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
repetition of the same names over drug stores and
eating houses and cigar shops and haberdashers, be
longing to chains of similar shops, so that many a
stranger becomes bewildered, by encountering the
same name and the same window display, at right
and left and around the corner, in a short walk in
the busy part of the city.
Alleys are frequent, between the main streets, but
altogether without picturesque appearance, and
without distinctive life of their own. That they are
an aid in loading trucks, and that they uncomfort
ably break the level walking for those on the side
walks, is about all that can be said for them.
And yet, I remember a picturesque spot, off La
Salle Street, where an alleyway, bordered by tall
buildings of tawny brick, leads to and through and
under a building of brown : and I remember another
spot where an alleyway, almost picturesque, is
blocked at its end, almost quaintly, by a small pillar-
fronted building.
To quite a degree, businesses of a kind flock to
gether within the Loop. As, furniture dealers are
gregarious, and so are dealers in pianos and harps ;
and the harps of Chicago are played everywhere but
in heaven! Gregarious also are those who sell
plants and seeds. And here is the beginning of an
advertisement of one of the seed houses, and I quote
it because of its racy Chicagoism :
"Nature's factory whistle is blowing. Can't you hear
it? It is the moming song of the robin calling to you to
start your garden. The earth is waking. The first green
78

THE LOOP HOUNDS
tints of growing things suggest messes of tender peas,
bunches of spicy, baby radishes and onions, new beans,
spinach, chard and tomatoes."
In the buildings that are used for a multitude of
indoor shops there is some attempt at getting
people of a kind together; in one corridor osteo
paths are noticeable ; in another, music wails from
every room, these being haunts of music teachers;
in certain corridors one notices only perfumery or
drugs. So solid is the general appearance of the Loop
that two facts in regard to it are extraordinary:
one being, that many of the buildings are put up
on leased land — but the leases are mostly for ninety
nine years, and I suppose that to the typical busy
Chicagoan a century ahead has seemed an incred
ible time, short though has been the century just
past. The other fact is that this so solid seeming
city is mainly built on made ground. For the city
was too low for drainage. It had to be set higher.
And in Chicago, to realize the necessity of doing a
thing is usuaUy to do it forthwith. The project
was decided upon in 1857 and in spite of appalling
difficulties was carried into effect. "Every build
ing in the city must be raised the height of the
mayor, and he is six feet seven," declared a news
paper humorously. Later, another raising was
found to be necessary. On the whole, great areas of
the city have been raised from eight to fifteen feet.
The Tremont House of 1857 was one that had to be
raised. It was four stories high, of brick and stone.
79

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
A stranger, arriving from the East, heard of the
predicament from the sorely troubled proprietor,
and said, "I'll do it for you; and your guests will
not miss a single meal or a wink of sleep." Where
upon he placed five thousand jackscrews under the
building and set over a thousand men at work, and
the building rose, inch by inch, and the foundation
mounted beneath it as it rose. And thus the task
was done. The man who thus remarkably began
his Chicago career was George M. Pullman. And it
is odd to consider, that the line of achievement in
which, afterwards, Pullman won worldwide fame,
was based, after all, upon that idea of not letting
people "miss a single meal or a wink of sleep."
A serious shortcoming which Chicago had to face
was that of soil. For beneath the city is a great
bed of clay which shifts and moves under pressure,
and it was found that heavy buildings not only
sank, but raised or lowered buildings adjoining;
and as buildings must become stUl larger and
heavier the only remedy was to use unusual pains
and go to unusual depths with foundations.
There is no "Great White Way" in Chicago.
There are bright spots at night, with somewhat of
whirUng electric signs and colored lights, but no
great Ulumination and no outward indications of
particular gayety. Not that Chicago is a sedate
city, at night, but that even before the coming of
prohibition there was no particular brightening and
lightening of the ways.
Hotels are more a vital feature of Chicago Ufe
80

THE LOOP HOUNDS
than in most cities; one of the results of having a
crowded life within the Loop. The hotels are freely
made use of by the city people themselves and not
only by visitors. One of the newest and biggest is
not only thronged with men from out of town, but
has many little rooms used steadily as meeting
places or lunching places by this or that formal or
informal Chicago organization. Another holds it
self so high that to be, say, at a dance there is almost
equivalent to having the formal sanction of society.
You enter another hotel and find a long passage
way, where everybody meets everybody, a place full
of animation. And there is a gorgeous Pompeian
room, with pillars and pilasters of black and white,
and wall panels of brilliant Pompeian red, and there
are a fountain and an orchestra playing beside a
sunken pool. And one may go into an English
room, an Elizabethan room with dark oak and high
ceiling, with windows of leaded glass, a room of
wonderful effectiveness, in its subdued lights and
its grave beauty, and you think of Haddon Hall and
Knole. And there is still the famous Palmer House, with
its salmon-colored walls, which was long thought to
represent the last word in hotel achievement. An
English traveler set down more than a quarter of a
century ago, that he was told it was "the finest hotel
in the finest city on God Almighty's earth." Both
Palmer and Mrs. Palmer stood high, and being a
hotel keeper was not permitted to be any drawback.
On the contrary, Palmer set his name, "Potter
81

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Palmer," plainly and prominently upon the Palmer
House. In Chicago, hotelkeeping may still bring
substantial public prominence: the Sherman who
gave name to the Sherman House was three times
mayor of this city.
The invention of the free lunch has always been
claimed for a Chicagoan, and to another has been
given such distinction as may come from the quick
lunch. And many a Chicagoan has felt intense
civic pride in these claims, for the city is markedly
a gustatory city, a city with the love of eating, a city
devoted to viands.
Everywhere in the city, throughout its length and
breadth, there is an astonishing number of eating
places. Nor does this mean that people have no
home life. It means devotion to eating and to the
pleasant sociability of eating in public places. And
the feature is most strongly marked within the
limits of the Loop. Wherever you look, in this
central section you see some eating place. They
are on corners and between blocks, they are on side
walk level and upstairs and in basements: cafe
terias, restaurants, waffle shops, with rivalry in not-
distinguished names. There are the Universal,
the Wonder, the Ontra, there are the Eed Star
and the Puritan; there are the Pony and the Little
Gem; one offers "Quick Lunch for Bizzy Business
Men: Eat it and Beat it;" numbers have but a
single word over the doors, "Eat." To the thou
sands that you casually see, add the dining-rooms
in the hotels and clubs, and the dining-rooms tucked
82

THE LOOP HOUNDS
away in business blocks, and the vast dining-rooms
of the department stores, and it is amazing.
And I remember a restaurant that seems as if
transplanted direct from some French provincial
city, where the leathery-faced proprietor stands be
hind his own mahogany comptoir, where there are
formal lambrequins of velvet and gold over the
windows, where a little fat bus boy brings in the
silver-domed meat; with always the very atmos
phere of France, not unlikely added to by the en
trance of a couple of French officers in their uni
forms of horizon blue. And the wife and the daugh
ter of the proprietor come in, and he quietly sits
down to dine with them at a table next the comptoir.

83

CHAPTEE VII

STREETS AND WAYS

HAT the streets of Chi
cago were long and flat
and without end and
that they impressed
him with a great hor
ror was how the author
of "Plain Tales from

the Hills"
in making
from the
after all,
impressions

expressed it
vain wails
plains. But
the fleeting
of visiting

authors need not be taken too seriously by any city.
Our own Hawthorne wrote quite similarly regarding
what seemed to him the immense dreariness of
London, but I never heard that London was particu
larly overcome by it. Probably, in the case of both
men, it was a matter of getting tired and having
their feet hurt them, and homely explanations are
often the best.
Although there are great areas of quiet in Chi
cago, as in the region of the Gold Coast, the city
on the whole gives an impression of noise, and I
am inclined to think that this is because the average
84

STEEETS AND WAYS
Chicagoan has an actual love for noise, deeming it,
subconsciously, as necessarily and pridefuUy a con
comitant of a city's energy and success. Walk on
the sidewalk, in the central portion of the city, and
you cannot hear your companion speak. Eide in a
street car and you will find conversation impossible.
The noise of the trolley cars is terrific, particularly
at the unusually frequent switch intersections.
Flat wheels, with their pounding jar, are common.
Never, elsewhere, do you hear so many shrieking
automobile brakes, nowhere else is there such a clat
ter of broken chains on the wheels. The delivery
of coal at a high-class apartment house is likely to
be made the occasion of a carnival of noise. Open
a window, and a thunder of sound comes up.
There is a general sense of free-and-easiness, yet
it does not show itself in the supposedly "Westem"
style of dress. The Chicago business man dresses
like the business man of the East, except, now and
then, for a hat with a slightly broader brim. But
it is quite noticeable that the average Chicago busi
ness man has a more alert and forceful facial ex
pression and a better general air than has the
average business man of the East. A city does not
make such strides as this city has made without the
striders showing it.
The average policeman does have somewhat of an
easy-going air, compared with the police of most
older cities. In height and build he is much like
the New York policeman of the nineties, before the
coming in of so many foreigners, and their accession
85

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
in large numbers to the New York force, lowered
there the old-time American — or Irish! — physical
standard. If one does really notice an apparent heedless
ness on the part of a Chicago policeman, one must
also notice that it disappears in an instant when
there is anything to do : it is worth while to see him
stop a speeder or some other traffic violator or
gather up a blown-off hat, at the very moment when
he might be thought to be wrapped in thought.
And policemen in general, here, seem favorable to
motorists. At a busy crossing, in a time of busy
traffic, a car stalled at a crossing. There were only
two young women in the car, and within twenty
seconds twenty men were helping, or at least crowd
ing in an effort to help. One raised the radiator
cover, another peered beneath the car. One came
with gasoline, one with oil, one with a wrench, an
other with a screwdriver, others with nothing at all
but the determination to aid. The policeman on
crossing-post was master of ceremonies and let
traffic fume and wait. And the two girls sat de
mure and quiet; and perhaps it should be added
that they were unusually pretty.
The average of good looks, among what one terms
the "higher" classes of Chicago women, is very
high; in this, the city stands second to only one.
The women clerks and stenographers are, in gen
eral, alert, self-possessed, capable, pleasant to look
at, very feminine rather than strong-minded in
type. 86

STEEETS AND WAYS
The 'buses of a line along the lake shore are in
a dpuble sense vehicles of discussion on the part of
women and girls. One day, on a seat on the roof,
immediately behind me, the conversation ranged
from Mozart to the dramatic poets; but such pro
fundity did not keep them from very humanly
switching to the clothes of a friend: "She has
beautiful furs! But you know" an awed pause —
"she paid for them on the installment plan!"
There are such naive confidences as "I don't care for
"anything but reading and dancing"; a combination
not met with in many places ; and one day, directly
in my ear: "I want to write a good short story
and have money of my own."
It is often said that Chicago is not a colorful
city ; and the grayish black to which soft coal smoke
from myriad house chimneys and railway engines
and factories has reduced so much of the city has
really done away with much of the possibilities of
brilliancy and variety of color. Arnold Bennett
meant this when he said that Chicago reminded him
of the Five Towns, which like this city, are remark
ably smoke grimed. And he looked upon Chicago 's
smoky air as a mystifier and beautifier; which is
certainly making a merit of misfortune. But Chi
cago has what his Five Towns do not have, the
bright and vivid colorings that come from its posi
tion on the shore of the oftentimes brilliant lake.
Another English visitor went home and wrote of
"murky, grimy, choky Chicago."
And as to color — after all, it may be found here.
87

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
There comes the memory of seeing, on Monroe
Street, two men in blue overalls and jumpers, load
ing green bales upon a high-sided wagon whose
wheels and body were of bright yeUow. And out
on the western outskirts of the city I noticed a
Eussian-like effect in color, a warehouse of .garish
yellow standing in the middle of a field of swamp
grass of vivid green. Even more strong color con
trast was in the Lake Calumet part of the city, where
a building used for some kind of lime-burning work
was aU white as to roofs and sides, and the yard
about was all white, too, from some deposit that fell
or floated through the air, and against this striking
and grim whiteness, rose two stacks from the tops
of which came columns of excessively black smoke.
And some recent pictures by Joseph Pennell show
unexpectedness of color in supposedly commonplace
portions of the city.
One is reminded of a marked difference between
the Elevated lines of New York and those of Chi
cago, the latter running largely through rights of
way, rather than through streets, thus giving much
of unattractive and uninteresting views of squalid
back yards and back doors, and at night running
through darkness instead of along lighted streets.
Sunday night is a time for enjoyment. The
theaters, at least the greater number, are open, and
the advertising Ughts are blazing, and the billiard
'rooms are brilliantly lighted along their lines of
tables, which are in full view. The sidewalks are
thronged in a quite orderly but distinctly gay
88

STEEETS AND WAYS
fashion, although not so gay as before the incoming
of recent laws.
Especially in those amusement and shopping
centers which are away from the heart of the city
is Sunday a day of promenading, motoring, dining
and gayety. Always one notices these distant
centers with interest. I do not refer to villages,
taken into the city with small centers of business
life already in existence, growing as the city grows,
but centers which have sprung into busy and
thronging life by what might seem chance. And
there always comes to mind, more than others, the
extremely busy and attractive center at Broadway
and Lawrence Avenue, where for quite a region
thereabouts stores have arisen, and moving-picture
theaters; one or two of these being of extremely
high standard as regards general plan and lavish
ness of expenditure. Chicagoans believe that there
are about fifty outlying centers ; but visitors, with
out in the least doubting the statement, do not hap
pen to come upon so many as that. And, curiously,
these local centers do not in the least offset the
massed centering of the Loop.
As the State names its counties after dis
tinguished Americans, so the city similarly names
many of its parks and streets; and it helps to up
hold the Americanism that one notes as a feature of
the city. Among the parks are Washington and
Lincoln, Grant and Jackson, McKinley and Garfield,
and among the streets there are, as with the parks,
Washington and Lincoln (the city does not tire of
89

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Washington and Lincoln!) and a host of others,
such as Sherman and Sheridan, Dewey and Custer
and Polk and Taylor, Madison and Monroe and
Webster. The name of California is given to an avenue
that runs for many miles, and Sacramento is also
used as a name, there being a strong pro-California
feeling here, but New York is quite ignored as a
name, although the name of New England is used.
Western Avenue is naturally and properly the long
est in the city, reaching from the southern limits
of the city to the northern. Foreign names are
used to Some extent, including the one so often
called, quite simply and frankly, "Goat" Street;
and I was intrigued by the name of Napoleon some
where on a street comer.
It is odd for a city of the undoubted independ
ence of Chicago, that there is an intense following
of the doings of the very rich; an idiosyncrasy
which shows itself markedly in the "movies,"
where every action of wealthy men and women is
watched with absorbed attention, and whose every
motion, every act or gesture, of maid or valet, of
the personal servant, is observed with fascinated
absorption. Some of the smaller politenesses, little nice-
nesses, Chicago ignores. For example, few men
take off their hats when standing on the street in
talk with a lady. But hats-off is observed in eleva
tors the moment a lady enters. Many children are
allowed to be lax in general politeness in public
90

STEEETS AND WAYS
places ; it is seldom that a boy or girl gives up a seat
in a street car for an old man or even for a gray-
haired lady. Men do not greatly give up their seats
to women, but this is coming to be the case in many
cities, through the insistence of women themselves
that they are in every way men's equals.
In a street car one day I noticed an extraordi
nary devotion to courtesy. The car was so packed
that nobody could move an inch. A woman, ad
mirably gowned, was quite unconscious of the fact
that one of her hatpins kept touching the face of a
man standing beside her and unable to escape.
After quite a while he spoke, but even this was not
to complain of his own injuries. For he said,
gently: "Madam, I beg your pardon, but perhaps
you would like to know that a drop of blood from
my cheek is on the shoulder of your gown."
The surface cars are so run and managed as to be
a matter of suffering, but some day Chicago will
doubtless have subways like other great cities, or
lines of motor 'buses. Now and then there is a car
with a few vacant seats; and at such time I have
noticed that there are almost sure to be several
men and women standing, swaying and staggering
as the car itself sways and staggers, and not taking
any of the seats! One helplessly wonders why.
Eecently I saw this oddity commented upon in one
of the newspapers, which published a letter asking
if it could be explained by the fear of spoiling ex
pensive fur coats. To this another observer
triumphantly replied that animals themselves wear
91

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
fur coats without injuring them. Upon which
came a comment from the editor, dryly suggesting
that a visit to the zoo would show whether or not
furred animals injure their coats by sitting down.
The homes and business offices are heated per-
fervidly; and I have wondered if this has anything
to do with the baldness so common among youngish
men. And one wonders also where the old men go !
For they are seldom seen except a few as exhibits
at meetings of the Historical Society.
There is a smaller number of opticians shops to
be seen, than in Boston or Philadelphia, and it
naturally follows that there is a smaller than cus
tomary average of eye-glassed men. Although
restaurants are incredibly numerous, the number
of what are distinctively known as grocery stores
seems small; at least, one does not notice many,
although there are many of the type termed delica
tessen shops. Candy shops are common and so are
shops for ice cream. It is curious to notice that
artichokes are eaten quite commonly, even small
shops selling them. And that Chicagoans are very
largely farm boys and farm girls grown up is shown
by the fact that so many, in springtime, love to
carry home little bunches of sassafras root, the
habit being apparently a survival from the times
when every household held firmly to the tradition
of sassafras as a "blood purifier."
There is a noticeably large number of little shops
for repairing shoes. The astonishingly large num
ber of drug stores, most of them selling "soft
92

STEEETS AND WAYS
drinks" and candy, makes for close competition;
and one druggist has, at his shop door, a ther
mometer with shif table frame; with this he makes
the weather seem a little colder than it is on a cold
day and a little hotter than it is on a hot day; and
people are so pleased to see a thermometer that
expresses their feelings, that quite a proportion of
those who stop to look go in and buy.
Bordering the excellent residential sections there
are a great many fine small shops, with articles for
women or various supplies for households; small
and intimate shops which it is pleasant to see stUl
in existence as well as to see the great department
stores. Much of the shopkeeping, alike in little
places and big, is positively Parisian in standard,
in attractiveness and charm. There are hat shops
of French exquisiteness. And in the window of at
least one prominent shop is "On parle Fra/ngais";
this being not only to attract such French as may
come but also to please a large French element that
settled here from Canada.
Chicago uses great quantities of box plants, with
out roots, in hotel and theater lobbies and as supple
mentary foliage in flower shops; and this is the
more noticeable from the almost sacredness in
which, in other cities, box is held.
Horses are still more in evidence than in most
large cities ; and this gave a recent opportunity for
a reporter, describing a street accident, to say that
the horse was with difficulty "stood up on its four
corners." Perhaps it was the same reporter who,
93

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
narrating a bit of local heroism, declared that
"Horatius had nothing on Jimmie."
Chicago has such oddities as houses with outside
wooden steps up to the second-story front doors —
not high steps to a merely high entrance, but steps
leading ladder-like from the sidewalk to a literal
second-story front door. It is presumably an idea
retained from the time when most of the city was
swamp, above which it was imperative to go. It is
quite a feature with houses in the humbler districts,
-and on an afternoon stroll one may count fifty or
sixty of such houses. There are square miles of
rather dingy, detached and discouraged dwellings
built of wood, but they are more homey than the
human hives of close-built cities, although the
dinginess of sooty wood lends its aid to discourage
ment. Overhanging cornices, in the business section, are
permitted to drop water freely on the unhappy
pedestrians, after a rain or when snow is melting.
Every city has, from necessity, somewhat of this
condition, but Chicago suffers particularly even in
the best shopping districts. The sidewalks are also
allowed to become sloppy, after a snow, and the
cleaning of the sidewalks does not appear to be
closely enforced, and the alleyway entrances that
frequently cut across the sidewalks are often deep
in slush. Often there is an unexpectedly steep step
downwards from sidewalk to street pavement.
Wet streets are largely due to the lowness of the
city levels ; and one wonders, in all seriousness, why
94

STEEETS AND WAYS
windmills are not utUized, as wise little Holland
would utUize them. Chicago has the wind ! There
comes a general impression that it rains very easily
here ; and indeed there are often sudden rains that
may tum into drenching drives and go roaring
through the streets. Nor is this impression of easy
rain one which comes only to visitors, for it rains
quite through "The Pit," book of Chicago by a
Chicagoan that it is, and even the very last chapter
begins, ' ' The evening had closed in wet and misty. ' '
Pavements are in general so excellent that some
very bad ones, even in good residential districts,
are noticeable by contrast. And these are remind
ers of the early days when all the streets were deep
in mud. There are still places where, after a
period of wet weather, one thinks of the oldest of
Chicago stories, about a pedestrian noticing the
head and hat of General Hart Stewart showing
above the mud, whereupon, "You're in pretty deep.
General!"; to which the reply: "Great Scott!
I 've got a horse under me ! " And one needs to re-.
member not only that the city level has been raised
but that up to the middle of the eighteen hundreds
there were no sewers, and no sidewalks except a few
planks. Old settlers teU, too, of water being sold
by the bucketful, that being the drinking-water
service of the city.
Chicago has no home district close to the business
part of the city, that being a result of the soUd de
velopment of business within a definite area, for it
left no place for houses. 95

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Years ago, great lumber piles covered great areas
along the river beds, but with the disappearance of
the mighty forests of the neighboring States the
pUes have dwindled to comparative nothingness.
Chicago is a city of homes. And somehow the
impression of an old-time friendliness of life has
been retained; the comfortable, homey quality of
life. And in spite of an immense influx of
foreigners the American atmosphere has persisted,
the American spirit is still dominant.
Even when the homes are in apartment houses
the general aspect is so comfortable that the home
like impression remains. There are plots of grass
and greenery around the buildings. The homes are
detached, instead of being built closely shoulder to
shoulder. Most of the apartment houses also have
at least somewhat of lawn and greenery: they
average four stories in height, and are generally so
arranged that the rooms are grouped about a center,
instead of being in a straight line like the cars of
a railway train. There are also, too, some great
caravansary apartment houses, tall and capacious.
Huge beachside hotels, for both winter and sum
mer living, are a feature of life here, within the city
limits but far to the south of the center and far to
the north.
Chicago is not a towered or spired city; there are
few in all, and mostly they are where they cannot
readily be seen. The street lights are admirable
in appearance, in their round white globes on top
of well-made poles ; and at many corners there are,
96

STEEETS AND WAYS
on the lampposts, the letters "N," "S," "E," or
"W," to teU strangers the points of the compass.
^ As showing one of the piquant contrasts of the
city there comes the memory of a night following
a mayoralty election. The day had been one of
tremendous excitement. It had been a bitterly con
tested struggle with an almost unprecedented vote.
Hundreds of thousands of ballots were cast. That
night, huge crowds gathered to learn the result,
especially in front of the building of a principal
newspaper. But the crowd was quiet! Excite
ment and interest seemed to have vanished. Now
and then came a cheer, but rather as if perfunc
torily. Nor was this because of doubt as to result,
for very early it was seen which candidate was win
ning, nor was it that an unpopular man had won.
It was a decorous street gathering, with a few boys
hovering on the outskirts of the throng and from
time to time spiritlessly essaying horns! The slo
gan of the winner was that he was not to be
"bought, bluffed or bossed," and that was an ex
cellent example of Chicago's excellent advertising
phraseology; which brief political phrasing makes
me think of a brief religious wording on a placard
in front of one of the churches: "Only once a
stranger. ' '
For a city so full of the very essence of animated
existence, it is odd to notice the great attention paid
to the business of undertakers. Of course, Chicago
is noted for its undertakings ; but not of that kind !
A show window centered with a gorgeous "casket"
97

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
is certain to attract a constant succession of awed
and intent spectators. And there are such adver
tisements as "the spirit of emotion is tenderly
woven into every bouquet from our sympathetic
hands." At the same time, the city does not hold
its cemeteries to be among its sights; visitors are
not taken to them as to places of importance and in
terest ; not even to Graceland, where there are many
of the most famous of Chicagoans, and where John
Kinzie and his descendants rest ; in peace, one may
hope, although to judge the future by the past, the
original Kinzie will keep on moving, Graceland
having been attained only after his body had been
several times disinterred and moved on.
As a local description has it, in Graceland "there
are presented suggestive features which, while not
inharmonious with the purpose of a necropolis, are
cheerful, quieting and restful." Although one may
wonder under which heading comes the startling
statement, in a description of one of the tombs, that
"Five persons are now enclosed within its solid
walls"! The city cannot help being black so long as the
smoke is permitted. And if you notice stenog
raphers lean out of high office windows to catch
sight of something in the street below, you will at
the same time notice that they first lay paper on
the sill, to keep their hands clean. Much in the city
being grim and grimy makes it the more noticeable
that such a proportion of men wear white stockings,
as if in defiance. Yet laundry is handled but
98

STEEETS AND WAYS
slowly. Glove-cleaners, in this city where gloves
are so quickly soiled, expect to take a week for
cleaning, or think it a special dispensation to do it
in four days: the twenty-four hour glove service
of other cities is unknown.
The iron boxes on the curbs, about two and a half
feet long and eighteen inches high, are not pirate
chests, although they give that picturesque re
minder, but are what they are marked as being, aids
in keeping the city clean. They are usually so per
versely placed that, to lift the cover to drop in litter,
one must leave the sidewalk and go into the gutter ;
but the people take pains to do this. But another
use for them is advantage points for standing upon
to see a parade or any excitement.
Although there is much of effort to keep many of
the streets clean, many others are neglected. And
vacant lots are likely to be entirely neglected. That
wagons are permitted to be parked, throughout the
night, in vacant lots, is an astonishing survival for
so highly civiUzed a city. And a habit in some
parts of the city, of throwing refuse matter upon
vacant lots, does not represent the best possible
method of garbage disposal.
The city of Edinburgh, in the Middle Ages and
up to within less than a century ago, permitted the
throwing of refuse from the windows of the many-
storied houses whose quaintness gives such charm.
And modern Chicago seems to have tried, at least
in some parts of it, to simulate that ancient custom
of an ancient city. For a recent superintendent of
99

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
police, according to a publication of one of the
women's clubs under date of 1917, sent out a notice
directing his officers to check "the throwing of gar
bage from the windows of the first, second and third
fioors of buildings to streets and aUeys." But why
such favoritism to the fourth!

100

CHAPTEE VIII

CLUBS AEE TRUMPS

L U B S are
trumps in Chi
cago ! Every
body belongs
to a club ;
everybody that
i s clubable,
that is, to use
a word beloved
of Doctor
Johnson. Most
men and women
belong to sev-
eral clubs.
And there are some belong to many clubs.
All the principal clubs except, of course, the
country clubs, are close together and close to every
thing in the heart of the city. Within a radius of
less than a mile, within a few minutes' walking dis
tance from the banks, from the wholesale and retail
stores, from the Art Institute, from the Public Li
brary, the clubs are located. They are busily used.
Business men, authors, artists, bankers — at noon
101

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
and in the evening they are in these clubs. Clubs
long ago became an intimate feature of the daUy
life of Chicago.
There is a mingling of classes which is unknown
elsewhere in anything like the same degree, and
which is of vast importance to a city that would re
main open-eyed and possess continuously the vigor
of youth. At a club where a stranger would expect
to meet, for example, only writers, he will find, be
side the latest poet, the oldest bank president, be
side the author of a novel of Chicago life will be a
dealer in laces or leather. And if he goes into a
business man's club he will find, in conversation
with a lawyer fresh from his case in court, a writer
whose work has attracted national attention, he will
notice the head of a department store or a promi
nent architect in conf abulative talk with an editorial
writer from one of the newspapers. The meeting
and mingling of engineers, architects, artists, mer
chants, manufacturers, novelists, essayists, para-
graphists, poets, makes of the clubs a unique and
powerful force. Every one finds an opportunity to
give and receive ideas. And each club, though a
meeting place for various classes, holds to its own
distinctive line and develops most strongly along
that line.
Club characteristics which supposedly belong
only to some old city with a long-established society,
as a London, a Philadelphia, are found to be firmly
established here. Here are clubs of exclusiveness,
clubs the majority of whose members are men of
102

CLUBS AEE TEUMPS
settled position, literary clubs which seem of as firm
consistency and of as excellent flavor as if long
periods of time had gone into their making. Even
the newer clubs quickly take on an air as of stability
and age. And there are noble club buildings which
would honor any city of the world. And, the city
not being possessed of the mania of moving on, hav
ing iio "uptown" bee in its civic bonnet, there is a
feeling of permanency in the location of the clubs
which is very restful. And already there are clubs
in which, to gain membership, one must join a
lengthening line of aspirants: one of the big clubs
has a waiting list of twenty-two hundred.
But there are clubs and clubs. There are some
whose memberships are frequently advertised, to
sell or to buy. The newspapers run a regular ad
vertisement section of ' ' Club and Association Mem
berships" and in it the names of a few clubs of repu
tation sometimes figure.
Instead of being sleepy places for sleepy men, or
mere places for imbedding oneself in an easy chair
to read the newspapers and magazines, or places
for gossip and scandal — although there are doubt
less elements of all these — the clubs of Chicago are
vivid with mental life. The club rooms are just as
quiet and restful as those of other cities; they are
not in the least noisy with conversation or argu
ment; but they are really meeting and thinking
places, as well as places with a full proportion of
comforts. Most of them have highly popular din
ing rooms and their being so centrally convenient
103.

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
for noonday getting together is of high importance.
But they are not merely places where men make
two chins grow where only one grew before.
Benjamin Franklin, with his Junto, made one of
the aims of that remarkable club the welcoming to
the city of visitors; and this idea is finely carried
out in Chicago ; and many a traveler goes home and
declares that in the city of Chicago he found the
finest hospitality in the world. I recollect having
heard this said as far away as in England and in
France. Women are prominent in the club life of Chicago :
and not only as charming figures in the women's
dining rooms of the men's clubs, or at the tea-hour
in their own. Their club rooms, like those of the
men, are within the circumscribed limits of the busi
ness center, and their clubs busy themselves in mat
ters of art and Uterature, in matters of home-mak
ing or social concern, in matters of public good or
public evil.
The oldest club for women, among those that
stand for civic service, is the Chicago Woman's
Club, and in its half century of existence (it was
founded in 1876) it has made an ever-lengthening
record of achievement in arousing public opinion.
It has from the first been an organized center of
civic initiative and inspiration. And the club feels
pride in the fact that within it originated the idea
of the National Federation of Women's Clubs.
With its more than thirteen hundred members, the
club has thus far gone on without a building of its
104

THE MULLION-WINDOWED UNIVERSITY CLUB

CLUBS AEE TEUMPS
own, but has had commodious quarters in one of
the great office buildings facing the lake; but as I
write plans are well toward completion for the put
ting up of a new building to be exclusively the prop
erty of this club.
Among the numerous delightful women's clubs —
I was about to alter that, and say "delightful clubs
for women," when it occurred to me that the first
phraseology was the better after all — I may men
tion one of the newer ones, the Cordon, energetic,
with a membership of well over five hundred and
with a thoroughly delightful atmosphere. I do not
remember being told of a specific purpose except
to be an excellent club. Its rooms are in the Fine
Arts building, with a pair of entrance doors of
carved oak, as excellent in effect as if from some
Spanish or Italian grandee's home of the Eenais-
sance. A room for dining has a monastic effect,
with a raised floor at one end, with a sort of "above
the salt" table. Walls and arches are in buff-
plaster, and there are tables and chairs of mellow
brown oak. The china has a narrow black haw
thorn border. And another long room parallel to
this is all a greeny-blue as to chairs, with portraits
of Italian ladies — we all love Simonetta! — and the
fair faces of the Eenaissance.
The Fortnightly is in the Fine Arts building; and
notable is its meeting room, large and rectangular,
with high-coved ceiling. It is of very quiet effect,
with creamy walls, and a raised platform backed by
green-toned tapestry. The especial feature is the
105

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
presentation of important subjects by important
people. When tea is served in quiet Canton china,
it is in a small room that has old and lovely furni
ture. This club seems to average an unusual
number of women of wealth and acknowledged posi
tion and to stand for the quiet and conservative in
taste. At the Fortnightly and at some of the other clubs,
I noticed much of real lace, in collars and neck
garniture, very quiet, not widespread shoulder dis
play, and mainly worn by elderly ladies and young
matrons. There were Venetian, Brussels, Honi-
ton ; and I think more of it is worn and prized here,
as in England, than in any other American city
that I have noticed.
The Eleanor clubs are for self-supporting girls,
offering opportunity to sit and read or talk, and
to meet callers, and where a girl may be accom
panied by a brother or a man friend in the dining
room. The central club occupies practically an en
tire floor of an office building in the business center,
with a membership of over eighteen hundred; and
there are branch club houses in various parts of
the city where girls may live who do not have homes
of their own.
In Chicago, there is the Beresford Cat Club, and
there are more than a dozen Households of Euth,
and there is a branch of the Daughters of Isabella,
and there are three Councils of the Degree of
Pocahontas, and there are a number of branches
of the Knights and Ladies of Security, and there is
106

CLUBS AEE TEUMPS
the Prince of Wales Chapter of the Imperial Order
of the Daughters of the British Empire. There
are various Tents of the Daughters of Veterans,
and there are also Daughters of the Confederacy.
It is astonishing and it is remindful of what
mingling of blood went into the making of Chicago
and from what proud American ancestry came the
makers of the city, to find that here are organiza
tions, strongly entrenched, such as one's first
thought would scarcely draw away from the Thir
teen Original States! For here are the Daughters
of the Eevolution, and here is a branch of the
Society of Colonial Wars, and here are even May
flower descendants.
The Colonial Dames are also here, in this new
city, and they have established an American His
tory scholarship at the University of Chicago, and
are working steadily to increase patriotism,
through aiming to give an understanding of Ameri
can institutions and ideals to foreigners of the city,
by means of many lectures, by the buying and dis
tribution of books, and by interesting school
teachers in the work.
The Arts Club, in its location on Michigan Boule
vard high up in an office building, is one of the
examples of the extraordinary results that can be
attained, without building especially but by utiliz
ing what may be found. There is a room, high and
long, across the front of the building, and one
notices the marble pillars, slender and dark-green,
and black lamps with vellum shades. Back from
107

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
this room extends a room so long and narrow as to
be almost a corridor, and when dinners are served
all is effective, with the long candle-lit table, the
gowns, the faces, in the softly long perspective.
An appreciation of the beauty-loving quality in
Chicagoans comes upon one very strongly in a place
like this. When there is a play given by members
of the club, it is likely to be very well done; and
I remember an excellent presentation of "The Im
portance of being Earnest." Local play-writing
is encouraged, by an offer to give production to any
play that is recommended by a special committee.
The club is a club that is different, so to speak, for
its object is to bring art lovers and art producers
together, for mutual benefit, by means of exhibi
tions, decorations and plays.
There is so great an amount of club life that there
is a marked lack of knowledge as to where people
Uve. Men meet one another at the clubs and then
vanish from one another's sight. It may even be
the case that intimate friends meet at the club of
one or the other of them, to the practical exclu
sion of home hospitalities; and the men's clubs
with dining rooms where women are made welcome,
and the women's clubs where men may dine, add
to the ease of keeping up family friendships away
from home.
The country clubs are, as with other great cities,
of an attractive order, such as the Exmoor and
Glen View, with golf as a principal feature; and
there is the unique-looking South Shore, palatial
108

CLUBS AEE TEUMPS
albeit of stucco, with its immensities of corridor
space, its superbness in size and proportions of the
interior. In contrast to this is another club to the
southward, the quiet, friendly, intimate Quadrangle
Club at the University.
But one always comes back to the center of
things, for in the center of things are almost aU of
the clubs.
The White Paper Club meets once a week at its
meeting room in one of the central hotels. It is an
interesting club, for one meets newspaper writers
and artists, publishers and advertising managers,
live men of live ideas; it is a lunching club, and
there is good talk with the luncheons. And if, as
at other clubs, the talk is sometimes of business,
it is but making friendly use of club facilities. The
idea that a club is a drowsy place, where business
or the mere thought or mention of business is
shocking, is not at all consonant with Chicago ideas.
A Chicago club is a convenient place to talk busi
ness as well as a place for social gathering and con
verse, for rest and recreation. Now and then some
one jibes, at some club or another, with such
phrases as, "You meet your tailor there and talk
business," but the majority of clubmen quite ignore
such flings.
The Union League is important, and its member
ship is largely of oldish men (oldish for Chicago!)
men of business, men of politics, men of wealth.
And one notices that the name, as with the similarly
named organization in New York, is the "Union
109

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
League Club," instead of, as in PhUadelphia, the
"Union League." The Chicago Club is likewise
a club with a considerable proportion, and perhaps
a preponderance, of what are here deemed oldish
men. The club itself is more than half a century
old, and its members are largely of the firmly es
tabUshed in wealth. It holds itself rather high
and stiff— that is, stiff for Chicago! — but the
members smilingly admit that at the time of organi
zation it was necessary to instruct some of the im
portant men among the charter members as to the
meaning and uses of a club and club membership.
Among its members have been such men of national
fame as Chief Justice Fuller, Eobert T. Lincoln
and General Sheridan. You may be told, also, that
the first president of the club was one McCagg, and,
with a fine particularity as to details, your club-
member informant may add that he was the hus
band of the sister of the first mayor of the city.
There used to be, frankly, a "millionaire's table,"
in this club; but the frankness of the early days
has largely gone: there could readily enough be
a roomful of such tables now, but they don't call
them so.
The Chicago Athletic Association may stand as
a type of strong and admirable club, with its great
list of members, including a wide variety of classes,
and its great and notable building looking out over
the Lake Front; a roomy capacious building, of an
architecture of which its members are immensely
110

CLUBS AEE TEUMPS
proud, and with a fine air of cheerful restfulness
and an atmosphere of comradeship.
Equally typical, in its way, is a tiny little club
which is not really a club at all but something which
holds the finest essence of clubdom. I do not know
anything in other cities precisely to compare with
it. The Little Eoom, it is called. A group of men
and women, of ideas and ideals, gather one after
noon of each week to interchange their ideas and
judge of each other's ideals. Artists and authors
meet there, with a sprinkling of architects: it is
a closely friendly little group, meeting in the studio
of Ealph Clarkson. It is so without pretense or
pretentiousness that it can take with a smile the
appellation of the "artistic holy of holies," be
stowed upon it in friendliness. A "quaint close
corporation" I have also known it to be termed.
The Cliff Dwellers is the name of a club which
might be called the Larger Eoom, for it is much
like the Little Eoom except that it is in every re
spect a formal club and that its membership is of
men only. In the evening, however, and for dinner,
women are guests. Primarily the Cliff Dwellers is
a club for writers, and every local author is ex
pected to be a member; the club takes its name be
cause its rooms look out over the lake, from the
very cornice line of one of the Lake Front build
ings. Artists belong, and professional and business
men who are interested in artistic and literary sub
jects. It is not only a most agreeable club, in atmos-
111

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
phere, but is a strong influence along the best lines of
Chicago development.
The Commercial Club is an organization of lead
ers in Chicago life and finance, always ready to aid
when an object especially appeals.
A club of weight and character, of large and im
portant membership, is the University Club. It
occupies its own building, a building superb in size
and symmetry, facing out toward the lake from
Michigan Avenue ; a building Gothic throughout, as
tonishing in mastery of great height. It is, through
out, a surprising building in beauty and impressive
ness. And it is remarkable that in such a city of
newness, university men should be so powerfully in
evidence. It is a men's club, distinctively, but there is a
women's dining room; a large, low, pleasant room,
of leather and oak; it might be a Cambridge or an
Oxford room, perfect as it is in soft, rich, dignified
detail, far removed from gloss and glow, filled at
luncheon with wives and daughters and guests; a
sort of happy, easy, protected type, far removed
from the tawdry glories of a "peacock alley" and
not to be seen from the street or corridor.
But the most remarkable feature is the great
high main dining-room, splendid in its Gothic ef
fectiveness and with windows glowing with stained-
glass color. This, you will be told, is the finest
club dining-room in the world ; and you are inclined
to gasp; and then you begin to wonder precisely
which one you could place ahead of it ! It has not,
112

CLUBS AEE TEUMPS
indeed, the age and associations of some of the old
dining halls, but Chicago merely feels, in the face of
any such objection, that age and association will
come with time. And I appreciate the sincerity
of a member who gravely said to me : "When I eat
my dinner here I feel as if I am dining in West
minster Abbey!"
And this reminds me that somewhere in the city
there is a Society of St. George of Tanias! And,
as if not to be outdone, others have formed a Tribe
of Ben Hur. And are there not also the Eoyal
Black KJnights of the Camp of Israel !

113

CHAPTEE IX

THE PASSING OP PEAIEIE AVENUE
EAIEIE AVENUE,
"the sunny street that
held the sifted few,"
stiU remains in the mind and
memory of many a Chicagoan
as illustrative of all that is
rich and splendid in city Ufe.
Some of the most costly of
Chicago homes may still be
seen there, and some of the
city's most delightful peo
ple still dwell there, but
social leadership, on the whole, has gone northward
to the Gold Coast. With the departure of social
leadership, even though some of the social leaders
still have their homes there, the passing of Prairie
Avenue began. As any great city grows, it leaves
behind it once prosperous sections; and as this is
the region of Prairie and Calumet and Indiana
avenues it is remindful, through these names as
sociated with the Indians, of the custom of some of
the tribes, when on the march, to leave behind to
perish such as could not keep up with the necessary
swiftness of the pace. 114

THE PASSING OF PEAIEIE AVENUE
An example of the changes that have come is
given by the First Presbyterian Church. It was
prominent among the churches of this section and
was just one block from Prairie Avenue. It took
pride in having the tallest steeple in Chicago and
in having a congregation of importance; but the
church spire has vanished and the building stands
bleak and bare and dreary, and the congregation
has deserted the old building and has gathered in a
new one elsewhere.
I think it was Dean Hole, that merry old soul,
who first put a Prairie Avenue story in print, after
it had passed for quite a while in Chicago circles
by word of mouth. One of the very rich men of
this very rich quarter, a man sour and dour, who
had the reputation of being grasping, fell sick, and
the doctor ordered that he walk every morning to
his place of business. The first morning, he looked
so unwontedly happy that his business partner
asked him what had occurred. "I have done three
splendid acts," the man replied. And he went on
to say that as he walked down to business he saw a
woman with a child in her arms weeping on the
steps of a church. He stopped and asked her what
was the matter and was told that she wanted to
have her child baptized, but that a dollar was de
manded and she did not have it. Whereupon, "I
have only a ten dollar bill. Take it. Go in, get the
child baptized, and bring me the change. And so"
— this with immensely satisfied triumph — "And so,
I made a woman happy ; and placed her child upon
115

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
the heavenly road; and I got rid of a counterfeit
ten doUar bill and have nine good dollars in my
pocket ! ' '
Dean Hole also quotes with joy some statements
made in a speech of welcome at a dinner in his
honor by one who seems to have been of Prairie
Avenue: "Chicago is the largest city in America,
has more miles of railroad, more vessel tonnage,
more freight, larger parks, dirtier streets, a sootier
atmosphere, a more malodorous river, more
gamblers, more good things, more bad things, than
any other city." That was some years ago, while
Prairie Avenue still possessed more of the im
portant spokesmen for the city, but, to add to the
joy of superlatives, I have before me a statement
made in print this present year: "A casual in
vestigation shows that Chicago is America's prin
cipal piano market, its chief mail-order center, its
leading stove market. The city has the busiest
street corner in the world, the most traveled bridge
in existence, the largest department store on the
map, the largest art school on the globe." And aU
these from a mere "casual investigation!"
The Prairie Avenue district is narrowly hemmed
in by the railway tracks and lake on the east, and
the encroaching business district on the west, mak
ing it impossible to expand or even to hold its own.
From the northward, what may be called a sort of
debris of business has been swept ahead of the
Grant Park and Lake Front improvements, and
only a few blocks to the southward is a region
116

THE PASSING OF PEAIEIE AVENUE
which, as Chicagoans themselves love to put it, is
the "greatest negro settlement outside of Africa!"
In this encroaching district immediately to the
westward there stands what one is tempted to term
the ugliest building in Chicago, a huge building,
hugely barrel roofed, with pseudo-mediaeval battle
ments and towers. One day, in Eome, I was told of
a Chicago woman visitor who asked if it were really
true that the Pope never went outside of the
Coliseum; adding, that they had a Coliseum them
selves, at home, in Chicago. And this is the
Coliseum. They hold great meetings there, the place at least
being a convenience from its size, and now and
then one sees upon it the sign of "Greatest Show
on Earth" — ^which, oddest of all odd facts, is not,
even with such a description, a Chicago show! —
and it is a place for great conventions. And they
teU you (those who boast of the "greatest settle
ment outside of Africa") that a darky, dressed
with an elaborateness such as only a darky dandy
can achieve, was walking past this huge building
of ugliness from his nearby home when he was
espied and accosted by a white delegate who
thought him possible poUtical prey. "Are you a
delegate?" To which came the answer, coldly dis
dainful: "No, sah! No, sah! It's bad enough
bein' a niggah without bein' a delegate!"
Hemmed in on all sides, actually and potentially,
from the first, it is astonishing that men of astute
business minds should have built in the Prairie
117

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Avenue district. And, indeed, there never were
enough great houses in number, to explain the pre
dominance of the neighborhood for years. The ex
planation lay in the character of the individuals.
The houses built by the wealthiest among them were
not models of grace or beauty or dignity; they
were put up in an era designated, from the name
of the long regnant British Queen, as Victorian,
although it might have been fairer and assuredly
would have been more chivalrous to term them as of
the period of Hayes or Arthur, or Benjamin Har
rison. But whether named from Queen or Presi
dents it was an era in which the wealthy reveled
in the heavily and solidly and expensively in
artistic, with somewhat of a popular towered effect.
In most of these bizarre houses of heavily heaped
wealth, bizarre things were done, seeking bizarre
effects ; for example, as I remember noticing in the
memoirs of a Boston woman who visited here
shortly before the Great Fire, the serving of ices,
at a luncheon in one of these great houses, was on
actual calla lilies, each lily resting on its ovra leaf
on the plate: "All in good taste," wrote the
Boston visitor, so perhaps one is over critical in
thinking that it was not a nice way to treat calla
lilies. Most of the great homes of this region that are
still kept up as homes are closed and dreary during
a great part of each year, the owners using them
as city houses only, and living a more charming
existence in some residential suburb, such as Lake
118

THE PASSING OF PEAIEIE AVENUE
Forest, or, still farther, perhaps drawn by the
beauties of Lake Geneva.
Business has not only pressed close against the
borders of the Prairie Avenue region but has
actually begun to scatter through the district; and
it seems odd to notice a once while residence turned
into a factory for hairpins. Another house, made
over for business offices, bears the saddening sign
that it is for rent for "school or offices" or, last
blow of all, "sanitarium."
But another and different business, as to outward
aspect, with fine architectural effects, has also in
vaded the so recently socially sacred quarter. A
big printing house has put up a building there, with
a charming entablatured line, on the exterior of the
building, of open books, in terra cotta: and the en
tire building is unobtrusively excellent in its effect.
Another business structure has a fine stone balcony;
and there is a business building with an attractive
line of armorial bearings.
When one notices the huge stones slanting down
over the deep gutter crossings, one of the evidences
of care for pedestrians in the already distant days,
the feeling comes that the district might be worthy
of a better fate than gradual desertion. And the
thought of pedestrians brings thoughts of- trolley
cars, these being the two acknowledged methods of
getting about, for the hoi polloi, up to recent years ;
and this comes from the memory of a novel by a
Chicago novelist, Eobert Herrick (who was once
highly praised for some verses written by the
119

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Eobert Herrick of long ago, who died five years be
fore La Salle first reached the site of Chicago). In
the novel by the Chicago Eobert Herrick, the
daughter of one of the Prairie Avenue palaces finds
that her motor-car and chauffeur have vanished,
and she is thereby quite helpless, having no idea
how to get home; she thinks vaguely of taking a
trolley-car, knowing, in a way, that people actually
ride in trolley-cars and presumably reach certain
destinations; but would not risk the experiment,
never having been on a trolley-car in her life! — ¦
a supposed situation which seems somewhat gro
tesque, for the distance is not great and a Chicago
girl would surely have been sensible enough to
walk. She lived in a "formidable pile of red brick"
near Eighteenth Street; and that street is memor
able as the scene of the long-ago Chicago Massacre.
For at what is now Eighteenth Street and Calumet
Avenue the massacre centered ; and one pictures the
doomed party making their slow way along while
the Indians, from what we may term, on account of
what was afterwards built there, their department
store camp, gathered and watched and followed;
and here they did their killing. There were no
houses along the lake then, southward from the
fort near the mouth of the river; there were no
streets and no store; but one imagines the tragedy,
at times, as if the party came up the briUiant Lake
Front to be killed at Prairie Avenue. Calumet
Avenue and Prairie Avenue adjoin and parallel
120

THE PASSING OF PEAIEIE AVENUE
each other, and the kiUing raged around where both
these thoroughfares were to be. In those early
days, along the lake there was but an ancient Indian
trail used by dusky tribesmen for long genera
tions. Never was a movement more definitely arranged,
in every detail, for disaster. It was in August of
1812. War had broken out with England. The
Indian allies of the English were hovering hungrily.
The commander of the Fort, Captain Heald, de
cided to attempt to make the overland joumey to
Fort Wajme, the nearest place of refuge. He called
the Indians together and told them of his plans!
He promised them all the supplies and muskets and
whiskey that his party could not carry, and the
Indians met his declaration with ejaculations of joy.
After that, he took several days to complete his
preparations, and, upon Kinzie 's warning him of
the danger of handing over whiskey and firearms,
he broke open what whiskey barrels remained and
let the whiskey run out, and broke up the muskets ;
all of which naturally angered the Indians.
Heald might have remained and defended the
fort. General Hull, his superior, sent orders from
Detroit to evacuate the post, but Heald might have
exercised the right to act on his own judgment, he
having full knowledge of the situation and General
Hull not being in touch with it. Or he might, had
he been a swiftly resolute man, have marched away
without any delay, his only possible chance of mak
ing a safe retreat. But to wait for several days,
121

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
and to let the Indians know all his plans, and to
anger them needlessly by disappointment — the
whole thing was such a series of blunders as could
scarcely fall to the lot of one man to make. But
Heald did not miss a single blunder.
He seems to have had something fewer than a
hundred to care for, including officers and soldiers
and a number of wives and children. A brave
young American officer, romantically chivalrous and
well acquainted with Indians and their ways. Cap
tain Wells, unexpectedly appeared, having made
his way through the wilderness, from Fort Wayne,
starting the moment he heard of the garrison's
danger and hoping to be of help in defending the
fort. He brought with him fifteen Indians, friendly
to the Americans. Wells was bitterly and passion
ately angered when he learned that Heald was
going to march them all out to what seemed certain
death. On August the fifteenth the party left the fort. It
was a pathetic and desperate sight. Wells had
painted his face black in Indian fashion, in token
of certain death, and a few musicians brokenly
played the Dead March. There were a few rough
wagons; a few rode on horseback; most went on
foot. Kinzie, too, had to leave his home, and he put his
family in his boat, to cross the lake, while he him
self disinterestedly accompanied the soldiers, hop
ing to be able to aid them through his own influence
with the Indians. 122

THE PASSING OF PEAIEIE AVENUE
The tragic notes of the Dead March, the sobs of
the children, the frightened silence of the women,
the curses of the men, the already frightened brag
gadocio of Heald, the blackened face of Wells — the
Indians spreading along abreast of the thin line
and silent except for now and then a signal whoop
— thus, holding to the trail close to the side of the
lake, the refugees went on. One shivers at the
imagination of the agony drawn out for two miles,
with every moment the expectation of attack, and
with the Indians flitting along like shadows.
After holding off for two miles, playing with the
fugitives like cats with particularly helpless mice,
the Indians swarmed to the attack. Even now mili
tary skill could have done something. Defense
could have been made. The party could have
fought its way back to the fort. But there was
nothing of military skill in Heald. He was as in
capable as was General Hull himself. There was
random fighting, there was desperate individual
heroism, there was the killing of women and chil
dren and the killing and torturing and scalping of
prisoners; the usual and expected details of Indian
fighting. The whites lost some fifty in aU. Some
forty men and a few women were permitted to sur
render and their lives were spared owing mainly to
the influence of Kinzie. Poor Wells was killed,
after displaying desperate bravery and killing at
least eight : and the savages devoured his heart that
they might thus acquire a share of his courage: a
compliment which he, more keenly than most men,
123

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
would have appreciated had he been in a position
where appreciation was possible. Heald, one finds,
was among the saved; and his wife was saved
through her readiness in presenting to the Indian
who seized her the mule upon which she was riding
— he not stopping to realize that her title to it had
become suddenly very faint, and owing also to her
promise that at some later day she would get for
him a dozen bottles of whiskey. When the step
daughter of Kinzie, wife of Lieutenant Helm, the
second in command, was on the point of being toma
hawked, when indeed she had received one stroke of
the blade and was about to receive another, another
Indian rushed in and, grasping her from the Indian
about to kill her, dragged her toward the lake, close
at hand, crjdng out that he would drown her ; when
in reality it was a feint to save her.
The Indians did not harm Kinzie. It was with
reluctance that they even led him off as a prisoner.
He was not long held captive, but he did not see
Chicago again for some years and the fort was
meantime burned by the Indians and the locality
was for a time a place of desolation.
So the F. F. C.'s — it was too late to include them
among F. F. V.'s, the Virginia government of Chi
cago having ended— the F. F. C.'s went a dreadful
joumey to a tragedy. And there a monument has
been put up, at the lake-side end of Eighteenth
Street, close behind the great Pulhnan mansion and
facing out toward Prairie and Calumet Avenues.
It is a spirited and excellent monument, a bronze
124

THE PASSING OF PEAIEIE AVENUE
grouping of figures on a lowish granite base. It
is an odd feature, that this monument to the memory
of a massacre actually perpetuates the saving of Ufe
instead of the taking of it, for it represents the
rescuing of the wife of Helm, by Black Partridge,
from the hands of the Indian who was about to kUl
her. Upon the sides of the granite base are bronze bas-
reliefs representing scenes connected with the
massacre, and especially notable is that which shows
the soldiers and civilians, in a long line, on foot, on
horseback or in wagons, setting forth on their march
to death ; a grimly effective bit.
The soot from the near-at-hand railway seems
thicker and blacker here than elsewhere even in the
Prairie Avenue district, and thick lying cinders from
the railway engines crunch beneath the feet as one
walks around the monument.
With the great houses shuttered and deserted in
winter-time, and with front steps and driveways
thick with untrodden snow, much of the region then
wears a desolate aspect. And I remember an odd
and characteristic sight, a long double line, on an
alley, of silent and unused-coach houses, out of
which the barouches of the eighties used statelily to
roU. And as I noticed one closed house, of unusually
pathetic dreariness, there came to me a verse by
one of the Chicago poets (it was Grace Boylan,
one of those who find inspiration in their own en
vironment) : 125

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
"Cold and cheerless, bare and bleak,
The old house fronts the shabby street;
And the dull windows eastward gaze,
As their cobwebbed brows they raise. ' '
And another of the houses, as I passed by one
evening, made me think of some lines of another
Chicago poet, Bodenheim:
' ' The ghost of a purple-roofed house
That ever held repose. ' '
It was a few blocks to the southward of the dis
trict, that there stood the home of that Stephen A.
Douglas who made so great a figure in Chicago and
in the nation. And in tiny Douglas Monument
Park, at the lake shore end of Thirty-fifth Street,
is his monument. His marble sarcophagus is in
view, within the crypt, and deeply engraved are the
words which, good Amierican that he was, he left
as his final and solemn admonition: "Tell my
children to obey the laws and uphold the Constitu
tion." A round granite tower rises above the
crypt, and aloft, on its top, stands Douglas in
bronze. "Preparing to dive into the Lake," wrote
a cynical Boston visitor; but in reality looking, in
bronze, up on top of the granite, so old-time Chi
cagoans will tell you, precisely as he looked in life :
and they will tell you that, though of bronze and
granite character, the "little giant" was a lovable
and likable man.
To have the P'resident of the United States, An
drew Johnson, lay the comer-stone of the Douglas
126

THE PASSING OF PEAIEIE AVENUE
monument was the occasion of one of the most
curious episodes in American political history; for
Johnson's trip to Chicago for the unveiling de
veloped into the famous "swinging around the
circle" in the course of which there were so many
exciting scenes and so many unwise statements.
Petroleum V. Nasby, with his genial backhanded-
ness of humor, declared the tour to have been under
taken "to arouse the people to the danger of con
centrating power in the hands of Congress instead
of diffusing it through one man. ' '
Beaten by Lincoln for the Presidency, Douglas
held the hat of his successful rival, that funny huge
ness of headgear, during the Inaugural address;
and went to his home city to die. But he did not
die in his own house : more fittingly, under the cir
cumstances, Uke a soldier meeting his end on the
battlefield, he died at the old Tremont House, so
closely associated with the political fortunes of both
Lincoln and Douglas, and the scene of numberless
political meetings and consultations and contests and
speeches. From the balcony of that old Tremont
House (it stood at Dearborn and Lake Streets)
Douglas delivered to a huge crowd the first of his
mighty speeches in rivalry with Lincoln, and from
the same balcony Lincoln made a still more mighty
reply: not of the formal Lincoln-Douglas debates,
these, but immediately before that astonishing
series commenced.
As the Convention which nominated Lincoln be
gan its sessions, the Illinois delegation met at the
127

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Tremont House and discussed among other things
the tactics of the Seward men, who had organized
a system of tremendous cheering at every mention
of Seward's name. One of the Illinois delegates
told of a man whose voice could be heard against a
storm on Lake Michigan, or, on a cahn day, it was
claimed he could be heard across the lake. Another
knew where, on the Illinois Eiver, lived a Doctor
Ames, said to be unequaled as a shouter. Ames
was telegraphed for, to come on the first train. The
Chicago man was also secured. And at the head of
parties of shouters on either side of the Wigwam,
these two shouted and roared at every mention of
Lincoln or whenever a Lincoln leader motioned with
his handkerchief. Never was there such shouting!
Seward's men, mere mild New Yorkers, were out
classed into insignificance. And Lincoln was nomi
nated amid a terrific uproar of voices.
In 1856 Lincoln wrote of Douglas : "Twenty years
ago Douglas and I first became acquainted. We
were both young then — he a trifle younger than I.
Even then we were both ambitious — I, perhaps,
quite as much as he. With me the race of ambition
had been a failure — a flat faUure. With him it had
been one of splendid success." And it was in that
year that Douglas farsightedly gave ten acres of
land, at Thirty-fourth Street and Cottage Grove
Avenue, for the beginning of a University of Chi
cago. He was one of the incorporators, was one
of the trustees till the time of his death, and for at
least part of the time president of the board. It
128

THE PASSING OF PEAIEIE AVENUE
did not succeed, as it would have done had Douglas
lived. In the course of its years of financially
troubled existence it won honor and friends, and in
manly fashion it passed over its title, the University
of Chicago, to the institution founded by Eocke-
feller, and the new university courteously adopted
the alumni of the old as her own, reenacted the de
grees of the old university, and placed a bronze
bust of Douglas in one of the new university build
ings. But it did not establish itself, in accordance
with the ideas of Douglas, immediately to the south
ward of the Prairie Avenue district.
The well-known men connected with the limited
area of the Prairie Avenue region, the owners of
the old homes there, won honor from this "city
whose merchants are princes," to use the fine old
phrase of old Isaiah, when writing of Tyre, a Chi
cago of the distant past. And he goes on to say
that the city's "merchandise shall be for them that
dwell before the Lord, to eat sufficiently, and for
durable clothing" — to have sufficient food, and dur
able clothing (what a supposedly modem phrase
put in by the Elizabethan translators!) and to be
religious, were thus his ideals for a city ; and, some
what incongruously, there comes to mind the story
of the minister who, living on one of the streets that
cross Prairie Avenue, was called upon one evening
to perform a marriage ceremony at his home, for a
young couple, strangers to him: after which the
new-made Benedick somewhat nervously took the
clergyman aside and said: "I'm sorry that I
129

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
haven't any money; but if you'll lead me to your
cellar I'll show you how to make your electric meter
stop registering"!
When I think of this district of Prairie Avenue
there oome not only thoughts of tragic history and
of "merchant princes," again to quote Isaiah, and
of slow-vanishing glory, but also the memory of a
huge apparent water tank, standing on a low flat
roof near the Massacre Monument and seen from
the railway, and bearing, when I saw it, the one
word, mysterious-seeming under the circumstances,
with nothing accompanying or explaining, "Milk."

130

CHAPTEE X

SOME BOOKS AND WEITEES

IPLING frankly railed
at Chicago. Every
thing there was un-"
pleasant or bad. He
wandered "through
scores of miles of
these terrible streets, jostling
some few hundred thousand
of these terrible people."
And he was worried because
of the city's flatness. But
Chicago took his criticisms
with philosophic tolerance. "The truth seems to
be that Mr. Kipling is an unusually bright fellow
who enjoys a somewhat exaggerated opinion of his
own brightness," as a newspaper expressed it; and
then came one single crushing caustic retort to his
unbridled comments: "Is it possible that Kipling,
now twenty-four years of age, is at his perihelion,
physically and intellectually?" And that cut Kip
ling deep.
It needed the clear-sighted West to discern or
divine, what was not to be visible to the rest of the
world for years, that Kipling, at the time he was
131

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
writing of Chicago, had already begun to show
signs of a fall from a marvelous rise ; at that time, or
within a year or two afterwards, he had done prac
tically aU the writing for which he is to-day held
famous. But there were noble possibilities of apprecia
tion, even for things American, in this young man
of remarkable powers, seeing this country on his
way to England from India, the land of his birth.
For, a few days after leaving Chicago and going
eastward, he called upon Mark Twain; he had, as
he wrote, learned to love and admire Mark Twain
fourteen thousand miles away ; and, as the two talk
together, Mark rests his hand for a moment on
Kipling's shoulder, and the young man is thrilled
and humble. To him, as he expresses it, it is equal
to being decorated with the Star of India, with blue
silk, trumpets, and diamond-studded jewel, all com
plete; and then come creepy words, terrible words,
showing that the calm query of Chicago had found
an echo within his own consciousness: "If, here
after, in the changes and chances of this mortal
life, I fall to cureless ruin, I will tell the superin
tendent of the workhouse that Mark Twain once put
his hand on my shoulder; and he shall give me a
room to myself and a double allowance of pauper's
tobacco." But whUe in the Lake Michigan city he spent his
time in seeking new splenetic phrases. ' ' They have
managed to get a million of men together on flat
land, and the bulk of these men appear to be lower
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SOME BOOKS AND WEITEES
than Mahajans. The city is inhabited by savages."
And how Uttle Kipling could possibly have
imagined that he was to become connected with
Chicago by marriage! John Kinzie, the trader,
had a son, also named John, who as a boy of nine
years witnessed the Indian massacre from a little
boat out in the lake, in which, with his mother, he
had been placed for safety. He grew up a Chi
cagoan, and married a Connecticut girl of unusual
qualities, a girl of family even according to the
strictest code of social Pharisees, for she was a de
scendant of the great Governor Eoger Wolcott,
She had been given a fine education, and was pro
ficient in Latin and German and French; and to
know of such people in early days in Chicago is to
understand somewhat of the reasons for the city's
intellectual advance. The wife of Kinzie really
ranks first amonj authors of the city, too, through
her "Wau-Bun," a book of charm, still read and
readable, conceming the early days of her city.
(To be literally exact, it should be said that the
first complete writing, here, long antedated Wau-
Bun, it being the Portage de Checagou letter of La
Salle; and that, a Uttle earlier, Marquette wrote
part of his Journal here.)
The author of "Wau-Bun" and her husband lost
their own son, and they grieved bitterly, but strove
to fill the place by adopting, from time to time, sev
eral nieces and cousins. One of these adopted
children became Mrs. Joseph Balestier, and it was
her granddaughter who became the wife of Eudyard
133

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Kipling. After which, so far as I have ever heard,
he no longer criticized Chicago.
This city has had a goodly number of unusually
good writers. But some go and settle in the East,
after which Chicago forgets them, as does the world
in general.
It looked for a while as if Hamlin Garland would
be a Chicagoan. He was bom in Wisconsin, and it
seemed to him that this city was to be his destined
literary home. He went East, however, instead;
but after some years decided to obey the Chicago
impulse and return. And the city offered him a
cordial welcome. "We have for Mr. Garland the
warmest affection," wrote Eugene Field: "We
admire his work, too, very, very much. Garland is
young and impressionable; in an evil hour he fell
under the baleful influence of William D. Howells,
and — ^there you are. If we could contrive to keep
Garland away from Howells long enough we 'd make
a big man of him, for there is a heap of good stuff
in him. In all solemnity we declare it to be our
opinion that HoweUs is the only bad habit Garland
has." But Garland, although returning to this
city, did not stay long after all, but went back to
New York ; with the usual result.
Eugene Field was the Oliver Wendell Holmes of
Chicago. "A fellow of infinite jest, of most ex
ceUent fancy. ' ' Author of the city 's classic, ' ' Little
Boy Blue," he was equally at home in verse or
prose. But, though so much Uke Holmes, Field, be
side the Lake Front, could never have faUen into
134

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SOME BOOKS AND WEITEES
the habit of Holmes, beside his Back Bay, of sitting
down and writing a poem, before going to bed, upon
some lecture to which he had that evening listened !
In cleverness, in whimsicalness, in insight into
humanity and character, in geniality, in real feel
ing, in wit and humor, in pungency, in camaraderie,
in bonhomie, in marvelous facility, in genuine
Americanism, the two were much alike. And here
is an astonishing consideration which must be real
ized by any who would understand this city and its
development : it is not that there is likeness between
a man of recent time and a man of long, long ago :
for although one was of old Boston and the other
of new Chicago, the Boston man, born in the East,
died in 1894, and the other was born in the West
and died in 1895. Field started in life later than
did Holmes, just as Chicago started out later than
did Boston, but for many years the two writers
were cotemporaries, and they died within a
year of each other. (But in this city, where mighty
sums are expended for statuary or memorials
which, preferably, shall keep in mind distinguished
Chicagoans, I have not noticed any memorial to
Eugene Field, who so finely represented the best of
the city's spirit.)
In book reviews or comments upon authors there
has always been, here, a keeping away from the
bland phraseology of the East. "The new national
library will have space for four million books,"
writes Field; "we mention this merely to en
courage Mr. F. Marion Crawford to keep right on."
135

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
That is aU! And with such as that Chicago may
defy the world.
It was Field who carried to perfection "the
column that made Chicago famous"; and in that
daily column appeared much of his best work.
Under the title of "A Line o' Type or Two" the
tradition is continued by "B. L. T." — ^his name
being Bert L. Taylor, but everybody knowing him
by the initials. And the city's boast is that, al
though every city, little and big, follows and tries
to imitate it, "the Line" continues to be the best
column in the world. To "make the Line" by
having some quip or cleverness accepted and
used is the principal ambition of many a
Chicagoan! And the "Line" forms a steady topic
of conversation. Nor is it only a daily column
of humorous and clever comment; it is that,
but it is more than that, for it is flavorous with easy
and humorous use of books and authors, of the
classics and history: the kind of thing you would
expect to flnd in Boston — but don't!
Looking in the catalogue of the Chicago PubUc
Library I noticed Lorimer 's "Letters from a Self-
Made Merchant to his Son" indexed under "Busi
ness." It would naturally have been put under
"Fiction"; it might have been classified as
"Humor" or "Philosophy"; aud as a matter of
fact it is all these, including the classification of
the library, for never were a business man and
business matters described with such infinite and
constant cleverness, with such swift felicity of
136

SOME BOOKS AND WEITEES
phrase. As a matter of fact, the author was in
spired by a close acquaintance with one of the
greatest of the men who made the city; but the
book, and its saturation with human Ufe, and the
cleverness, are all Lorimer 's, and the literary skiU
which masterfully uses colloquialisms to express
character and ideas. Open it anywhere and you
are fascinated. Start to quote from it and you
quote the whole book.
It sold by hundreds of thousands: it was trans
lated into a score of languages: yet the name of
George Horace Lorimer is barely known in Chi
cago except by such as know of him as editor of an
Eastem periodical of wide circulation. Even at
the library they are surprised to know of him as a
former Chicagoan. And this is not a pose. It is
absolute sincerity. It indicates a rule, not con
sciously formulated but none the less observed,
regarding an author who goes East. But an author
may go to Califomia and remain closely in Chi
cagoan thoughts.
Mention of a magazine is remindful of a maga
zine of this city which begins, in large type, a full-
page newspaper advertisement which is an excellent
example of Chicagoan advertising; beginning, in
sonorously measured phrase: "Fiction has been
for centuries the most powerful influence on the
thought and conduct of men and women" and con
tinuing: "Nathaniel Hawthorne's story, 'The
Scarlet Letter,' to cite but a single instance, lighted
a flame of human compassion in the breasts of our
137

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
New England ancestors," and leading up to:
"This and other stories exerted a positive influence
on the social and economic conditions of their time,
just as the stories of our day, ' ' which appear in the
magazine that is advertising, "point for this genera
tion the way that America is going, and must go."
You see, the kind of appeal to intelligence and edu
cation which you would expect to find in a Boston
advertisement — ^but don't.
Frank Norris left Chicago for the East and his
fame is drifting to forgetfulness. That he is dead
is another reason, for the city, with a certain sub
conscious heartlessness, which is only an expression
of the virility of its life, does not greatly desire to
be reminded of those who have gone. As if in con
tradiction of nature, the sun of numerous Chicago
writers has set in the East.
Only a few years ago it seemed that "The Octo
pus" and "The Pit" could not be forgotten. But
"The Pit" was written after Norris went to New
York. It was written in a room in tbe ItaUan tower
whose windows look out over Washington Square
toward the Arch. But it would have been better, for
perpetuity of interest, had it been written in a room
looking out over Lincoln Park.
Among the Chicago types of Norris is the young
man "who always impressed me as though he had
just had his hair cut"; and the broker's wife who
"wore turquoises in her ears morning, noon and
night"; and the wealthy Curtis Jadwin is described
as sitting down before his big new mechanical organ
138

SOME BOOKS AND WEITEES
and, while boasting of its horse-power, as the ma
chine thundered, putting his feet on the pedals, ad
justing the roll, watching the sliding slip of paper
— and feeling, proudly, that he was doing the play
ing! There is, in Chicago, a street of endless dreari
ness, a street curiously uninteresting to the casual
glance and more and more uninteresting to the
lengthening look. Yet the touch of genius made
this street seem one of the most fascinating streets
of the world, in humanity, in humor, in tragedy and
kindliness. It is Archer Avenue, in earlier days
Archer Eoad, made by Dunne into "Archey Eoad."
It was one of the earliest streets of the city, having
been laid out on the line of an Indian trail and
stretching away from the center and far out toward
the wilderness. Finley Peter Dunne originated
"Mr. Dooley," and placed him on "Archey Eoad,"
and proceeded to fascinate all America.
How he described the people and their daily
lives : the priest and the policeman on post, the fire
man, the ward politician, the parties and funerals
and wakes and marriages, the heartbreaks, the
rivalries, the triumphs : a world of its own, with its
own happenings and happinesses, its own stand
ards! You see politics and national affairs, too:
and always you see through the eyes of Mr. Dooley.
"There's no betther place to see what's goin' on
thin the Ar-rchey Eoad," he said; and this is why
he was so great a creation.
I find myself putting it in the past tense; and,
139

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
as a matter of fact, Dunne some time ago as
sociated himself with New York, and — well, "and
there you are" as Eugene Field would have ex
pressed it. After all, suppose that Dickens, after
his earlier work, had left London and gone to New
York, would he have continued upward? It is not
so much a matter of which city is the better as it is
a matter of staying in your own environment — if
you have the right environment.
Dooley was so extraordinarily good! Take the
unexpectedness of twist of his "Old men fr th'
council, young men f 'r th' ward!" And, for grim-
ness, "His heart was shriveled up like a washer
woman's hand."
"Who'll tell what makes wan man a thief an'
another man a saint?" wonders Mr. Dooley, as he
remembers the "bit iv curly-haired boy that played
tag around me place" and he tells of Clancy, the
fireman, the pride of the Eoad. " 'Wan more, an'
I'U quit.' An' he did, Jawn. Th' day the box
factory burnt. 'Twas wan iv thim big, fine-lookin'
buildings that pious men built out iv cellaloid an'
plasther iv Paris. An' Clancy was wan iv the
men undher whin th' wall fell. I seen thim bring
him home; an' his wife met him at th' dure,
rumplin' her apron in her hands."
"I knowed a society wanst to vote a monyment
to a man an' refuse to help his fam'ly, aU in wan
night," is one of his reminiscences of human nature
as it actually is to be seen.
It is most curious, as showing how a general
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SOME BOOKS AND WEITEES
change may come, that for the years of the supposi
titious Mr. Dooley 's popularity it never occurred to
any one to feel either shocked, or in the least degree
critical, because of his supposititious business, which
was that of saloon-keeper. That he was uttering
constant wisdom, with humorous clarity of insight,
was what made him so loved, with always his in
tense feeling for humanity and a hatred of every
thing wrong. " 'Tis cold outside the dure, ye say,
but 'tis warrum in here ; an' I'm gettin' in me ol' age
to think that the diff 'r ence between Hivin an' hell
is no broader. ' '
Not long ago Dunne went back to visit Chicago,
and he went to look at the house where he was born ;
and, so the story is told, catching sight of a tablet
on the house, "Eecognition!" he gayly cried, glad
to think that honor had been done him while he was
away; but as he neared the house, to read, he saw
that it was merely "For Eent."
George Ade, as a Chicagoan, won the attention
of all America with his delightfully clever
"Fables"; and how he added to the joyousness of
life! Emerson Hough is of the very essence of the
Middle West; born in Iowa, a Chicagoan by years
of living, a writer who has won wide fame and who
still remains a Chicagoan. The very mention of
his name brings before us the great out-of-doors,
the sweeping stretches of wUderness, the rivers
and mountains and the Arctic snows, and novels
of the days of heroic romance. Good Chicagoan
141

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
though he is, he loves, from a cheerful perversity
or through force of artistic necessity, to locate his
novels in places away from his city. And what a
genius he has for titles! "Fifty-four Forty or
Fight"; "The Girl at the Half -Way House"; "The
Magnificent Adventure"; and that notable "best
seller," "The Mississippi Bubble." And was
there ever a better beginning than he gave this
book! — "Gentlemen, this is America!" And there
you see Hough all unconsciously display himself,
for, more than anything else, he is American.
And remembering that in one of his stories he
tells of a house on the Pacific Coast furnished with
rare antique furniture as if it were an old house
on the Atlantic Coast — for he well knows that to
the lover of antiques the antiques will come, even
in unexpected places — it is pleasant to know that
his ovra home in Chicago is furnished with rare and
beautiful specimens of old furniture.
Mention of that great success, "The Mississippi
Bubble," leads to the question: What other
American city can show anything like as many lit
erary successes as Chicago? What other city can
point to so many writers who have swept the
country with their books? More than that, what
other city can point to anything even approaching
so many? New York claims the honor of being the
literary center. But how many books of sweeping
popularity have come out of New York! Whereas
Chicago has been furnishing a steady line of suc
cesses. 142

SOME BOOKS AND WEITEES
Long ago E. P. Eoe — ^to name whom is to smile
— aroused the entire country with his "Barriers
Burned Away." He felt the drama and tragedy
of the Chicago fire and managed so to set it forth
that the entire nation read and heeded. Not litera
ture, you will say? But at least Eoe had sincerity
and a homely skill.
A few years ago the entire nation was stirred by
"The Fat of the Land." Everybody read it;
everybody talked about it. And the odd thing was
that this farm book was written by a Chicago
doctor, Streeter, who had never been a farmer!
His widow explained to me that Doctor Streeter
had some slight knowledge of farming as a boy,
but that he became a doctor and, although always
dreaming of being a farmer, was too busy with his
practice to carry out his dreams. He bought a
country place at nearby Lake Forest, but even that
was not a farm. He took regularly, and carefully
studied, the crop reports and weather reports and
Government pamphlets descriptive of plantings
and crops. He wrote the book as fiction, and it
was without his knowledge, and through a mis
understanding, so Mrs. Streeter told me, that the
book was published as if descriptive of facts.
It had phenomenal success, and letters of inquiry
and requests for advice came from all parts of this
country and even of the world, and many pilgrim
aged to Chicago in the hope of getting in personal
touch with the author and of getting further light
on the age-old problems of back-to-the-land.
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THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Streeter told his wife that he was able to write with
such assurance because, for twenty-five years, he
had regularly put himself to sleep by working out
details of his imaginary farm.
Henry B. Fuller is a Chicagoan, a Chicagoan
born. Years ago he wrote, with a certain quaint
ness of setting and handling, "The Chevalier of
Pensieri-Vani, " but he really found himself when,
leaving Europe as a field, he took up his own city
and produced "The Cliff Dwellers," setting forth
the spirit of the city as it appeared to him, and with
actual people, so it was believed, either described
or hinted at. The book, with its realistic setting,
aroused widespread interest, and was a pronounced
success. Sinclair's novel about the slaughter-house work
ers cannot be included among books by writers of
Chicago, but it is interesting to name it as an ex
ample of how a supposedly unpromising Chicago
subject may be made to yield sweeping popularity.
Edgar Lee Masters is a Chicagoan who has
aroused general attention with a book of verse,
"The Spoon Eiver Anthology"; pessimistic in the
extreme, with its pictures of sordidness, viciousness
and crime. Spoon Eiver is the name of an actual
stream, and it rises in Bureau County — homely
household nomenclature ! — and Masters lived in the
Spoon Eiver region as a youth and here sets down
what he now thinks he saw; making every one tell
his own sordid or wicked life story in supposititious
epitaphs. Maupassant did that long ago in prose,
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SOME BOOKS AND WEITEES
in a vivid short story, with each of the dead writing
a few words on his own headstone with a bony fore
finger. With Masters, it is this volume of verse,
not without a certain power and insight.
In Chicago poets take themselves and each other
very, very seriously; and one, Eobert Nicols, ad
dresses Masters as having a face with
"The soft or savage night
Dwelling in eyes under the bulwark brow";
and, after some lines:
"Tour heart you catch
To mark those swart eyes largen as with tears."
But really, when swart eyes begin to largen — why,
there you are!
"We don't use much poetry here except in our
street car ads.," Lorimer makes a Chicago busi
ness man say, but nowadays there is a large annual
output. William Vaughn Moody loomed largest
with promise some years ago, and suddenly at
tained wide prominence with "The Great Divide,"
on account principally of its dramatic sex appeal
in the first act. But he went down to New York;
and I remember that he looked unhappy there ; and
after a while he ceased from notable production ; and
died. Chicago has attained the marked distinction of
regularly publishing a "Magazine of Poetry," of
which Harriet Monroe is editor, and it sets forth
the ideas and results of modern poets, with especial
145

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
regard for the poets of this city. And the maga
zine marks another of the city's steps toward in
tellectual leadership.
In earlier days, before the city had such a versi-
cal output of its own, it was willing to consider,
as Chicagoan, poets from quite a distance away,
and Will Carleton, of Michigan, the Carleton of
"Betsey and I are Out," was one who was admitted
as a local man. Eugene Field genially put in his
column one day that : "At the meeting of the West
Side Literary Lyceum last week the question, 'Are
Homer's poems better reading than Will Carle-
ton's?' was debated. The negative was sustained
by a vote of 47 to 5." That, again, was typical
Chicago humor. And what a zip to the finish!
Another city might have suggested the proposition,
but it needed Chicago to follow the humor to its
logical conclusion with the imaginary overwhelm
ing vote. Carleton was always ready to smile at a
jest upon himself, and I remember meeting him in
New York, one day, when he said to me that he had
just been on a visit to his Michigan home town, and
that while there they had honored him with a re
ception and speeches, and that the principal
speaker had declared that this, their home product,
had won such fame that his name was now known
over "almost all of southern Michigan"!
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, then of Wisconsin, was also
taken in as almost a Chicagoan in those days of
dearth of Chicago verse; and, as a newspaper one
day soberly announeed, "We understand that Mr.
146

SOME BOOKS AND WEITEES
Gunther, the autograph virtuoso, recently paid two
hundred and fifty dollars for an autograph of Dante
Alighieri, which he discovered on the fly-leaf of a
volume of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's poems."
Dana, of the New York Sun, owed to Chicago
the uniqueness that made him famous. Not pre
cisely like the idea of the Scotchman who, chal
lenged to give some proof of his claim that even
Shakespeare was a Scot, replied, "Look at his style,
man!" There is more than a matter of general
style to the Dana statement, though the style may
be taken as clinching it. After quitting his con
fidential post with the Government, at the close of
the Civil War, Dana took charge for a year of a
newspaper in Chicago, the Republican. He ex
pected to make Chicago his permanent home. But
he did not succeed there. He and Chicago did not
get along together. Whereupon he secured pos
session of the New York Sun, backed, politically
and financially, by a group of powerful men which
included Conkling, Evarts and other leaders, and
for the remainder of his Ufe he was himself the
Sun, displaying throughout his career a vividness
in writing, a succinct individuality, that marked
the influence of his year's sojourn in Chicago.
Without identifying himself with Chicago, he was
inspired and filled with the spirit of the city, and
it accented and aided his natural uniqueness of
thought and expression.
Chicago is a great publishing city. There are
over five hundred listed under that classification,
147

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
besides music publishers, law publishers, news
paper publishers and others, and a great number
listed as printers.
"Who's Who in America" is published here.
Telephone books and city directories are turned
out in tremendous number. Here, too, are printed
and pubUshed the books of Harold Bell Wright,
or at least some of them, with such figures (not
looked upon here as astonishing!) as first editions of
two hundred thousand. Not long ago, by the way,
Wright was offered sixty thousand dollars for the
serial rights of a new story, but he refused, pre
ferring not to have it published before it came out
in book form. Although not precisely of Chicago,
Wright was near enough, for a time, to be ranged
under the Chicago banner with his amazing sales;
and his sojourning in California caused him no loss
of consideration here. But what a curious life rec
ord has been his! Beginning life as a decorator
and painter; turning to landscape painting; then
taking up the writing of religious romances with
an utterly astonishing success.
The biggest printing plant in the world, as it is
termed, is here. And among the publishers you
hear such statements as, "We printed a million and
a half of this catalogue last year," or "We shall
print, as only a part of our work, more than a mil-
Uon school books this year," or, "We annually put
out millions of telephone directories, for various
cities." As I write, the zone system, for United
States maU, is promising to make Chicago a center
148

SOME BOOKS AND WEITEES
for important publications heretofore brought out
in the East, and some big strikes have also had the
effect of turning publishers' thoughts Chicagoward.
When the creator of "Sherlock Holmes" visited
Chicago he was recognized by the cabman, who ex
plained, when asked, "Well, sir, of course all the
members of the Cabmen's Literary Guild knew you
were coming on this train, and I noticed, sir, if you
will excuse me, that your hair has the cut of a Phila
delphia Quaker barber, that your hat shows on the
brim in front where you tightly grasped it at a
Milwaukee literary lunch; your right overshoe has
on it a block of Buffalo mud and on the top of your
bag are the crumbs of a doughnut which could only
have been bought at the Springfield station; and
then, sir, to make sure, I happened to see, stencilled
in plain letters on the end of the bag, the name,
'Conan Doyle.' "
For a time this was noted as a city where rich
men become authors, by proxy; they had their
names on the title page and found somebody to do
the work. And one such man, of nation-wide
financial fame, was so proud of his name on a book
that it all seemed true, and he even sent one of his
copies, autographed by himself as author, to the
man who had done it all.
The city is not without real authors of social
distinction, who really write their own books and
do it with literary skill; and one of them is often
referred to with awe as "the first gentleman of
Chicago!" 149

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
And it is pleasant to think that, at least once,
appreciation of Chicago was expressed by a Bos-
tonian, for William James took pains to write, in
his "Memories and Studies," of the "exquisite
book of Chicago sketches" by Edith Wyatt, en
titled ' ' Every One His Own Way. ' '
Oscar Wilde made an unexpected reference to
Chicago in a lecture in which he spoke of how
machinery should be valued if it does its best pos
sible work. "A train, that whirls an ordinary
EngUshman through Italy at the rate of forty miles
an hour and finally sends him home without any
memory of that lovely country but that he was
cheated by a courier at Eome or that he got a bad
dinner at Verona, does not do him or civilization
much good. But that swift legion of fiery-footed
engines that bore to the burning ruins of Chicago
the loving help and generous treasure of the world
was as noble and as beautiful as any golden troop
of angels that ever fed the hungry and clothed the
naked in the antique times."
And the Great Fire influenced another English
man, the author of "Tom Brown's School Days,"
in a noble way. For Hughes loved Chicago. He
was here in 1870 and was touched and moved by
his welcome. And he wrote that "this place is the
wonder of the wonderful West." The next year
came the fire, and Hughes saw his opportunity.
He personally interested the authors and pub
lishers of Great Britain; and the Public Library
of Chicago was founded with some thousands of
150

SOME BOOKS AND WEITEES
volumes given at his request, among the donors
being Herbert Spencer and Huxley, Charles Kings-
ley and John Stuart Mill, John Bright, Palgrave
and Charlotte Yonge, Eossetti, Dean Stanley,
Samuel Smiles, Disraeli and Gladstone; and there
was even, among the thousands of volumes, "The
Early Years of the Prince Consort," which was
"Presented to the new Free Library of Chicago,
by Victoria Eegina. Balmoral, November 13,
1871." And the library has developed nobly from
such a noble foundation.
Its building stands on the Lake Front, close to
the heart of business Chicago. And I know of no
other city where a library is so freely used by so
many kinds of people. It attracts all classes.
And a charming feature is that at the library, al
most as if it were a club, one may meet delightful
and interesting people, those connected with litera
ture, art, and civic movements. The library is in
fused with such a spirit, under the influence of
Librarian Eoden and Miss Elliott, as to draw, with
its hundreds of thousands of volumes, the cog-
nescenti and the hoi polloi, the literati and, so to
speak, the illiterati.
In some cities there is something slighting, felt
or implied, in the idea of going to a public library;
but not in Chicago ! The people here not only use
its books freely but it has become so friendly a
feature of life that many a person drops in, or tele
phones, to ask about some point of grammar or
pronunciation, or the author of some quotation,
151

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
or to know the precise location of some town in
France or Florida.
The building is exceUent, of dignifled classic de
sign, with arched windows, with columns, with
elaborate entablatures. The massive elliptical
arch of the main staircase, as you enter from Wash
ington Street, and the landings and archways as
you mount the broad marble steps, are admirable;
and there is much of an ornate glittering, as in all
"encrusted architecture," in mosaics of glass and
mother-of-pearl, and in marble of green and white.
To carry out the idea of popular service, there
are more than two score branches and a hundred
and twenty-flve delivery stations and more than
half a hundred deposit stations. One of the
branches, the Blackstone, is positively beautiful,
a smallish building of marble and granite, with
low dome and pillared entrance.
There are two other important libraries in the
city, both of them heavily endowed, and possessing
great and notable collections: the Newberry,
specializing in history and the fine arts, and the
Crerar, specializing in science. Chicago is indeed
a city of magnificent libraries, for there is also the
fine University Library, and the remarkable Eyer-
son library at the Art Institute.
The central building of the Public Library holds
more than books ; it holds what, in a way, represents
the greatest' triumph of Chicago: the central offices
of the American Library Association, which sends,
throughout the country, reviews, magazine cata-
152

SOME BOOKS AND WEITEES
logues, bulletins, and "The Booklist," and keeps
practically every library in the country supplied
with the most recent literary information. It has
a membership of over three thousand, scattered
through every State of the Union and much of
Canada and even extending to some of the
European cities. It is a delicate and highly im
portant work that the "A. L. A." performs and the
city which possesses its headquarters may properly
feel itself a literary center: and Chicago feels it
the more pleasurably from the fact that the "A.
L. A." was transplanted to the Lake Front from
Beacon Street in Boston !
The city has always attracted, as visitors, many
authors not Chicagoan; and I was told of an old
gentleman who, in the lobby of the old Tremont
House, was listening to a story of a poker game in
which Sol Smith Eussell, the actor, was a partici
pant. "Do you dare to tell me, sir, that my son-in-
law plays cards 1 ' ' suddenly cried the old gentleman :
and it turned out that he was William Taylor Adams,
whose books had given delight to millions of boys :
for Adams was "Oliver Optic."
I think that the oddest of all literary happen
ings has to do with Chicago. For one S. E. Gross
had written a play called "The Merchant Prince
of ComviUe," and he claimed that "Cyrano de
Bergerac" was plagiarized from it by the French
man, Eostand, who had just been made an "Immor
tal" by the French Academy on account of his play;
and Gross went into court in 1912, his chief re-
153

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
liance being a John McGovem, who had for sixteen
years been on the staff of a Chicago paper and who
worked on the case with such perseverance that
he was able to dumbfound a United States judge,
sitting in Chicago, with a list of over seven hun
dred "deadly parallels"! Whereupon, the court,
deciding for Gross, actually issued an injunction
against the presentation of "Cyrano"!
Year by year the Chicago injunction held. As
recently as March of 1920, when a company at
length prepared to present "Cyrano" in New York,
the Gross estate brought forward the old injuction,
but a New York judge refused to uphold it.

154

CHAPTEE XI

HOW ART CAME TO CHICAGO

N front of the portrait of
General Dearborn, in the
Art Institute, a devoted
Chicagoan was standing.
He looked with evident in
terest at the florid and
agreeable face, at the double-
chin and the high-brushed
hair, with interest at the
fascinating uniform, of dark
blue with much of gold, and
with white ruffles and red sash. That
it was a Gilbert Stuart and that Dearborn was
of a type which that greatest of American artists
dearly loved to paint, that in fact Stuart had
painted Dearborn at least twice, the man may not
have known, but he knew that it was the por
trait of the distinguished general after whom old
Fort Dearborn, at the mouth of the Chicago Eiver,
was named. "And what's that medal he's wear
ing?" he asked; and when his companion told him
that it was the insignia of the Order of the Cin
cinnati he was instantly in a burst of anger. ' ' Cin
cinnati! What's Cincinnati got to do with our
155

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Dearborn! He ought to wear some order of
Chicago!" Another picture, a landscape, in the Art Institute,
might well be thought to represent the mouth of the
Chicago, although it was painted by a man who
never saw this city. The darkly mysterious water,
in the painting, is the very hue of clayey green so
often seen in the Chicago Eiver and in the lake
near shore. The sky is of clay-green hue. There
are a few touches of land and ships in black. The
picture, in the mysteriousness of its dark colorings,
is an English scene by James McNeill Whistler; it
is one of his "Nocturnes"; and even before see
ing this picture the impression had come to me that
the color effects in Chicago are often Uke those of
some of the "Nocturnes." Whistler could have
put on canvas the color effects of Chicago. And,
odd man that he was, he would have cut a strik
ing figure here. St. Gaudens, himself closely
associated artistically with Chicago, describes
Whistler, whom he knew in London, as "a very at
tractive man with queer clothes, a kind of 1830 coat
with an enormous collar, a monocle, a strong jaw,
very frizzly hair with a white mesh in it, and an
extraordinary hat."
And Whistler would have liked to see this city,
not only for its nocturne effects but because of his
own association with Chicago. For Whistler's
grandfather was Captain John Whistler, sent in
1803 by General Dearborn to build the fort here,
and retained in command of the post for seven
156

HOW AET CAME TO CHICAGO
years, when he tumed it over to that Heald whom
we have seen acting so disastrously.
Captain Whistler was assisted, in building Fort
Dearborn, by his son George, afterwards to be
come a civil engineer in Eussian railway building:
and, which is of much more importance, also to be
come the father of the artist.
So Whistler, the distinguished painter, although
he never came to Chicago, was grandson of the of
ficer who built this fort. An uncle of the artist was
also here, William Whistler, who entered the army
and attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel, the
height of six feet two, and the weight of two hun
dred and sixty pounds.
There is an odd Chicago connection between the
author Kipling and the artist Whistler, for a close
companion, at Fort Dearborn, of Whistler's father,
was the John Kinzie who adopted the girl who be
came grandmother of the wife of Eudyard Kipling.
A daughter of this John Kinzie, and therefore
granddaughter of the original John Kinzie, was
born in Chicago in 1835 and, for years enjoying
the distinction of the oldest living white child bom
in Chicago, lived until the extremely modem year
of 1917. She looks down from the walls of the
Art Institute, an adorable young woman with lovely
eyes, exquisitely dressed in a low-cut party gown
which shows the tips of her softly-rounded girlish
shoulders and her rounded girlish arms. The por
trait was painted in 1856, the year before her mar
riage, by Healy, who had such an influence on art
157

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
in Chicago and who might in a sense be termed the
Gilbert Stuart of the city.
George Peter Alexander Heaty — with the first
names usually shortened to G. P. A. — was a Boston
boy whose grandfather was painted by Gilbert
Stuart; and the lad never forgot the thrill of once
catching a glimpse of the mighty artist.
In beginning to be a painter, Healy felt that he
must portray a beautiful woman, and he fixed upon
Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis, one of the leaders of the
socially elect. A friend gave him a note of intro
duction but even with that he hesitated and paced
back and forth in front of the Beacon Hill home.
But at length he lifted the knocker and was ad
mitted: he told Mrs. Otis of his ambition; he was a
lad of eighteen, and she liked his looks and his
manner, and, grande dame though she was she was
flattered; and he found a friend.
He studied in Paris. He went everywhere, saw
everybody. He painted the Duke of Sussex, uncle
of Queen Victoria, and described him as a tall, bald-
headed man who used to sing, to his own guitar ac
companiment, to his tiny morganatic lady-love of
only five feet. Healy painted King Louis Philippe,
and the King told of Gilbert Stuart, whom he had
met on his strange journeyings before kingship
came, and he had Healy paint him a copy of
Stuart's Washington. He painted the singer
Braham, who figures so much in memoirs of the first
half of the nineteenth century, and he said that
Braham was reaUy a Hebrew named Abraham.
158

,"i

•ssjp

THE ART INSTITUTE

HOW AET CAME TO CHICAGO
He painted one of Napoleon's marshals, the mighty
Soult. He painted Pope Pius the Ninth, and told
of an American, admitted to audience, who refused
to bend when expected to do so, at which the Pope
only said, kindly, "My son, an old man's blessing
never did harm to any one." He painted Carmen
Sylva, Princess of Eumania and afterwards to be
Queen, but then little known, and he tells of how he
painted her in her national costume, in red skirt,
and red morocco shoes and with embroideries of red
and gold.
In America he painted Webster, Clay, Pierce,
General Cass. He painted President Buchanan.
He painted Lincoln, who said to him that a lady had
written, urging him to wear false whiskers to hide
his ugliness; and he said to Healy, laughingly,
"Will you paint me with false whiskers?" He
went to the White House to paint President Arthur
and, while waiting in an anteroom, saw on the wall
a painting of his ovm of a long-past President, John
Quincy Adams, painted in 1845, long after the term
of Adams was over. He painted General Sherman.
He painted Jefferson Davis, who told him a de
Ughtful story of the obstinacy of Andrew Jackson.
"The horse was seventeen feet high," said Jack
son. "Hands, you mean, General," murmured a
friend beside him. "What did I say?" "You
said seventeen feet." "Then, by the eternal, it
was seventeen feet!"
Healy 's connection with Chicago came through
his meeting with WiUiam B. Ogden, in Paris in
159

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
1855. Ogden had been the first mayor of Chicago
and was a man of power. He told Healy of the
certain future of the city and urged him to go there,
and from that year Healy was a Chicagoan, with,
of course, absences for visits and work in other
places. In Chicago he seems to have painted everybody
worth painting. He painted Ogden himself; and
among the host of other names were those of
Sheldon, Arnold and Skinner, Newberry and
Blatchford and Blair and Kinzie. Always he
painted with a certain verity, a certain quality, and
he was of enormous industry. Born in 1808, he
died in 1894, rounding out, with his life, the period
from before the Chicago Massacre to after the
Chicago World's Fair!
His portraits are prized possessions; incontest
able proof of a family's ancient lineage, as it has
been aptly expressed; I think by Hobart Chatfield
Chatfield- Taylor. There are family traditions re
garding the saving of Healy portraits at the time
of the Great Fire. Newberry library has many
examples of his work, in originals, and in copies by
himself; and a few of his portraits are in the Art
Institute. There, also, in the Institute, is himself
by himself: black-haired, black-coated, white-tied;
and there is his portrait of his brown-eyed wife, in
gown of black velvet. In the same room, this being
one of the charming features of the Art Institute,
recognizing as it does art in various lines, are a
Duncan Phyfe table, and two adorable Chippen-
160

HOW AET CAME TO CHICAGO
dales, and a capable square-backed Sheraton: these
being among the numerous examples of fine old
furniture placed in the various rooms. And it is
still told, that before close knowledge of antique
furniture came here, a visitor aroused resentment
by remarking that there were numerous fakes.
"But you are not an expert," he was told. "No;
I am not an expert; but one need not be an expert
to see that those are fakes." And soon there was a
weeding out and a gathering anew.
There, too, in the Institute, is the superb Gunsau-
lus collection of old Wedgwood ; a collection surpass
ing those of Wedgwood in London, New York, Bos
ton or Philadelphia, and unequaled except by the
collection at the Wedgwood works at Etruria, where
still the manufacture is carried on by descendants
of the great founder, and where two or three build
ings are still standing that were used by Josiah
himself, where one may meet a great-great-grand
son, and where may be seen, in a distant church, the
monument to Wedgwood by the fine artist Flaxman,
who worked so intimately with him.
Chicago, although interested in the best of
European art, gives especial attention to the artists
of America and particularly to those of this city.
The Friends of American Art, an organization
nobly conceived, have gathered at the Institute the
work of the best American artists, of the past and
the present, including Gilbert Stuart and Benjamin
West, Copley and Sargent, John W. Alexander
and Eobert Henri, and others, among whom should
161

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
be named Ealph Clarkson, not only an artist of ad
mirable skill but one around whom largely revolves
the city's art life. In his early days Clarkson was
delightfully encouraged by Whittier the poet. For
although a Chicagoan, now and for many years
past, he lived as a boy and a lad in Whittier 's town,
Amesbury, Massachusetts, and he knew and honored
Whittier, and when he returned from several years
of art study in Boston and Paris, . Whittier, then
very old, sent word that he would like to see him,
and Clarkson found him tall and thin and stately
as of old and, as of old, dressed in garments which
accentuated the stateliness, the thinness and the
height. The old poet was keenly alive to the work
of the young painter. Clarkson remarked on the
poet's love of nature, and Whittier replied, "Yes,
I have always loved nature, and the promise that
she made me in my youth she has kept in my old
age and she grows more and more beautiful to my
sight." Clarkson is one of the artists who resort in the
summer months to the little town of Oregon, in the
Eock Eiver valley; and there is a Ganymede Spring
there, but it is not a modern christening by some
artist of to-day, but received its name some three
quarters of a century ago, from the original of the
highly picturesque Zenobia, of "The Blithedale Eo-
mance," who in real life was the writer, Margaret
FuUer, who visited out here in Illinois, at Oregon.
Chicago itself, as a city, has begun to purchase
paintings by artists who have lived here for at
162

HOW AET CAME TO CHICAGO
least two years, and the pictures are to be peri-
patetically exhibited in various public buildings and
in the public schools.
When one thinks, to use the quaint old Shakes-
perean phrase, of "the memorials and the works of
art that do adom the city," the mind goes at once,
here, to the Art Institute. It is a part of the city's
daily life. Each year more than a miUion people
enter its doors. One who may be considered the
dean of Chicago authors told me that when he wrote
an article about the Institute for one of the lead
ing magazines of New York, in which he stated that
the Institute had more visitors than any other
art museum in America, he was amazed to find this
altered, in the proofs, by the addition of "except
the Metropolitan Museum of New York." But it
has vastly more visitors than the Metropolitan, and
is claimed to have twice as many as the Boston
Museum of Pine Arts and four times as many as the
Philadelphia Academy.
It is among the few best art museums of the world
in its high proportion of the eminently good. An
odd feature is that it annually sells over two hun
dred thousand postcards with pictures upon them
of some of its artistic treasures. And to show how
it holds the public love it need only be said that it
has a membership of seven thousand, many of whom
have given it large sums.
It is saturated with the very spirit of art, and at
the same time is full of the city's dynamic energy.
The present building was opened in 1893 and has
163

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
not been closed for a single day, since, either Sun
day or weekday!
The building stands on the Lake Front at the foot
of Adams Street, and is thus close to the very heart
of the city. It stands by itself, detached, with great
open space on either side and with a noble back
ground and setting of lake and sky. And the first
thought is that, Florentine-like, some of its best
art is open to the view of the passers-by, on the ter
races or seen through open arches.
The building is beautiful. It is extraordinarily
effective. It is built of gray limestone, in the style
of the Italian Eenaissance, with classic Ionic and
Corinthian details. It is three hundred and twenty
feet across and is terraced on front and side with
superb stone balustrades.
Go up the broad steps that front the central por
tion, past the monumental lions of Kemys. Above
you, with open arches, are niched statues. Loggia
dei Lanzi-like. On the level of the entrance is a
niched copy of Houdon 's Washington: the original
being at Eichmond, Virginia; and there comes the
memory of the Frenchman's visit to America, sent
by Franklin and welcomed so cordially by Wash
ington. Within the building is Houdon 's Joel Bar
low, the Connecticut poet who died, with Napoleon's
army, on the retreat from Moscow.
You enter, and, before you, there are steps lead
ing up, and they separate and continue upward on
either side, with the Nike of Samothrace superbly
facing you, as in the Louvre. 164

HOW AET CAME TO CHICAGO
The entire entrance system is splendidly planned,
on the grand scale. To the right, through an arch-
wayed vista, is seen a great cast of Donatello's Gat-
tamelata, made for the Signoria of Venice; that
superb equestrian which still stands in the Piazza
di Saint 'Antonio in Padua. Through an arched
vista to the left is seen a great cast, matching it,
of Verrocchio's noble equestrian of CoUeoni. And
how old Italian stories come flocking! Of Dona
tello's hastening home from Padua from fear that
flattery would turn his head ; of Verrocchio 's defiant
leaving of Venice because his pride was touched,
and of how the rulers threatened to take his life
if ever he should return ; and of how they lured him
back with honeyed words, and how, the statue al
most completed, he suddenly died — of course, from
perfectly natural causes !
In a causeway, between these two great equestrian
statues, is a tawny II Marzocco, the Lion of Flor
ence, of the Bargello, and it is so a lion of an impres
sion, so upsitting a lion, so cute and pawky a lion,
with paw on escutcheon, as to give a final touch on
entering the building.
It is well to speak with enthusiasm of this Insti
tute, for to understand it and the forces behind it is
to understand Chicago. From the earliest days, one
remembers, even when Chicago superficially seemed
all rawness and roughness, there were people here
of the finest inherited traditions; always, that has
been recognized by intelligent visitors from abroad,
much more than by Americans from the East. And
165

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
this Art Institute is a shining light, an accomplished
result, to show what taste and knowledge and energy
and money can accomplish.
Here (not copies, but rare and precious originals)
are examples of the work of the masters. Here are
Corot and Daubigny, here are the stately Eubens
and the magnificent Eembrandt, here — one may
only name a few, almost at random — ^here are the
beauty and mystery of Monet, such as the Venetian
San Giorgio, with buildings of blue and gray and
red, with sky and water all magic blue and green,
such as you see in going by gondola to Murano.
Here is Eaeburn, painter of men; but this example
is his "Jean"; and how she would have been amazed
could she have known, in her home near the Tros-
sachs which Scott made so famous, that this paint
ing, with its background of the wonderful Scottish
hills stretching away for miles, should within a cen
tury find its way to a distant city on the level flats
of an interior lake of North America ! Here is Win-
slow Homer, "whose name was writ in water."
Here is Chase's "Alice," expressing the joyousness
of youth. Here is a superb full length by Henri, a
lady, all in black. Here is a recent portrait of
Joseph Pennell by Wayman Adams, a striking pre
sentation of the long, lean, earnest etcher.
No other individual artist is so honored here as
Inness. For there is a room devoted entirely to
him; to a score of his paintings; and one sees here
his sunsets and sunrises and mists, his sweet dis
tances and his trees and distant hills; one sees
166

HOW AET CAME TO CHICAGO
American scenery so presented by an American
artist, with rich coloring and misty sheen and softly
glowing beauty, as to show what a paintable land
this is. It is a triumph which Inness himself would
have profoundly appreciated ; and especially because
he would have remembered the immense contrast of
this with his visit to Chicago in the days when he
had modestly to count his dollars.
After establishing himself and his wife at a hotel,
on that long-ago visit, he left his card at the
proprietor's office, and shortly afterwards was sur
prised by the coming of a bell-boy, who deftly
gathered up their belongings and, saying that their
room was changed, led the way to the most elaborate
suite in the hotel, Inness uttering no objection but
thinking that he would stand the expense for a day
and that then they would quietly leave. But there
came a note from the proprietor. Potter Palmer,
saying that Mr. and Mrs. Inness were to be his guests
while in Chicago and sending, with his note, baskets
of fruit and flowers. It reads like a pleasant fairy
tale. Outside of the southern end of the Art Institute
has been erected the Fountain of the Great Lakes,
by Lorado Taft, who was commissioned from a fund
of a million dollars whose income is for monuments,
in Chicago, to men and women prominent in Amer
ican life, or for the commemoration of American
events. Under the Institute roof, or rather in spaces
stretching out beneath the terraces or in wings
167

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
stretching out behind, are rooms devoted to various
branches of art study; for there are annually over
twenty-four hundred students, taught by the best in
structors and according to the most advanced
methods, thus making the Institute of great influ
ence, not only in Chicago but in the many parts of
the West from which the students also come. The
presence of so many students, of both sexes, adds
an air of life and brightness. Scholarships and
prizes give stimulus to ambition and to skill. It is
interesting to watch the students at work, in class
after class; and one class were practicing drawing
without looking at pencil or paper but keeping their
eyes fixed intently on the subject.
The strength and the profound influence of the Art
Institute are not due entirely to any one man.
Therein lies its enduring power. Not only are there
the thousands of members and the annual million of
visitors, but among its friends are men and women
who have given with lavish generosity or have
gathered and donated important special collections.
The Eyerson Library, a magnificent collection of
books on art, commemorates the name of its founder,
and it is a noble foundation ; and among other names
connected with special collections are Higinbotham,
Gunsaulus, Blackstone and Nickerson, and Mrs.
Field, now the wife of the author of ' ' Meh Lady. ' '
But, though far from being a one-man Art Institute,
one man has more than any other been associated
with it : Charles L. Hutchinson, a banker, who was
chosen president of the Institute in 1882, three years
168

HOW AET CAME TO CHICAGO
after its founding, and who has been president for
every year smce : president for two score consecu
tive years! His love for art, his wide knowledge,
his unwearied devotion to the interests of the Insti
tute, his administrative ability, have been of im^
mense advantage. And the Art Institute, recogniz
ing this, has honored him in a unique and noble
way. For it set aside one of the large exhibition rooms
as the Hutchinson GaUery of Old Masters ; and, to
begin with, it placed within it a painting by one who
may by comparison be called quite a new master ; a
portrait of President Hutchinson by Gari Melchers.
Around the room are ranged paintings of vast dis
tinction. Here is a Van Dyck, his Helena Dubois ; an
aristocrat, cold, aloof, with collar and ruff. Here
is a superb Eembrandt; a girl with tawny reddish
hedr. Here is a Terburg, his "Music Lesson," with
the guitar teacher wearing his hat, and the student
with a little velvet sack, with ermine, such as Ter
burg 's contemporary, Vermeer, loved to paint.
Here is a Franz Hals, a portrait of his son, a black-
hatted, chestnut-haired young man with hand on
hip ; a portrait fascinating in its richness and finish.
Here is a Eubens, the Marquis de Spinola ; and above
armor and ruff is the long face of the long-nosed gen
eral. ( One of the paintings by Velasquez, the ' ' Sur
render of Breda," in the Prado Gallery at Madrid,
has as its central figure this same Spinola.) Here
is a Hobbema ; it is of green and shadowy mystery,
with mysterious dark trees and an even darker pool.
169

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
And here are also Teniers, the Younger, Jan Steen,
Euysdael, and others.
In a sense, this collection of paintings points out
an odd connection between Peter the Great, the fa
mous Czar, and Chicago. (And an additional touch
is that Czar Peter was reigning at the time when
the first Frenchmen so long ago came to Chicago.)
Almost every one of the paintings in the Hutchinson
Gallery came from the Demidoff collection. The
Demidoff who first won fame and fortune was a can
non-maker for Peter, and Peter gave him rewards
and opportunities, and he gained ovraership of mines
and became very wealthy and was made a prince.
Descendants piled the fortune still higher and the in
come mounted to over a milUon dollars a year. A
Demidoff of the middle of the last century acquired
a palace in Florence and also a ruined palazzo of
the Medicis to the northward, at Pratolino.
But changes came; and in 1880 the then Prince
Demidoff sold his Florentine palace and great part
of his collections. But the pictures which he most
prized he would not sell, but took with him to Pra
tolino. Then the prince died; and his artistic
prizes, chosen gems of art, are now the pictures of
the Hutchinson Gallery of Old Masters.
Lady Eandolph Churchill has told, in her "Eemi-
niscences," of a Princess Demidoff, living in Paris
in the closing years of the reign of Napoleon the
Third, who, through positive orders from the Czar,
was paid by her husband, from whom she was sep
arated, a total of millions of dollars ; which may at
170

HOW AET CAME TO CHICAGO
least help to explain the, decline of Demidoff finances.
The paintings started on their joumey from the
Medici palazzo, in its region of great hills and
groves of giant pines ; they came southward through
that golden land, past lovely Fiesole and the hillside
where the Boccaccio tales were told; they reached
fascinating Florence, whence Demidoff had grimly
retreated with them into the wonderful land to the
northward; from Florence they came to Chicago:
and now, ranged about this gallery, on walls of mid
night misty blue with threads of gold, it is as if they
are to be companions forever of the man whose por
trait has been placed beside them.

171

CHAPTEE XII

SOME MATTEES OF BUSINESS

I HE Chicago business man is
a busy man. He gets to
work an hour or at least
half an hour earlier than does
the business man of New York
and he keeps at work a little
later. And he works hard.
I remember two men who,
speaking separately from each
other, expressed standpoints
oddly alike. "I came to Chi
cago without a cent and I
failed for a million dollars,"
said one, now a rich man. "I came to Chicago with
ten dollars and in eight years had two miUion" said
the other. A New York business man once said to
me, "I told my Jap that I was going on a trip to
Chicago." "That's good; that's good," said he
clasping and unclasping his hands. "Why good,
Mahdi?" I asked. "Oh, always good go to Chi
cago. Always bring home money from Chicago."
Which would surprise Chicagoans, who are not ac
customed to have visitors take away money from
them. 172

SOME MATTEES OF BUSINESS
Merely to say that Chicago works hard, gives at
tention to business, and takes advantage of oppor
tunities, does not sufficiently explain the city's tre
mendous success. But Chicago carries these traits
to their highest power. And it exercises swift
originality of action.
A minister of the city preaches a sermon in which
he tells what he would do if he had a million dollars.
A man with millions listens and is impressed. The
million dollars is given, a technical school is estab
lished, the minister is made its president: and Chi
cago and Chicago business are immensely benefited,
and the school wins world-wide fame. That is busi
ness in Chicago. And, soon, the million is increased,
which is also Chicago business.
There is lavish advertising. In this it is the verit
able home-town. Every magazine and newspaper
in the East uses pages and pages of Chicago adver
tising. Even with minor advertisements there is
constant aim at catchiness. "It is cheaper to buy
good soap than new clothes." You see the appeal
to intelligence! And note this four-line appeal to
men who would fain not lose time :
"Hats cleaned while you wait.
Hats blocked while you wait.
Suits pressed while you wait.
Shoes repaired while you wait."
"Do away with the high cost of charging," urges
one. ' ' Our wagon at your door means the package
is paid for" says another. "If it's used in an office
173

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
we sell it," is a succinct declaration; whereas others
get at their ends by divigation, as, "Whether you
live on the Gold Coast or in the Ghetto, in a ten dol
lar kitchenette or a six hundred doUar mansion,
whether you feast sumptuously every day or lunch
contentedly on cheese and crackers, this, the biggest
bargain of the age, will be of interest to you. ' '
Note the clever brevity of: "If you love her you
will get her this washing machine." And another,
with something similar to sell, begins, "That old
saw about 'woman's work is never done,' may have
been true when Chicago was young. But conditions
have changed with our electrical outfits." "From
factory to feet," is a style of phrasing that the city
lives; as is also, "Made by the mile, sold by the
yard"; and "Tot Shop" is delightful.
Naturally, this is not a city for quaint ancientness
of signs: but even the signs in London were once
new ! And in time these present signs will be ancient
curiosities and people of the future will notice, "Bar
bers' grind shop," and "Manufacturers of creamery
butter and eggs" (the "eggs" arousing thoughts!)
and "Song and hat contest," with no explanation
offered of this. "Watch our window for your new
hat, " is of high excellence ; and the fact that Chicago
is a windy city may explain the "Uncalled for hats
for sale"; and I thought I noticed an indication of
cold winds in "Blue nose powder" but then saw that
it was really "blue rose."
The "booterie" is rivaled by the "shoe doctor,"
but one would not have anticipated popularity for
174

SOME MATTEES OF BUSINESS
"Le grand foot parlor." And another example of
misplaced effort might be the aUogether delightful
"Overstuffed ladies' boudoir chairs"!
The feeling for brevity leads even to single word
announcements. In a window I noticed, with noth
ing illustrative or explanatory, the one word, printed
large, "Exterminating" — a threatening sign! An
other single word, in another place, was "Plugos-
cillators." Another was the one word "Higglede-
piggledy." The "Palace of Sweets" is distinctively Chi
cagoan. And in the way of music I noticed a ' ' Su
preme jazz band" and also a "Syncopating jazz
band" — so that a choice is thus offered of either
kind. "Wanted, a third hand on bread," and "A
heat that beats the sun," attract your attention;
and in "You can split a hair four times with a razor
sharpened on our strop" you recognize positive
genius in the designation of the number of times.
Intense local pride does not bar the Paris barber
shop, The Boston store, the Eussian baths, or the
Connecticut pie — ^which one sees advertised at
Thanksgiving time.
An advertisement beginning, in big black type:
"Let the loop-hound buy his clothes in the shopping
district. The foxes are coming down here," is suf
ficiently cryptic. And "Wanted, trimmer for men's
hats," would seem to point to an exchange in the
status of men and women. "Watch for your name
in our new department of society news," is the in
direct path taken by a newspaper to secure sub-
175

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
scribers. And there is the real Chicago spirit in this
declaration, by an expressing company, "Anything
from Anywhere to Everywhere at Any Time."
Then you notice, lettered large, "A different rug
displayed here every day. At this rate it will take
over four years to show our complete stock. So
don't wait. Come in now."
Frequently there is what may be termed the
stately type of advertising, as "Dress, with its dawn
in the dim distance of the past, finds its noontide
glow in the great retail store of to-day. Let the
imagination travel over all the continents, in all
climes, tracing all time from the early days of sav
agery to the latest period of civilization; gathering
all art, all science, aU industry; boiling, compressing,
and condensing them into a compact mass — and the
sum of all is revealed in this store!"
And I was charmed, one day, by noticing the effect
of a furniture advertisement in a Wabash Avenue
shop window; it was far from wealthy furniture,
quite within the range of the twenty-five hundred a
year man going housekeeping, and there was set forth
a quiet-looking dining-room set, with cross-braced
sideboard and cross-braced chairs, labeled at the
footlight spot, "William and Mary," and two lovers
were eagerly looking: they were doing a little
window-shopping and were planning their furniture
on the way to the theater or a "pop" orchestra con
cert, and they had become so fascinated by the
"William and Mary" that I thought those must
be their names; and they seemed to be marveling
176

SOME MATTEES OF BUSINESS
at the wonder of finding them so opportunely.
I cannot even offer a suggestion as to why the age
of the men was specified in the following : "Wanted.
Forelady assistant. To take charge over ma
chines on young men's pants." But there is no
doubt about the excellent Americanism in a "Help
Wanted" advertisement for men, inserted by one
of the great houses: "The men must be American
citizens aud must understand our language." And
the man who advertised, "Lost, two removable
bridges," assuredly had no reference to one of the
city's bascules.
In one single issue of a newspaper I noticed the
following delightful advertisements: "Money
loaned on your automobile while you drive it";
"Want automobile or diamond for my Chicago real
estate: 3 vacant lots on West 59th Street"; "WiU
trade 5 acre farm for late model light six any
make"; "Will exchange share of good industrial
stock for readymade clothes"; "Will accept type
writer, or what, as payment on city lot"; the odd
specification of a typewriter being more than
equaled in oddity by the "or what"; "WiU ex
change player piano for good used touring car";
and, best of aU, is: "WiU exchange shotgun and
violin for electric sweeper." What a triumph of
utUitarianism over sport! But what apparent
hopelessness in the idea of landing not only a man
wUling to dispose of a carpet sweeper but one who
also wants a violin and a shotgun !
A marked feature of Chicago business Ufe is the
177

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
fact that in the great stores one sees comparatively
few but Americans, either as sellers or customers.
The great foreign population of the city lives and
does its shopping mainly in its own districts. And
perhaps this explains the pleasant attitude of clerks
in general, for they are certainly more interested in
what a buyer wants, and more cheerful and ready
to please, than the average clerk in Eastern cities.
One of the illustrative Chicago developments is
that of freight subways. It was found that the
downtown streets were really quite too crowded, as
one of the results of the centralization of business
within the Loop : whereupon came the idea of carry
ing material underground, with the result that under
the congested downtown district there are over sixty
miles of tunneling, all with tracks and electric loco
motives and trains of cars, for hauling freight to
and from raUway stations, for carrying away rub
bish and ashes, and earth excavated in building
operations, and for delivering coal and building ma
terial. The big wholesale and retail establishments,
and the railway and freight stations, are connected
with the system, and it lessens amazingly the num
ber of horses and motor trucks on the streets.
It makes a labyrinth, beneath the busy streets, of
tunnels mostly six feet wide and seven and a half
feet high, the tops of the tunnels being thirty-three
feet below the streets, the idea being not to interfere
with the future passenger subways ; and the system
goes under the Chicago Eiver in a dozen lines or
more. Hundreds of thousands of tons are annually
178

SOME MATTEES OF BUSINESS
hauled. There are three thousand cars used, each
about twelve feet long; the tracks are of two feet
gauge ; and the Lilliputian dimensions of cars and of
tunnels add an odd picturesqueness.
Everywhere and constantly, in this city, one comes
upon odd business developments. Three brothers
came here after the Great Fire. They looked at the
reviving tovm. "These people are going to make
money: their wives will buy hats," they agreed with
each other; so they began with a millinery store.
Continuing, their question always was, "What will
people want?" And now they own such things,
among others, as restaurants, and hat shops, and
various shopping places, and they founded two pub
lications which now have large circulation.
I noticed a few days ago some statements from a
man of immense wealth and of worldwide fame.
"No eight-hour day for any one who wants to ad
vance, ' ' he said : and he added : ' ' For my own part,
I am often at work, at my house, before going to the
office, by seven in the moming, busy with reports
sent out to me there." And one of his favorite
phrases is that "Luck may give a man a job but
luck can't make him hold it. ' ' And he lays stress on
the distinctive Chicagoan idea : " It is more import
ant to pay attention to the hiring of office-boys than
of any other class."
As an example of self-confidence I saw another
Chicagoan quoted as saying that he could buy a thing
from a Jew and sell it to a Scotchman at a proflt.
One department store declares that there are days
179

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
on which over three hundred thousand people enter
its doors; and that their eighty-two elevators', on
busy days, carry more people in ten hours than do
the combined South Side and the Metropolitan West
Side railways of the city in twenty-four hours. One
day I came upon this fine business motto, soberly
announced by a great house: "Our aim is to do
the right thing, at the right time, in the right way;
to recognize no impediments; to master circum
stances. ' '
A station agent at a little town begins to sell
watches by mail. He is successful and decides to
branch out. He comes to Chicago. Here he founds
a business, and it grows : grows so enormously that,
as an indication of it, its trade publications, mostly
catalogues, mount, so it is stated, to over sixty-five
million copies a year, the catalogue surpassing in
annual output every other pubUcation, even the
Bible. Over six million customers, in all parts of
the country or even in other countries. An average
of one hundred and eighty thousand orders received
each day. And they tell you such things as, that ten
million pairs of shoes are annually sold, and ten
million pairs of stockings. Everything is done with
marvelous order and system, by employees number
ing twelve thousand or more. Everywhere is an
astonishing quiet. Machinery that almost thinks
has been invented, for the handling of packages
and orders. There are surroundings of brightness
and fresh air and recreation and even music, and all
this with an atmosphere of pleasant but concen-
180

HSm>COH!0nmO 1)
n X
n
¦> Oo

SOME MATTEES OF BUSINESS
trated work. The chief executive, a quiet man, has
a desk which is kept extremely bare, for with him
there are no left-overs, his rule being to decide every
question at once.
Always, in this city, one expects to find a touch
of originality: as with the highly successful dress
maker whose question, on her table of measure
ments, always is, not "How old are you?" but
"How old do you wish to look?"
Here and there one sees, in an advertisement or
upon a business building, a declaration such as "Es
tablished 1898," or some such recent year. And for
a moment one may feel amused, contrasting with
such dates those of anciently established businesses
of old cities; and then comes the realization
that this is Chicago's way of looking to the present
and the future. After all, a London house, estab
lished say in 1702, was once just a new concem.
And yet, it must not be thought that Chicagoans
do not look backward. Leaving the University Club
one day, with a Chicago business man, we continued
our talk as we walked along Michigan Avenue. "I
remember," he said, continuing some topic which
he had himself introduced, "that Long John Went
worth told me that John Quincy Adams once leaned
across the aisle, in the House of Eepresentatives,
and asked, 'Just how do you pronounce that queer-
named city of yours ? ' " And this reminiscence came
as naturally as if the episode of Wentworth and the
sixth President was but of yesterday.
The stockyards are a feature of enormous magni-
181

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
tude in the business life of the city. The figures are
of hugeness, in totals of dollars and of animals.
There are twenty-five miles of streets within the
yards, and three hundred miles of railway track, and
seven million gallons of water are consumed on a
hot day.
It is astonishing, how many Chicagoans, within
the first five minutes of acquaintance, will tell a visit
ing Easterner that they have never themselves seen
the stockyards and will urgently advise him not to go
there. It is the one thing in regard to which Chi
cago is touchy or peevish. And the queer thing
about it is that there is nothing to be ashamed of.
In the early years of the business, when the loca
tion of the yards was then the distant edge of the
city, no use was made of by-products and there were
in consequence great quantities of refuse that were
fit for nothing and which were merely thrown out
upon the prairies, making the region, to express it
moderately, most highly unpleasant. And this
aroused the feeling of being ashamed of the stock
yards, as a region of dirty undesirability, of awful
and offal odors. But not only has the city spread
out far beyond the yards, making it necessary to pay
attention to sanitary conditions, but even without
that there would be no refuse to throw away. The
by-products, once scorned, long worth less than
nothing because they had to be carried away, are
nowadays worth enormous sums of money. As
some one has expressed it, within fifteen minutes
after going in, a pig comes out as hair, sausage,
182

SOME MATTEES OF BUSINESS
hair-oil and the binding for a Bible. By-products
include such things, to give a partial Ust, as sand
paper, pepsin, isinglass, ammonia, feather-pillows,
glue, hair, wool, leather, greases, banjo-strings, lu
bricating oils, pharmaceutical preparations, surgical
ligatures, gelatine and of course oleomargarine.
The packers will tell you that forty-four per cent.
of a steer cannot be sold as food but must be used
in by-products if at all : and it is understood that the
entire forty-four per cent, is used.
Most visitors, largely owing to the attitude of
Chicagoans themselves, go to Chicago prepared to
criticize the stockyards. They know that Chi
cagoans shudder about them. And then they are
surprised to find the yards to be miles from the
center of the city, in a direction in which tourists
have no temptation to go, so that they need not be
seen except by such as really wish to see them. A
question actually put to me, recently, in New York,
by a highly intelligent acquaintance who is well
acquainted with the Eastem States and with Europe,
was, "Is there really anything in Chicago but the
stockyards?" Whereas the stockyards merely
represent an unusually important branch of the city's
business, splendidly developed, on a mighty scale.
The great covered sheds, with Eembrandt-like
effects of light and shadow, give an odd picturesque
ness, as also do the rounders-up, like cowboys, on
horseback, and the immense lengths of covered run
ways, and buildings rising low or high, black or gray
or some shade of red, above the twenty thousand
183

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
pens that checker-board the hundreds of acres of
space. There are bizarre color effects, from great
signs, in red or black, with great spaces of yeUow ;
from the blackest of smoke, in eddying clouds ; from
the whitest of steam; from the yellows and blues
and whites of the long lines of railway cars; from
stockyard wagons painted all red or aU blue or all
yellow or aU brown; from the colorful costumes of
the foreign workers ; from the cattle themselves, in
reds and grays and blacks and browns. There is the
sound of roaring machinery, of scurrying horsemen,
of the trampling of hoofs. There are the cries of
the drivers, urgent, sharp, mandatory, the cries of
the cattle, with a premonition that it means the end,
sounds that are expostulative, recalcitrant, making a
strange chorus. At times there rises a volumed cry
that goes from runway to runway, that is taken up
from pen to pen, a dreadful, dissonant, sweUing,
many-throated cry. In his Pelleas et Melisande
Maeterlinck makes one of the characters describe
cattle driven toward their death, saying, ' ' They cry
like lost children ; you would say they already smelt
the butcher."
Under the heading of business should properly be
included the immense achievement of actually turn
ing the Chicago Eiver back upon itself, of absolutely
reversing its course. The intent has been twofold,
for the problem has been twofold. Beginning as a
matter of aiding trade movements, it developed also
into an enormous solution of the problem of sewage
disposal. 184

SOME MATTEES OF BUSINESS
Joliet, one of the wonderful Frenchmen who were
here two centuries and a half ago, declared that by
cutting out and clearing away where was then a
short portage, it would be possible to go by boat
between the Mississippi and Lake Michigan. And
JoUet's idea has been carried out on a vast
scale. The first effort was made three quarters of a
century ago, with a canal forty feet wide and five
feet deep, but it was quite inadequate, and in 1892
the present Drainage Canal was begun. It was
opened in 1900.
The situation of the city, at the bottom of Lake
Michigan, as at the bottom of a water-bag, made a
dangerous condition as to health; for the city's gar
bage, although carried farther and farther out into
the lake, was persistently buffeted by winds and
waves till it returned; and the intake cribs of the
water department seemed to have a special fascina
tion for it.
The water bottle could not be tipped up and emp
tied, whereupon the city decided to cut a hole in the
bottom. The Chicago Eiver was to become an outlet
for the lake, instead of the lake being an outlet for
the river. Enormously sluice-gated and dammed,
with a depth of twenty-two feet and a minimum bot
tom width of one hundred and sixty, it carries away
the sewage, offers a water-way for boats, and at the
same time is so constructed, with water power and
power stations, as to generate for the city an enor-
mus supply of electricity. And further plans are
185

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
under active consideration for making the canal still
^more of an asset for Chicago.
When it was first planned to turn the river about,
and make its water run to the Illinois and the
"Mississippi, the idea attracted amazed attention, and
one local versifier wrote:
"This notion surely is an awful staggerer,
Down to the Gulf they'd carry great Niagara!
And, by forestalling all its feeding torrents,
Made a dry bridle-path of the St. Lawrence !"
Although the results have not been so marked as
that, there have been some complaints as to the
lowering of levels at other harbors on the lake, and
as to the contamination of river water for some
nUnois towns, causing watchfulness on the part of
the Washington authorities, and cautions or orders
as to the control of the water: for necessarily the
reversed river is now a controlled stream as to
quantity of flow.
Swinburne, in some of his most brilliant lines,
thanks "whatever gods may be" for, among other
things, the fact that "even the weariest river winds
somewhere safe to sea." But the apparently im
mutable laws of nature are no bar to Chicago, even
though versifically expressed by a Swinburne, for
this "weariest river," as I think it may fairly be
called from its past reputation, is no longer per
mitted to wind its way to the great inland sea.
By a delightful chance the canal ends at a point
186

SOME MATTEES OF BUSINESS
only a few miles from the town named in honor of
Joliet, the man who so long ago saw the opportunity
for it. And the remembrance of the farsightedness
of Joliet, and the proximity of the town named for
him, bring to mind the visit of Harriet Martineau
to Joliet three quarters of a century ago ; she knew
it had been named for the explorer, and regretted
that she found it called, by a perversion, Juliet, be
cause, so she wrote in all seriousness, with the town
of Eomeo close by, she feared that Juliet it would
remain !

187

CHAPTEE Xin
A MODERN COBSAIE
N a July aftemoon a
little craft was driving
ashore in a heavy
storm, a short distance
north of the mouth of
the Chicago Eiver. It
was a terrific struggle.
Great waves tossed and
swung the little boat and
rolled over it in torrents.
The beach was white with
raging foam. The drag
ging anchor would not hold. At length the vessel
grounded; and when the storm died down, the cap
tain waded ashore and claimed ownership by right
of discovery.
This reads as if it happened far back in the days
of the earliest explorers, when discovery still gave
unquestioned title. But it was really an event of
rather recent years ; for the claim through discovery
was made half a century after Chicago had become
an incorporated city ; forty-nine years, if one would
be exact in regard to so important a matter. It oc
curred in 1886. 188

¦t^r

A MODEEN COESAIE
And it was not a fantastic jest but a serious mat
ter and a serious claim, added to by other serious
claims as rapidly as legal ingenuity could formulate
them, and supported in time by rifles and bullets, by
desperate conflicts and desperate bravery.
Nothing so extraordinary, so wild, so bizarre, so
outre, ever happened in the history of any other
American city. It was the perUs of the early ex
plorers, brought to this great modern city in these
modern times : it was the Middle Ages ; it was knight-
errantry. And as Longfellow put it of some New
England celebrity, it is the more interesting through
its being an American and an American happening
than it would be if it were a story of
"Old Sir William, or what not,
Clinking about in foreign lands
With iron gauntlets on his hands
And on his head an iron pot I ' '
George Wellington Streeter was one of the
children of a pioneer of the West. As a young man
he served in the Civil War. After that he drifted
about, wandered though much of the Westem
country, became acquainted with buffaloes and In
dians, did steamboating on the Cumberland and the
Mississippi, and then gravitated to Chicago in the
late 80 's.
He had been roaming up and down the land, a
knight-errant, ready to fight with pistol or knife or
fists with anybody who wanted to fight: Uke those
old-timers who are so admired because they went
189

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
about with sword and spear looking for trouble.
Streeter was always looking for trouble, or at least
expecting it ! He had fights innumerable.
The summer of 1886 found him operating a little
steamer, scarcely larger than a steam launch, with
the ends of the deck open and the center inclosed.
With this he made trips out from Chicago, as far as
Milwaukee and return. It looked as if his life of ad
venture had become a life of the commonplace. But
the greatest adventure of his adventurous life was
immediately in front of him.
On July 10 he steamed out of the harbor for one
of his trips to Milwaukee. He had a party of
passengers aboard, and was to retum with them the
same day. But a storm arose, and so threateningly
increased that the passengers determined to return
to Chicago by rail.
But Streeter was not daunted. He started out in
the growing storm and managed to get his tiny
steamer opposite the harbor of Chicago. But to
enter the harbor was another matter. The gale had
furiously increased. Darkness came, and found him
still contesting with wind and waves, foot by foot,
inch by inch. Twice he was swept overboard ; but he
had tied a rope around his waist and was dragged
back by his wife or by one of the crew; the crew
totaling one or two men.
Hours passed. The boat rolled and struggled.
Darkness came. Ten o'clock came. The engine
broke down and there was now sheer helplessness.
The boat struck and slid and slithered onward. The
190

A MODEEN COESAIE
seams of its hull opened. It grounded again and
sank. It was now three in the moming and the boat was
aground at a point four hundred and fifty feet from
shore : or, again to be precise, just four hundred and
fifty-one feet from the shore line, this figure being
insisted upon in the legal battles that were to come.
He had landed near what was to be the foot of
Superior Street, and the general aspect of the neigh
borhood suited him admirably. There were some
houses at a little distance back from the water, but
the stretch bordering the lake was an uninhabited
waste and he very soon decided to become its inhab
itant. The spot where his boat was wrecked was less
than a mile from the mouth of the river and from
Eush Street Bridge. It was unsettled and un
claimed. The conditions were ideal. For Streeter
was not the man to let anything desirable go un
claimed if he had the right to claim it.
An adjoining owner — ^it is said to have been N. K.
Fairbank — told him he might haul in the boat and
strengthen its position: and this strengthened
Streeter 's legal position. Before very long the rich
owner asked him to leave : but this was not the first
time that an "Old Man of the Sea" stayed on, un
welcome, after having been welcomed.
The claim of Streeter seems sufficiently whimsical.
The treaty of peace between the United States and
Great Britain, so he set forward in his argument for
possession, gave as the national boundary a line
through the center of Lakes Ontario, Erie, St, Clair,
191

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Huron and Superior, but omitted Lake Michigan.
Were Lake Michigan a Uttle inland lakelet this
omission would be of no importance; but Streeter
declared it to be essentially an ocean, requiring to
be considered and named in a treaty: and that its
omission left the bordering land in the legal situation
of unclaimed territory, and that therefore his claim
of possession through discovery should hold.
Perhaps Chicago should be pardoned for not quite
following his logic ; perhaps it was not unreasonable
in being frankly puzzled; but the assurance of the
claim, the arrogance, the unexpectedness of it all,
were fascinating.
Streeter, man of action that he was and not mere
visionary, mapped out his claim and offered lots for
sale. Then the law was invoked, and a long series
of legal struggles was begun.
Streeter did not confine himself to the claim of
discovery. He asserted that Chicago owned only
through the rights of Virginia, and that Virginia
owned only to the water's edge. He would thus own
everything outside the technical water's edge: and
from the beginning he had set himself to the task of
fiUing in land.
The original claims might be taken by his oppo
nents to be a sort of jest; although not a jest to
him; but the matter of the fiUed-in land, the made
land, outside of the technical water's edge, could not
be treated as a jest by anybody. The owners of ad
joining land soon began to feel considerable con-
192

A MODEEN COESAIE
cem; and such bitterness entered into the contests
that there was for a long period resort to violence
as well as to the courts, and Streeter was charged at
one time or another with murder, assault, forgery
and other crimes. When a warrant was successfully
served, and he was marched off to be arraigned, his
wife stood guard in his absence, eye looking along
rifle barrel, finger on trigger, and as Streeter 's ab
sences were brief, the judges' verdicts deciding that
there was no reason for holding him, he would find
everything safe upon his retum.
His wife, Irish-born, was indeed a helpmate, ready
to help him devotedly. She was not his first wife,
nor was she his last — it might perhaps be said that
he had the marrying habit — but she was his wife dur
ing the years when his need was for precisely such
a helper as she was, valiant and labsolutely devoted,
not only sleeplessly on guard to aid him but, woman
though she was, of physical fearlessness.
He called his claimed land the "District of Lake
Michigan," and had it formally organized, with legal
ceremony, under this name ! And Chicagoans loved
to go and look wonderingly at his Peggotty-made
house. The boat had settled too firmly to be floated.
Sand began to drift and gather about it with
astonishing quickness, and he promptly assisted this
filUng-in. Much excavating for building was going
on in the city and he arranged with contractors to
dump refuse stone and brick at the edge of his
193

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
claimed tract. They would dump it as near as they
could, and he would load it in his yawl and carry it
out and dispose of it around his boat.
Sand gathered more swiftly. By the end of No
vember he was able to put jacks under the boat and
lift it inch by inch. It was the "Toiler of the Sea"
story, right here on the Chicago beach; a tale of
infinite patience, of skill, of strength, of tireless
energy. How Hugo would have loved it !
He repaired the cabin. Gradually he got his boat
three feet above water. Gradually he made land
around it. He and his wife prepared to face winter
there and its cold and storms. And, as it turned
out, they lived in this boat for a number of winters
and summers. Often, storms would wash away his
piled-up stone. B"ut nothing dismayed him. Al
ways he was Uke Hugo's "Toiler of the Sea." He
worked patiently and with vast labor at the filling in.
Now and then he found pieces of lead or zinc or
copper, lost wreckage, uncovered by storms, and
sometimes gold or silver coins! "Pieces of eight!"
What a (touch ! And as he would naively express it,
he felt that he was making a valuable homestead for
himself !
It has been asserted, and apparently believed, by
some of his opponents, that on that July day of
storm it was his deliberate plan to get himself
wrecked and driven ashore : but if that was so it
would but add to the desperate wonder of it, the dar
ing, the intrepidity, the readiness to face death to
gain an end. 194

A MODEEN COESAIE
The legal proceedings dragged slowly on. One of
Streeter 's claims, through some delving lawyer, even
went back to some ancient King Eichard law regard
ing forcible entry and detainer. And Streeter
claimed that his millionaire opponents were outlaws
trying to get him ejected by hired force. There were
attempts to catch him off his guard. There were
attempts to get him into fights, and as fighting was
his forte there would be grounds for new warrants,
new arrests, new charges, but with astonishing ab
sence of result.
Though the civil proceedings went loiteringly
there was no loitering with what may be termed the
uncivil. There were sieges and night watches. His
principal weapon was a sawed-off army musket,
which he often used as a club. It was kept loaded
with small shot instead of buUets, for he had no
desire to kill. For several years, for the guerilla
warfare was lengthy, the doctors of the growing
North Side were busy picking shot out of men en
gaged in the Streeter War.
He built a new cabin on top of his boat, and this
Fenimore Cooper-like cabin was often held by his
wife while he, like Deerslayer, dodged and watched
and listened outside. Often, police and crowds of
people gathered, to look on, in anticipation of a
battle. He had a place to hide his gun so that he could get
it after an absence without going to his cabin. One
night, getting back after one of the arrests which did
not hold him, he suspected an ambuscade and ap-
195

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
proached with infinite caution. It was bitter cold,
and he found that five deputy sheriffs were in the
boat, laughing and joking about their success thus
far and planning to get up into the cabin. They
sat by a lamp. He fired at it through the window,
putting them in darkness. Then he put a volley of
smaU shot among them. There were wild yells and
excitement. They rushed out. Three he knocked
unconscious. Two escaped but only by dashing
through icy water.
Conflicts grew more bitter. He gathered men
about him. Assailants tried to burn him out.
Lawyers flocked to Streeter ready to go into court
for the advertisement of it and for a share of what
they might gain. The situation grew more tense
and savage. A man was killed. The situation could
not continue forever. And it had by now gone into
this Twentieth Century !
After long delays, he was convicted of murder.
His wife died while he was in jail. He appealed,
and was set free. But somehow, the active physical
war was over although in some phases this Jarndyce
and Jarndyce case is still in the courts. There
seems to be some question as to precisely what
Streeter may have got out of it, but for a time he
actuaUy offered lots for sale in what was colloquially
known as Streeterville.
And as I write Streeter still lives in the city where
he played out his story for years ; and the land that
he claimed is immensely valuable, closely built over
by those he fought, laid out in streets ; and he goes
196

A MODEEN COESAIE
up and down, cinnamon haired and cinnamon coated,
a D'Artagnan of Chicago.
Going toward the center of the city, through
Lincoln Park, you see land jutting out into the lake.
Upon it rise tall apartment houses, which seem the
taller through their position at the edge of the water.
Beyond, you see the towered end of the great recrea
tion pier, and somehow, in all, you get an odd effect
as of Venice. At your right, bordering the park,
are homes of wealth. It is charming, this view; it
is one of the striking bits of Chicago ; and it is near
where these big apartment houses now stand, it
was here in the very atmosphere of wealth, that
Streeter was wrecked and where was organized the
"District of Lake Michigan. ' '

197

CHAPTEE XIV

TEAITS AND ASPECTS

"^HE word "Chicago"
1 has an electrifying

effect on the real
Chicagoan. It rouses
and stimulates. "Chi^
cago!" It is a battle-
cry, a slogan, a watch
word, an appeal, a de
fiance, a boast. ' ' Chicago
is Chicago. It is inevit
able. Nothing can stop
it," says one of the char
acters in Fuller's "Cliff Dwellers."
And, following from absolute confidence in the
city, comes high personal confidence. Advertise
ments offering for work (one does not say, "asking
for work") would seem to show that all the most
able men and women in the land are ready to work
in Chicago; at least, taking the advertisers' state
ments of their own abilities at even a great discount,
the impression still holds of the marvelous amount
of high capacity awaiting the invitation to highly-
paid work. And they are not in the least diffident
about declaring that they must be well paid. After
198

TEAITS AND ASPECTS
all, it is a very old Chicago story, that the lawyer,
called upon to settle a bet as to who was the best
lawyer in the city, promptly declared that he him
self was; and when asked, by the embarrassed in
quirer, how this could be proven to the other man,
repUed, "You don't need to prove it; I admit it."
(Chicagoans "with great art will lie on the watch to
hook in their own praise," to quote a quaintness
from an Englishman who wrote before Chicago was
founded.) It was another Chicago lavryer who never talked
ill of any one — because he never talked of any one
but himself ! And it was still another who demanded
the release of his client, a deaf man, on the ground
that he had not had a hearing. And it was a long-
ago lawyer who, receiving from Horace Greeley an
account for collection, with the offer of half the
amount for collecting, wrote Greeley after a while,
"Dear Sir, I have collected my half, but your half
is uncoUectable " ; a joke which Greeley deemed alto
gether too good to keep to himself.
Greeley, by the way, in spite of his "Go West"
slogan, did not particularly impress Chicagoans
when he was in the city on political or other mat
ters ; they described him, with a phrase that has since
been often applied to other men by other cities, as
a self-made man who worshiped his creator.
Chicago has been so freely abused that she has
felt quite at liberty to be critical in return ; and she
has kept her temper, and her comments have had a
cutting edge. When George William Curtis was an
199

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
idol in the East he went to Chicago and was duly
looked over. "His profile is fine; we suppose it
might be called classical. The forehead and nose
are particularly good. The chin has a dimple, and
we have yet to find a man with a dimple in his cHn
who has any staying quaUties. He parts his hair
in the middle, and that lends him an air of effemin
acy. ' ' And in conclusion comes the terrible insight
of the summing up; no one but a Chicagoan or
Dean Swift could be so easy and so crushing:
"His whole appearance is that of an overworked con
fidential clerk in a metropolitan jewelry store."
Not just a clerk, you notice, but so very much
stronger from the imagined detail of the jewelry
store. Often the jibes are not only clever but good-
naturedly so. "His Westem trip will do George F.
Hoar a power of good. He will leam that the cod
fish is no more the national bird than baked beans
were the manna which heaven showered upon the
children of Israel in the wilderness."
And humor may be very serious. It may be used
to point an argument or an idea, as by John T.
McCutcheon, the cartoonist, the best in the world in
recent years, whose pictures combine humorous
presentation with a tremendous effectiveness.
Chicagoans, hard though they work, also know
how to laugh. They have the joie de vivre. Their
humor is Ukely to have an unexpected droUness : and
always it is distinctly of a Chicago quality. Some
man is spoken of, who "was married twice and was
200

TEAITS AND ASPECTS
also in the war." Or, apropos of nothing in par
ticular, a friend will just happen to say in his talk
that your head sits upon one end of your spinal
column and that you sit on the other. Or "If that
man ever gets an idea, he would die of childbirth."
And, according to a newspaper, a little boy calls back
to his grandfather, "Come on, grandpa, put a little
more pep into your legs. ' ' And I remember that one
evening, in the ladies' reception room of one of the
clubs, a young woman beside me asked an older one,
of fifty years or more, "How's your mother?" To
which the elder replied, "Full of pep!"
The city has a few favorite words and pronuncia
tions. ' ' Sure ' ' is met very often : and it is uttered
with wide variation of intonation, from friendly to
quarrelsome with indifference in between. "Horn
ing in," one of the most expressive phrases on the
lips of man, comes obviously from a local source.
The pronunciation of the Des Plaines Eiver is al
ways just as spelled : no weak yielding to foreign in
fluence ! Halstead Street is given a markedly broad
"Haul." Devon is usually "Dee-vone." Now and
then there is a striving for the unusual, as, "The
singer was listened to by an abundant and adulant
audience." I have more than once noticed the pro
nunciation of "trait" as "tray"; something to be
met with, but rarely, in England ; and also one may
hear, as if in England, "Eafe" for "Ealph."
Often there is vivid brevity of speech, an ability
to answer. A judge sentencing a woman to ten
years' imprisonment for expressing socialistic views,
201

THE BOOK OiP CHICAGO
added: "You'll be an old woman when you come
out"; to which, turning a level gaze on the taunter,
she replied, "Yes ; I'll be an old woman — ^but I'll see
a young democracy. ' '
Men's evening clothes are still, at times, a subject
of local jest, although they are worn as generally as
in the East. The days when a rich man was ' ' backed
into his dress coat," as Lorimer delightfuUy put it,
are passing: always, "one generation passeth away
and another generation cometh"; and one would
scarcely find any rich Chicagoan saying, to-day, as
the original Armour is understood to have growl-
in gly declared, "My culture is in my wife's name."
But one may refer to George Ade's wealthy man,
whose "wife or daughter always had to go to his
room and look him over and turn him around a
couple of times before they dared to lead him out
where the company could see him." And it was
Eugene Field who joyously wrote :
"Oh, hand me down my spike-tail coat
And reef my waistband in,
And tie this necktie round my throat
And fix my bosom-pin. ' '
The young men who "remove their pajamas to
put on evening clothes" represent a certain type of
leisured wealth, not much in evidence; but the ab
sence of an important theater district makes for the
absence from sight of the young spender, the "gilded
youth" so prominent in New York and London.
The real leaders of Chicago society are people,
202

TEAITS AND ASPECTS
mostly of great wealth, who are cultured, alert and
intelUgent, unpretentious and unassuming; even
though the men may have won world-wide fame in
connection with beef or banks, soap or sleeping-cars.
A lady described to me an aftemoon reception, and
wishing me, a visitor, to know of it as a "select"
function, said: "Mrs. B. poured tea, so nothing
more need be said!"
There is much of a breezy openness of life; and
I have seen women, of undoubted high standing,
freely and breezily powder their faces in public.
I have seen it in hotel restaurants, in hotel'corridors,
in aisles of the big stores. And I notice in a
society column that "if done daintily" it is good
form, but that it is "very bad form" if the woman
should open a bag and "display toilet accessories."
One may find amusement in reading any city's
"society notes," and "hints on etiquette"; and I
quote from an extremely serious Chicago column
some advice for "those people who desire to create
an agreeable impression in the dining room. ' ' They
are told to ' ' sit up straight- and a comfortable dis
tance from the table (not so close as to be awkward,
and yet near enough to prevent any danger of a
sUp 'twixt the cup and the Up)." And, "Don't
put your elbows on the table or toy with the silver
at your place. Don't begin to eat until all present
have been served. Take small mouthfuls and chew
silently. A well-bred man makes no more noise
when he eats toast than when he eats custard."
Which delightfully well-put statement is followed
203

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
by the admirable directness of "Do your best to
keep conversation going, except when your mouth
is fuU."
Women cling to big heavy long fur coats; they.
are freely worn as late as April fifteenth ; and above
the heavy fur coats are perched little gay straw
hats. Chicago breakfasts early, lunches promptly, dines
early ; it is not in the least ashamed to. dine at six
or six-thirty ; but, delightfully, it keeps its Ubraries
open until ten; it may eat earlier than other big
cities but it reads later.
Chicago people have a character all their own,
among those of large cities, through the constant
meeting with one another, in the shopping district
and at the clubs ; they all know what their neighbors
are doing, and if a friend has a visitor it quickly
becomes common knowledge what he does and says
and what kind of person he is and whom he meets
and where he goes. Boys and girls stiU go to school
together, and grow up together, and use first-names,
and if anything happens to anybody it is talked
over by everybody. At bottom, this illustrates a
principle enunciated by Mark Twain, that of course
people are more interested in gossiping about a
tragedy or scandal or accident or murder among
those they know than among strangers. Naturally,
the intimacy of Ufe makes for cliques and piques,
and the piques loom easily into mountain piques.
Altogether it is a city that is loved, and not only
by its own folk but by sojourners. I know a couple
204

TEAITS AND ASPECTS
who went there to Uve, for business reasons, when
they were sixty. They lived there for three years,
and found the big city like the little place they had
long known, for they promptly came to know many
people, and everybody was friendly and everybody
talked; they found friendliness even in the atmos
phere of butcher and baker. The man works for
Standard Oil and was transferred to Cleveland,
but still takes a Chicago paper that he and his wife
may read the "personal news" of their three years'
home. Of Philadelphia it is said that no one can
become a Philadelphian ; that it is like being a Jew
— ^one either is or isn't one ; but it is not that way in
Chicago. In short, Chicagoans are f olksey folk ; and there is
no difficulty in finding apartment houses that have
no objections to children; than which it would be
hard to find better proof of folkseyness.
Much more than any other city, this is a place
for meetings : not lectures by professional lecturers,
such as Boston so multitudinously loves, but meet
ings at which some up-to-date subject is discussed,
with an up-to-date man or woman to lead. I find
that I noted for one single day from a newspaper —
and just an ordinary day for Chicago — that there
was a serious talk by the mayor at a large and at
tentive g'athering, that there was a serious talk
in another hall by the general in command of this
department, and there was a serious talk before the
Fortnightly Club, by the president of the Univer
sity of Chicago, upon conditions in Persia, to which
205

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
country he had led a Govemment commission, and
that there were two or more important talks at still
other places ; and on the same day a great audience
gathered for the Chicago Orchestra.
I was invited one evening to a meeting to be held
in a hall in one of the business blocks. I asked the
elevator man to let me out on the floor for the meet
ing. "Which meeting do you mean?" he asked;
for in four separate meeting-places in that building
there were that evening to be meetings ! ¦
Chicagoans are good listeners ; and I first noticed
this at a noonday meeting at the University Club,
when some two hundred business and professional
men gave quiet, steady-eyed attention to an earnest
and steady-eyed speaker. One notices, at such
meetings, that business men wear their clothes with
much of an air, and at the same time with a sort
of likable or even almost lolling unconsciousness.
And at any gathering of Chicago's business men
it will be noticed that the average is younger, and
that there is more of baldness, than one sees in
similar gatherings in Eastem cities.
Chicago is not always a good theater city for
briUiant plays. The city has its own standards,
and, clever though it is, resents the cleverness that
is different. "Androcles and the Lion," for ex
ample, in its recent remarkable presentation, was
frankly resented, was not understood. Indeed, the
best British actors, as weU as playwrights (not that
I mean that Bernard Shaw is British, except
206

THE NEW FIELD MUSEUM

TEAITS AND ASPECTS
through his adopting London!) are rather frowned
upon here : Chicago neither understands nor likes
the English accent so markedly given by some actors,
and bare chairbacks are mute but indisputable evi
dence of Chicago's opinion.
There are two or three really admirable theaters,
with charmingly correct exteriors ; but there are few
first-class plays. Vaudeville is popular, and has at
least one highly imposing theater : and I remember,
on the night of the opening, the awe with which the
news was passed from one to another that some
wonderful roses in the vestibule had cost ninety-
eight dollars a bunch. If the cost had been given
as one hundred dollars it would not have been nearly
so effective as the particularity of ninety-eight!
(Is it necessary to add that this is the "largest,
handsomest and costliest theater in the world!")
If, after all, some may think that this polished
city still has something of a substratum of raw
ness, it may be remembered that it was but yester
day that here were wolves and wildcats and wilder
ness. And one thinks of this when a huge audience
goes wild with joy over a pillow-fight between a girl
on the stage and one of the orchestra; and I re
member the roaring guffaws of thousands when two
little dwarfs were kicked by a man extraordinarily
tall. I suppose they were not really hurt : but the
audience would not have laughed had they not taken
the kicking to be real: and if they had not laughed
the dwarfs would have no engagements — so it's a
207

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
topsy-turvy world after all ; and the next day I saw
the two tiny dwarfs on the street, very solemn-faced,
walking to the theater to be kicked.
Moving pictures are palatially housed, with
elaborate programs ; and of course tn myriad places
unpalatial; and a successful form of advertising is
to announce that "The title is forbidden by the
censor to be used," and a close second in popularity
comes from the sign, "No children admitted." But
such deplorable bids are not used by the excellently
managed places.
Theaters of all kinds are open on Sunday : and in
this city it is not wicked to have your hair cut on
Sunday! On Sunday night shooting-galleries are
highly popular. With quieter folk Sunday is a
great day for card-playing. "We had a little party
up at our house yesterday, ' ' is something said very
often on Monday. And Chicago shares with the
Puritan and the Quaker cities a love for Sunday
motoring and a long game of goU.
The police, as in other cities are, as a city's
recreation, made a common target for criticism:
but, recently, criticism was quieted for at least six;
months through the outspoken declaration of the
poUce head that for every dishonest poUceman there
were five hundred dishonest citizens — ^which made
the city gasp and grow silent.
And this brings to mind the Chicagoan who after
taking a taxi for a long drive, found that he had no
money with him. It was night. It was an awkward
situation for he was to call at a home where he did
208

TEAITS AND ASPECTS
not want to borrow. Nearing his destination he
called to the driver to pull up in front of a cigar
store. "I want to get a candle. I have no matches.
I dropped ten dollars here on the floor," he said.
He went into the store — and instantly the taxi went
swiftly away!
Even reUgion is not without its distinctive treat
ment. Eudyard Kipling's susceptibilities were
quite touched by it, but really, a city need not take
very seriously the esthetic susceptibilities of a man
who, with all the world before him where to choose,
established himself in an unattractive location at a
place with the dreadful name of Eottingdean. To
Kipling, religious treatment in Chicago was a ' ' reve
lation of barbarism complete." The church was "a
circus really," and the minister, "with a voice of
silver and with imagery borrowed from the auction
room, built up for his hearers a heaven on the lines
of the Palmer House, and set in the center of it a
loud-voiced, argumentative, very shrewd creation
that he called God."
To those who know the quiet decorum of the thou
sand churches of Chicago, and the pleasant friendli
ness of the Sunday goU-playing of a host of
members, it will seem as if such criticism can never
have been even remotely justifled : and yet, after all,
this is the city of "Billy" Sunday, who left the
city's baseball club to become the city's religious
exponent — ^not without sensational ways and words !
And this was the city of Dwight L. Moody, the
wonderful shoe clerk who preached to fifty mUlions
209

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
of people, a man of magnetism and power, of blunt-
ness of religious method, who would stop a stranger
on the street to ask him about his soul. In his early
days he went frequently to the newspaper offices
to see about his notices : and it is still told that, one
evening, a voice sounded from the entrance of the
Tribune editorial rooms: "Is Christ among you?"
it demanded. "No, he's just gone out to see a
friend. He'll be sorry to miss you. WUl you
wait?" There was a moment's ominous silence.
Then, "Here's a notice I want put in." And he
caUed back abruptly from the door, ' ' Christ will get
you yet!" And I thought of this local story the
other day when I noticed, over the door of a Moody
branch, the old-time Moodyish directness: "Do
you want a friend? Come in! God loves you."
I noticed among the advertisements recently an
example of what is proverbiaUy next to godliness:
"Wanted, room: by a clean man." Brief; it could
not be more brief ; yet how complete it is !
The city boasts of more litigation per capita than
any other city of the world. It also claims more
divorces, with figures ready to prove the claim, than
any other city of the world : and a Chicagoan went
before a committee of the United States Senate, in
April of 1920, with that divorce claim.
In spite of its newness it has become a mellow
city : and it would not tolerate the New York custom
of streets tom up for months or even years, with
the consequent appearance as of a mining camp.
Making 'a beautiful city on absolute flatness is a
210

TEAITS AND ASPECTS
Chicago triumph; and they do not even have an
island out in the lake to help in this ! But they have
the water and the sky and a love of beauty. And
such things as lagoons and peninsulas and wooded
slopes and sites for new museums are created in
short order, in almost Genesis-like quickness.
There are few things more agreeable than to see
Chicagoans flocking into the sporting-goods stores,
in spring, to get their fishing outfits. Crowds come
thronging; all sorts of people, all types. And with
the greater number, who cannot travel to some dis
tant aristocratic lake, it is for the sake of sitting for
hours on a pier, soaking an ineffective bait in the
calm, indifferent water. And, speaking of fish in
these parts, I remember a hotel fountain with little
fish swimming; and — ^was it typical? — they were
gold fish!
Chicago regrets not having a few places of his
torical prominence to show; she knows that cities
are expected to have them — ^yet she did not even
keep Fort Dearborn! But, pleasantly predatory,
she took, for the World's Fair, "John Brown's
Fort," and set it up here, brick by brick. More
ambitious, and ready to take another city's treasure
if she had not some of her own, she almost secured
the Old State House, of Boston! — a shock from
which that city has not even yet entirely recovered.
Boston had neglected the building, had let it become
shabby and broken down, and Chicago reached out
and almost got it. Not daunted by failure she tried
to get Shakespeare's birthplace, so as to set it up
211

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
here — and only by a frantic rush of subscriptions,
largely from Pittsburgh, was it saved for England.
What next? Who can say! Possibly the Taj
Mahal. Or the National Capitol and the White
House. And indeed, Chicago has had serious
thoughts of becoming the capital, there being, she
thinks, no longer any reason for holding to the now
illogical and inconvenient location of Washington.
Always, the very confidence of the city, as a city,
makes the individuals confident : and they must look
out for themselves. If a lamp-post or fence is
painted there is likely to be the merest casual warn
ing of "Paint." Elevators in business buildings
and apartment houses, are not protected, from the
standpoint of careful cities, double-doors being prac
tically unknown. 'Buses, with passengers on the
roof seats, run for a long distance under Elevated
tracks below which hang live electric wires that are
a grim menace to life. Hidden motor cars back out
swiftly across sidewalks, without even a warning
honk. And motor cars are likely to rush at you
or back at you unexpectedly at crossings. To tum
a comer without honking seems the usual way. In
fact, motoring is fairly in the ranks of hunting
sports. One would expect certain natural results from the
general carelessness. And at least the subject of
funerals exercises unexpected fascination for a city
so extraordinarily alive. Herrick 's "The Common
liot" begins with a funeral. George Ade writes of
the man who "winds up as the Principal Attrac-
212

TEAITS AND ASPECTS
tion at a daylight Function at which six of his old-
time Friends wear White Gloves. Every one sends
Flowers, but he does not have to acknowledge them."
And an advertising sign that looks down at you as
you sit in a trolley car begins, "The spirit of emo
tion is tenderly woven into every bouquet from the
sympathetic hands of a master florist."
When a caucus was picking candidates it came to
the office of State senator. But Springfield seemed
far away from the loaves and fishes of Chicago
politics. One after another present, offered the
chance, declined it. "It's a dress-up job and poor
returns," expressed the general feeling. Then,
suddenly, came the winning idea: "Why not give
it to Ed's brother? He's got a silk hat! I saw
him with it at a funeral the other day."

213

CHAPTEE XV

MUSIC

HEN Jenny
Lind made her
memorable tour
Df America she did
Dt come to Chicago.
She went to St.
Louis, Cincinnati and
Cleveland, but although
some thought was given to
the idea of Chicago, her
manager, P. T. Barnum,
did not manage to get her
here. After all, shrewd
though he was, he was an Easterner and, like many
an Easterner, was unable to discern Chicago's
qualities. But none the less the Swedish Nightin
gale deUghtfuUy associated herself with this city.
It was in 1850 that she crossed the ocean ; and in
the course of her first week in New York she was
fascinated to learn that out in a new city, called
Chicago, a thousand miles to the westward, a con
gregation of her fellow countrymen were building a
church. It was not so much that she was actually
surprised, for she knew her race to be colonizers;
214

MUSIC
she probably knew that the Swedes had antedated
WiUiam Penn at PhUadelphia and that Swedes had
actually fought a battle on American soil with the
Governor of New Netherlands, Peter Stuyvesant.
But it keenly interested her to know of Swedes in
distant Chicago. And so, in spite of her being
lionized and acclaimed as few men or women have
ever been lionized and acclaimed, in spite of the ex
citement from immense throngs struggling to get
seats to hear her, in spite of the atmosphere of
adulation, her mind dwelt sympathetically upon that
distant congregation of Saint Ansgarius, and she
sent them a check for a thousand dollars, and, what
they prized still more, for the entire country rang
with her fame, she sent her warmly expressed good
wishes. Saint Ansgarius used the money delightfully.
Most, of course, went into the building fund; but a
large part was spent in buying a silver communion
service. The building, after some years, was
burned; and the present church is on Sedgvrick
Street ; a structure of dull red brick, already threat
ened with ruin, and not so attractive nor in so at
tractive a neighborhood as one would like it to be
with this happy association; but it still possesses,
in spite of the perils of fire and removal, a chalice
and a patten engraved with the name of Jenny Lind,
mementoes of a charming connection with one who
has been deemed the finest singer that the world
has ever known.
At that time Chicago had made no advance as a
215

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
musical center. Apollo, the God of Music, did not
much concern the city; although now, as I have
noticed, there is great popularity for Apollo, with
restaurants and cafes and "buffet" bearing his
name, and a theater and several business establish
ments, and a commandery and a hall, and a musical
organization of high local standing and popularity,
numbering some two hundred members. It is the
oldest existing English-speaking (ought one to
say "EngUsh-singing"?) musical organization in
Chicago, yet even this was not formed until some
score of years after the delightful act of Jenny Lind.
The oldest non-English musical society dates back to
1865. The only musician who seems to have left any
mark in early days was an odd fellow named Mark
Beaubien, who looms prominent in early Chicago
annals. Born at Detroit, he witnessed, as a boy,
Hull's surrender; and shortly thereafter went to
Chicago and, having the very urge of rhythm within
him, fiddled for every party and every dance. Be
tween fiddlings he built the first frame tavern on the
south side of the river and estabUshed the first
regular ferry; but such things were but minor;
fiddling was his vocation; it was known that his
dances would never break up early, for if a string
broke he kept right on, and if another broke he still
kept on, and in fact he finished many a dance with
a single string! Year by year he kept alive the
Chicago musical tradition. He had twenty-three
chUdren: he had fifty-three grandchildren; but
216

MUSIC
when the great-grandchildren began to come along
he stopped count, as he expressed it. It is re
membered, in particular, that he once fiddled for a
great gathering of Indians and half-breeds, French
and Americans, and that he stopped fiddling only
long enough to sing a song that he had learned at
Detroit, a dolorous song composed by one of the
inhabitants to express the grief and rage caused
by the surrender to the English.
It was immediately before the Civil War that
music became a real presence and influence in
Chicago. For a man went there who had within him
the genius (it is not too strong a word) for writing
songs: and he wrote song after song that thrilled
the nation; homely songs of affection and feeling,
and war songs. He wrote songs that appealed to
the very fiber of Americanism, and numbers of them,
known and loved by every one from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, are still widely known and loved, for
they have within them the very spirit of music.
That composer was George Frederick Eoot ; a man
that Chicago may well honor. But, as with Eugene
Field, I have noticed no monument to him in this
city where such princely provision has been made
for statues or memorials of such as become justly
famous. Never was a man who, in appearance, more rep
resented the unwarlike than did this war-song
writer. With baldish head, and hair brashed
toward the front of his ears, and close-cropped
whiskers and mustache of gray, he was a gentle,
217

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
genial, likable, peaceable-looking man; with this ef
fect added to by the white bow-tie that he loved.
At the outbreak of the Civil War he wrote "The
First Gun is Fired, ' ' but did not, with that, get into
martial stride. Soon, however, came the unforget-
able "The Battle Cry of Freedom," and people and
soldiers everywhere were "Shouting the battle-cry
of Freedom." He also wrote, "Tramp, Tramp,
Tramp, the Boys are Marching," thrilling, as it
does, with tramping and marching and war. You
are ready to go on marching forever.
It is bootless to say that such things are not
"great" music. What, after all, is "great" music?
Many a writer of music that is "great" according to
technical standards, has longed for fame such as
that of Eoot, who stirred and moved and filled with
patriotic enthusiasm.
"Just before the battle. Mother," was crooned in
thousands and thousands of homes and drew tears
from the eyes of millions. A nation's liberties
could be in no danger so long as its public stirred
to such songs as those of Eoot. And his war-songs
alone number thirty-six. Old Fletcher of Saltoun,
some two centuries before Eoot began his career,
wrote, in a letter to the gallant Marquis of Mont
rose, that if he could make the ballads of a nation
he need not care who made the laws.
Among Eoot's songs of feeling were such as
"Hazel Dell," and "We shall meet but we shall miss
him," — who does not know them! — and "There's
music in the air," and such as these still live, even
218

MUSIC
though others of his have vanished into the limbo
that awaits most songs and other things in this for
getting world.
Boston could have had Eoot. Born in New Eng
land, he worked his way through a musical course in
Boston, sweeping out the rooms as one of his tasks.
Then Boston swept him out ; or at least ignored him ;
and in 1859 he settled in Chicago.
Cities are apt to have some happening in their
musical past which they would fain forget. With
Boston, proud of her standing as a city of technically
correct taste in music, the blot on the musical
'scutcheon — or at least, the memory which arouses
smiles — is that of the unforgetable Peace Jubilee,
when thousands of voices joined in chorus, to the
accompanying clamor of an enormous orchestra and
clanging anvils and firing of cannon! As to
Chicago, I do not know of anything funnier — and
even in this the humor was in the name rather than
in the music itself — than the ' ' Chicago Church Choir
Pinafore Company ! ' ' — remindful of what seems that
long, long ago time of simple days, which was really
not so very many years ago, when not only was
every well-to-do or fairly prominent citizen of
Chicago known by sight to practically all, but when
members of the church choirs were widely known
and generaUy talked about: when Smith the bass
singer of such a church was contrasted with Jones
the bass of a rival church, and when the acquisi
tion or loss of a soprano was m^,tter for comment
at the dinner tables of the city. The combination
219

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
of church choir and "Pinafore" did not then seem
so bizarre ; and I refer to it because, connected with
that combination of churchly seriousness and musi
cal comedy, was a Chicago singer who afterwards
won nation-wide fame : Jessie Bartlett Davis.
Through Gilbert and Sullivan she thus had the
training which enabled her to leave the church choir
for the stage, and before long she was singing in
Grand Opera, and there are many Chicagoans who
thus remember her.
In her stage experience, Mrs, Davis sang, among
other operas, in "Dinorah": and it was in the
Meyerbeer opera that I first heard a Chicago singer
of marvelous voice, Galli-Curci; Chicagoan by
adoption and connected with the city 's Grand Opera,
It was in New York : the Opera company, under the
leadership of the late Campanini, having boldly
gone down there to show what Chicago could do.
And throngs went to listen, for there was not only
GalU-Curci but the wonderful Mary Garden who,
though born in Scotland, owed to Chicago her musi
cal cultivation: this being a Garden naturally culti
vated in the "Garden City." (Galli-Curci had been
secured in South America, where she had gone to
sing after being refused a chance by the Metro
politan Opera Company of New York.)
On that "Dinorah" night, in New York, the build
ing was packed, to hear the Chicago singers but in
particular to hear Galli-Curci. There came on the
stage an insignificant figure, slight, ungraceful,
plain-faced, wearing a frock of dull purple and a
220

MUSIC
waist of drabbish green. But such a voice! Ex
quisite, smooth, of fiute-like quaUty: and how the
house rose at her, wild with joy, hoarsely shouting
with inarticulate bravos, with choking cries: recall
after recall following the Shadow Dance song, six
times, eight times, ten, a dozen, till she stood before
the curtain and sang it once more.
At home, in Chicago, the Opera Company, gen
erously endowed, is housed in the Auditorium; with
a hall somewhat too heavy and garish and too
garishly lighted, beneath the strong square-sided
tower which gives an air of massiveness to the big
Auditorium Building. (Central Church, the re
markable organization presided over by Doctor
Gunsaulus, technical-institute president, minister,
professor, man of broad and varied interests, has
its meetings in the Auditorium, and there, week
by week, he finds time to deliver earnest Sunday
morning addresses; and there, as elsewhere, I no
ticed what excellent listeners Chicagoans are.)
To show how earnestly Chicago takes music I shaU
quote from the brief reviews of the various Sunday
afternoon performances of a single typical day.
And, incidentally, one may gather an impression of
Chicago's methods of criticism.
Galli-Curci sings, "in great voice, in the Audi
torium, which held its limit." A pianist plays at
the Studebaker, "putting into his biU a queer
haunting thing by the eerie Erik Satie, whom most
pianists inexplicably snub. ' ' Boris Torckinsky is at
the Playhouse, and is "the kind of baritone that
221

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
gets a great notice in the 'music news' " and "makes
the rain-drenched boulevard seem a better place than
the hall." Isolde Menges is at Kimball Hall:
" 'world renowned,' said the heralding, although the
audience had heard of her not. She played the
violin with a big rich tone and with musical sense. ' '
Isadora Duncan appeared somewhere else with ' ' six
girls, knuckle-kneed and well-nigh naked, who
danced, after a fashion, while an accompanist played
Chopin." Chicago is eminently capable of forming
its own opinions.
There have been a number of well-known Chicago
musicians. Eeginald de Koven won prominence as
a composer and his name is pleasantly linked with
"Eobin Hood." De Koven 's rich father wanted to
make his son a banker, but music successfully lured
him. "His mind was filled with melody, but his
hands were filled with money," as Anna Morgan,
herself so completely imbued with the spirit of
Chicago, expresses it. De Koven associated him
self with New York when fame began its promise ;
but he was back in Chicago when death came sud
denly to him.
A Chicagoan who has remained a Chicagoan is
Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler; like many of the city,
she was not born there, but it has been her home
since she was two years old: and as a pianist she
has won fame throughout America and Europe, and
has had a long career.
On the whole, a great number of Chicagoans love
the Symphony Orchestra more than they love any
222

MUSIC
individual musician or any other musical organiza
tion. This is largely due to the popular character
of the movement which made the possession of such
an orchestra possible : for, to begin with, a haU was
needed, and to put up a building containing such a
haU required nine hundred thousand doUars, where
upon the sum was raised by an extraordinarily popu
lar subscription, with a total of many thousands of
contributors of all classes, who gave in sums varying
from ten cents to twenty-five thousand doUars.
Orchestra HaU is on Michigan Avenue, between
Jackson and Adams. It was finished in 1904. The
Chicago Symphony Orchestra was organized by
Theodore Thomas, and for years he led it and it was
long known by his name, and he Uved long enough
to be its conductor for the first year of its life in this
new home.
All along, in buildings nearby, are nooked and
hidden away clubs and studios and gathering places
and studying places innumerable. It is a pleasant
sight, on an orchestra aftemoon or evening, to see
the flow of people drawn by the magnet of the
Orchestra Hall entrance.
Endowed though the organization and building
are as a financial precaution for musical art, there
is such demand for seats as to make the orchestra,
so it is stated, self-supporting. Friday afternoon
and Saturday evening are the usual weekly rule,
during the long orchestral season; but Chicago can
absorb even more, and I noticed, in one week, the two
usual concerts, and one of the popular concerts,
223

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
known locally and affectionately as "Pops," and two
others to make up for two that had been missed on
account of an "influenza" epidemic. Five orches
tra concerts, thus, in one week! Old Beaubien left
Chicago a grand heritage of musical endurance!
The city has given loyalty to the successor of the
honored Thomas, and as a Chicago newspaper puts
it — and one wonders why the modestly qualifying
"known" is used! — "No other city in the known
world is in possession of an orchestra and a leader
so good as Chicago's." Always, one sees, the best
in the world, in music as in everything else. The
city, you are told, makes more violins than any other
city in the world; similarly, it is the largest maker
of drum heads and of harps; it has "the greatest
music house of the world," makes more pipe organs
than any other city, and, with over sixty music pub
lishers and ninety-seven music schools claims full
right to be deemed the most important of musical
centers. ' ' Sound the loud cymbal ! ' '
If the orchestra hall gives an odd impression as
if the audience are sitting in the big horn of one of
the old fashioned phonographs, that is doubtless as
the city wished to have it. And if the orchestral
music seems somewhat thunderous, especially after
one has known, say, the delicate sweetness of the
Philadelphia orchestra under Stokowski, why that
again is doubtless as the taste of Chicago loves to
have it.
The founder, Theodore Thomas, was bom in
Europe and began his career there. It was a
224

MUSIC
precious memory with him that as a youth he played
in concerts with Jenny Lind. He gave up Europe
for the greater promise of America, and was associ
ated for a time with various cities, but his forceful-
ness, his profound self-confidence, led him to be
come a Chicagoan. He loved to take his vacations
in the White Mountains, and he had a cottage up
there, and, as he once wrote, "I go in the morning
and at night and talk to my trees and my mountains
that I love. Aud I catch a Uttle bit— just a Uttle
bit — of what they answer me." It was in Chi
cago that he died, and his wife has told of his final
words, on the winter day in 1905 which was his last.
He spoke to her, low and dreamily: "I have had a
beautiful vision — a beautiful — ^vision"; and with
that the famous Chicagoan died.
As to Boston, and the concerts of the Symphony
Orchestra of that city, one retains an impression of
musical students following the score in big black
music books, and of more than a sprinkling of the
gray haired and elderly. At the Chicago concerts,
the students and the big black books are absent, as
are any marked Unmber of elderly folk. But it is
clear that Chicagoans love music; that music gives
them quiet joy. And I noticed, at these concerts,
what close listeners the people of the city are, how
absolutely attentive. Chicagoans have not yet
learned either the pose or the reality of supercilious
ness. If, in rendering the most beautiful music, the
orchestra may present it with somewhat greater vol-
225

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
ume of sound than the composers dreamed of, why,
that must be as Chicago prefers to have it; and it
is, too, not unlike the way of the Boston orchestra in
this regard; with the difference that in Boston the
over-noise is with the drums, whereas in Chicago it
is with the horns: which, after all, may be deemed
not un-Chicagoan, for each man is blowing his own.

226

CHAPTEE XVI

WHERE ONCE WAS THE WHITE CITY

I HE flrst time that America
turned out for an unre
strained good time was in Chi
cago; and that properly gives
the city a strong claim to dis
tinction as well as to gratitude.
For America went happy over that
special feature of the World's
Fair, the Midway Plaisance
Mile! (This city seems naturally
to turn to Miles: there is the
Lake Front Mile and there was
the Midway Mile.)
Where the Midway flourished is now a broad
decorous open space, extending in front of a line of
University of Chicago buildings that have been al
most altogether built since the great Fair. Chicago
has a vision of flooding this broad Mile into a long
and broad lagoon, and of spanning it with a few
bridges, and then, faced by the fine buildings of the
university and bordered by driveways, it would be
an unusually beautiful and distinguished feature;
and, as the city is in the habit of carrying her visions
into reality, this will probably be done.
227

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
The oncewhile Midway Plaisance is now part of
the city 's boulevard system and makes an admirable
connection between Washington Park and Jackson
Park. A deUghtful old professor stood with me at
the entrance of one of the university buildings —
he wasn't really old, but somehow the environment,
and something in his air, gave him a charming effect
of age, just as the university buildings themselves,
though not at all old, give somehow an air as of age
—at any rate, the professor said to me, with a sort
of prim puzzlement and a sigh — the primness from
subconscious fear that any knowledge of the Mid
way Plaisance would seem unprofessorial, and the
sigh from his dimmed memories of Midway joyous
ness — he said, with slow thoughtfulness, "I can
not sufficiently orient myself to repicture the scene
as it was in ninety-three. ' '
To many, it is the memory of the Midway that rep
resents the Fair. Of course, they went where duty
led, and saw all the other portions of the Fair ; but,
with a host of people, the thought of the Midway
transcends all else, because no Mile ever before or
since gave such quantity of joy, and mostly good and
wholesome joy. Whatever there may have been that
was not wholesome, most people did not find. Even
the hoochee-koochee dancing did not greatly shock
but only apprehensively thrilled; and compared
with what is commonly given at the best theaters
nowadays the hoochee-koochee seems but mild.
You look over the Mile and it is vain that you
ask yourself where stood the Irish village, where was
228

WHEEE ONCE WAS THE WHITE CITY
this, that or the other favorite eating place ? Where
were the restless Javanese and the quiet folk of
Japan? For the very atmosphere of foreign lands
was there. You look again: for where were the
Streets of Cairo ! Is even that locaUty lost, merged,
altered into a part of the present-day ordered calm !
Where were the bazaars and the donkey boys, the
tawny men, the supercilious camels in their ungainly
awkwardness! And you think of the native pro
cession in the narrow twisting street, and the case
ments, and the color, and you remember the close-
veiled women, and the swordsmen whirling their
naked blades and striking and parrying with danger
ous skill. And most likely you too will sigh, as the
professor sighed, finding it impossible to orient
yourself though you know you are looking at the
very Mile where all the joyous wonders of the Mid
way were wrought, the Mile within which America
was taught joyously to be joyously merry.
The Midway Plaisance was an offshoot. The
main grounds of the World's Fair occupied the huge
extent of Jackson Park ; and Jackson Park is still a
great park, looking out serenely upon Lake
Michigan. Within the park still stand a few, a very
few, of the buildings of the "White City," the
name given because of the white marble effect of
most of the buildings, which effect was secured by
the use of ' ' staff. ' ' The buildings were planned for
temporary use only, and were therefore built of
temporary materials ; but miracles were wrought in
the beauties of architecture and grouping. The
229

THE BOOK OP CHICAGO
architects and artists of America threw themselves
into the work with a wonderful degree of comrade
ship, of esprit de corps, and perhaps there was not
much of exaggeration, even if there was exaggera
tion at all, in the declaration that it waa the great
est getting together of artists since the fifteenth
century. And it is no exaggeration to say that the
results were worthy of the efforts of the artists
of any century.
It was hard for the English, in advance, to gain
an understanding of what America was planning
to do. The statesmen and the business leaders saw
poUtical and business advantages for both sides of
the water, and warmly entered into the plans even
though they did not fully understand them ; but the
class who deemed themselves "intellectuals" were
quite frankly slow to perceive anything at all.
What it meant to Kipling was that there was
"some sort of a dispute between New York and
Chicago as to which town shall give an exhibition
of products, and through the medium of their most
dignified journals the two cities are ya-hooing and
hi-yi-ing at each other like opposition newsboys."
And even Wilde, although on the whole ready to be
friendly to things American, saw but the oppor
tunity to round one of his most brilliant dialogues.
When Lady Caroline, in "A Woman of No Impor
tance," says to the American girl. Miss Worsley,
"They say that in America you have no ruins and
no curiosities," Mrs. AUonby remarks aside, "What
230

WHEEE ONCE WAS THE WHITE CITYi
nonsense! They have their mothers and their
manners"; the American girl responding to Lady
Caroline, says, "The English aristocracy supply us
with our curiosities. Lady Caroline. They are sent
over to us every summer, and propose to us the day
after they land. As for ruins, we are trying to
build up something that will last longer than brick
or stone " ; to which Mrs. Hunstanton, with her ideas
of the coming World's Fair at Chicago vaguely
awakened, says, "What is that, dear? Ah, yes, an
iron Exhibition, is it not, at that place that has the
curious name?"
There was certainly an exhibition, though not
precisely an "iron" one, at the "place with a curious
name"; although, just in passing, it might be re
marked that the last man in the world to refer to a
"curious name" ought to have been Wilde himself,
whose full baptismal name was "Oscar Fingall
O'Flahertie WiUs Wilde!"
Burnham, an architect trained in Chicago and
full of Chicago ideas, was the moving and direct
ing spirit of the structural work; a post of vital
importance. He could plan, he could arrange co
ordination, he could bring things to pass. Yet not
with him originated the designs of pure beauty.
His buildings in the business district of the city,
such as the Eookery, and the Masonic Temple,
would alone show that. But he was a big man, with
big ideas, and he was a splendid executive.
One goes to Jackson Plark as to a scene of achieve-
231

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
ment, a place of memories. Of the few build
ings of the Fair still standing, highly/ worth
while is La Eabida, the reproduction of the convent
so intimately connected with the sdccess of
Columbus; and perhaps, for the newer generation,
it should be mentioned that the World's Fair,
although held in eighteen hundred and ninety-three,
instead of ninety-two, was to celebrate the four
hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America.
Who, that saw it at the time of the Fair, will for
get La Eabida, with its white walls and red roofs,
its long cool arcaded cloister-like walks, and the
monks' benches! Who can forget its atmosphere,
so dreamy and peaceful, so restful! To hundreds
of thousands it gave a thrill. It meant foreign
travel, it meant the magic and mystery of foreign
lands : not, as with the Midway, the gayety and
glitter, but the sweet fine intimacies of one 's dreams.
La Eabida stands on a point of land between
the lake and a broad lagoon. It should be seen,
for the best effect, at the present time, from the op
posite side of the broad entrance to the lagoon and
a point a little to the east. And it is best seen as
evening is close hovering on the very fringe of dark.
You see a little mass of building, with an odd little
tower, and with all the proportions just the right
proportions. It is as if "Made in Spain" were
plainly upon the building's architectural face. On
one side the darkened water of the lagoon, on the
other massed trees standing close, with other trees
stretching dimly into the distances along the shore,
232

CO M>Ha[-1!S

oH Sm

^

1

WHEEE ONCE WAS THE WHITE CITY
and with the water of the lake whispering and lisp
ing in loveliness. It is lonely there now, for the
building is unused and closed.
The great and sweeping waters of the lake, upon
which Jackson Park looks out, and the lagoons and
inlets within the bounds of the park, are reminders
of the superb use of water effects at the World's
Fair. And the well-remembered Statue of the Ee-
public is here: not the original, which was of
temporary materials, but a costly permanent repro
duction. During the Fair this statue won the name
of "Big Mary," so stodgy, so graceless and stiff, so
heavy, was she ; and the Irish policemen of the park
— for Chicago remains so much of an American city
as to have Irish poUcemen much in evidence!
— still casually retain the name, not as criticism
but merely as the natural appellation. The statue
is now of bronze, and is covered Avith gold leaf, and
the great pedestal on which she stands is of solid
granite, and the total cost was a huge sum.
Thackeray wrote some lines on a World's Fair of
long, long ago, and referred among other things to
the statuary: "There's statues bright
Of marble white,
Of silver and of copper;
And some in zinc,
And some, I think,
That isn't over proper."
But the statuary was mostly proper enough at
233

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Chicago, and this statue of the Eepublie, as one may
see, was eminently and stoutly respectable.
But what an opportunity the city ha? missed!
— this city, with its great legacy of an iilcome that
must be devoted to sculpture. For there could have
been, instead of "Mary" with the uplifted arms, to
commemorate the Fair permanently, a perpetuation
of the Lady of the Chair; that wonderful Mac-
Monnies fountain, at the Fair, of which St.
Gaudens, writing long afterwards and thus express
ing his sober estimate of the work of a great rival
and friend, said that it was "the most beautiful
conception of a fountain, of modern times, west of
the Caspian Mountains" (was there ever so queer
a reservation!) ; it was to St. Gaudens, "the glorifi
cation of youth, cheerfulness, and the American
spirit." What a pose the Lady of the Chair had!
How splendidly she sat there! And such acces
sories ! — the water and the boat, the rowing maidens.
And that thing of beauty could have been a joy for
ever for Chicago. But the city let it go : perpetuat
ing instead this other statue.
Even more than on the Midway one wonders, go
ing about in Jackson Park, where the once familiar
buildings stood. They were somewhere within this
great acreage with its mile and a half of lake front
age, a space now thick with trees and shrubs and
paths and drives and water.
Bordering the park on the Stony Island Avenue
side is a great long grassy pathway, an allee verte,
such as one sees in great French parks or forests;
234

.WHEEE ONCE WAS THE WHITE CITY
a long grassy way between two parallel lines of tall
Carolina poplars of the height of eighty feet or
so; and — best seen from the comer where the "L"
ends — this allee verte, this tall-bordered, green-
grassed way, stretches into the distance on either
hand, with an effect distinguished and beautiful.
Wooded Island still retains that World's Fair
name. And as you go into the park, from the "L"
station, and look across the water at Wooded Island,
it is a Corot-like view, with thick shrubbery along
the edge of the dark water, and with Lombardy
poplars, in groups and singly, standing straight or
leaning out above the lagoon.
Tucked away on Wooded Island is ' ' Cokey. ' ' So
at least it is commonly pronounced; but it is really
Cahokia Court-House, the first court-house built
within the present limits of Illinois. It was carried
here from its original location in the southern part
of the State, and here set up. One feels some dis
appointment in the practical result. But it repre
sents an effort to secure and retain what was left
of a building which represents early Illinois history.
This little building was successively the seat of local
government of French and British and Americans,
and it was built in the year 1716. Why, the ' ' Grand
Monarch," Louis the Fourteenth, died but the year
before! How it sets us back into the very atmos
phere of the past 1 — for the time of Louis the Four
teenth seems long ago even to France. And a watch
ful policeman, for it is all loneliness here on Wooded
Island, obligingly finds the key and opens the Uttle
235

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
old court-house for you; and, seeing that you are
interested in the unusual, begins, somewhat hesitant,
to tell you something of the migratory birds that he
has seen here ; on Wooded Island he has been study
ing them, and he is full of briefly-expressed lore
of scarlet tanager and oriole, of robin and red-
winged blackbird ; and he swiftly tells of wading and
water birds; an unusual policeman.
You start to leave Wooded Island; and where,
you again ask yourself, did the great buildings
stand? Where, even, was the wonderful Court of
Honor? And again there comes the versification
of Thackeray, of three quarters of a century ago,
about the EngUsh fair:
"With conscious proide
I stud inside
And look'd the World's Great Fair in.
Until me sight
Was dazzled quite,
And couldn't see for starin'."
But in what direction ought you now to stare?
Then, through the trees, you catch sight of a dome,
and you walk swiftly toward it, and part by part
a glorious building comes into view as if rising
from the past; a building of pure classic, the only
building remaining of those which gave the dis
tinctive name of the "White City."
"Say not, 'Greece is no more,'
Greece flowers anew and all her temples soar."
236

WHEEE ONCE WAS THE WHITE CITY
Thus Eichard Watson Gilder, Easterner and New
Yorker though he was, expressed his admiration
of the superbly beautiful triumphs of the Fair ; and,
of all of those triumphs, this remaining one most
fully justifies his lines, for it so fully represents
the noble beauties of Grecian architecture.
This great building was preserved in order to
hold the collections of the Field Museum; but the
completion of the great new museum structure on
the Lake Front, in Grant Park, seems to render this
World's Fair memento, this oncewhile Fine Arts
Building, of no further practical use, and it is set
down for early destruction.
Even while used by the Field Museum the build
ing was permitted to go gradually into a tragically
ruinous state, with great fragments of "staff"
flaking off. To come upon it, lonely and still lovely,
seen across a great lagoon, is deeply impressive;
a^nd it is affecting to see so much of beauty 'going
drearily to final loss.
In splendid center and wings, in pillars and
pilasters, in pediments and dome, it is the very joy
of architecture. It is a larger temple of Passtum,
here in Chicago. Paestum is of stuccoed stone, and
this Fine Arts Building is of plastered wood,
Paestum was permanent and this "White City"
impermanent — yet after all, what do permanency
and impermanency mean! For the Greek temples
of Paestum, set up, twenty-five centuries ago, between
snow-capped mountains and summer sea, and this
Greek temple of Chicago, set up not much more than
237

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
twenty-five years ago, and now sleeping over the
wimpling water of the lagoon, are alike in ruins.
The "White City" was a dream, and dreams must
fade. Those wonderful creations of beauty
"Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces.
The solemn temples — shaU dissolve.
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind."

238

CHAPTEE XVII

AN OXPOED OP THE WEST

LEVELAND holds the formal
monument to
John D. Eoeke-
feller, set up by
himself years
But Chicago holds
finer and greater
monument, also set up
by himself years ago.
The Cleveland monu
ment is a monolith. The
Chicago monument is
the University of Chicago.
It was in Cleveland that his business life began
and where for years he made his home. So he
chose that city for his monolith, and it is understood
to be the tallest monolith in America, with the excep
tion of the so-called Cleopatra's Needle, in New
York; which hieroglyphic-covered stone was really
put up some sixteen hundred years before the time
of Cleopatra, with the intent to keep forever alive
the memory of an up-country ruler named Thotmes,
long since forgotten except when some one casually
239

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
remarks that the Needle was his, after all: and if
EockefeUer would but cover his own monolith with
a genuine history of his own money-making, it
would undoubtedly be preserved and studied for as
long a time as the three thousand and five hundred
year monument now in Central Park.
To be the founder of a university is to seek for
another kind of fame than the monoUthic. And the
founder of the University of Chicago sought for that
fame, with the aid of his mighty wealth, and a great
deal of personal attention. Yet there must neces
sarily be something of the casual about the estab
lishment of an institution by a man of many mil
lions. And so it was in Chicago. It was like Cole
ridge 's Kubla Khan : the University of Chicago was
"decreed." But it was a stately pleasure house
that Kubla decreed, whereas here was decreed a
series of stately Oxford-like structures. At the
beginning, indeed, the buildings were not Oxford
like; the first few were quite ordinary in design;
but the idea of following the ancient English uni
versity style was soon adopted and now the entire
effect is akin to that of Oxford. The buildings are
of dignity and distinction, they are of a high degree
of beauty, and although the look of venerable age
has not yet oome, it will come in time, as Chicagoans
smilingly declare, and meanwhUe it has actuaUy
come in surprising degree even within these few
years, owing largely, no doubt, to the drifting smoke
clouds of the city, and largely to the kind of stone
used, and no doubt in considerable degree to the
240

AN OXFOED OF THE WEST
subconscious effect, upon the mind, of a group of
buildings, of ancient and stately style.
Although EockefeUer was the founder of the uni
versity, the one whose fiat caused it to exist, it
would not have had successful existence without
the cordial cooperation of Chicago. He gave great
sums of money, but citizens of Chicago also gave
with a fine liberality. He gave in all more than
thirty millions of dollars. More than ten millions
of dollars was contributed by others, and in the list
of donors may be noticed such names as Eyerson,
Noyes, Cobb, Hutchinson, Field, Blaine, Williams,
Culver and Yerkes. Not a one-man university,
this, for the total of contributors reaches to more
than ten thousand ! Ten thousand givers, some few
giving a million dollars or more each, with their
total of more than ten millions, properly lifts the
university quite out of the one-man class. And,
more than that, there was the enthusiasm of the en
tire city behind it.
After all, it was the taking up again, and carry
ing on, of a distinctively Chicago institution, the
University of Chicago that had been founded by
Stephen A. Douglas in the Civil War period, and
which, 'after a hard fight financially, had ceased to
exist less than five years before EockefeUer founded
the new University of Chicago.
The founder naturally exercised a great deal of
control in essentials, but at the same time showed
restraint. Had he so desired, he could have given
his own name to the University, but this he de-
241

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
clined. But he did not forbid the use of his name
as founder, upon the university seal; though he
may have been somewhat surprised by the form that
it was given by Latinization : "A Johanne Davi
son EockefeUer Fundatae": and he ought to be
pardoned should he wonder why two-thirds of his
name was left untouched, with one-third given the
odd twist of "Johanne," and it is possible that he
was mildly surprised by the "A." However, what
really suffered, on the seal, was the name of the
university, made over, as it was, into, "Universitatis
Chicaginiensis " ; than which ingenuity could go no
further. "Bless thee. Bottom! Bless thee! thou
art translated."
More impressive than the seal is the University
"yell," with its plain recognition of Chicago and
even of the "go" in Chicago:
' ' Chi-ca-go, Chi-ca-go !
Chi-ca-go— Go!"
That the president and a majority of the trustees
must always be Baptist came not only through the
desire of the founder, himself a Baptist, to seize
the chance of strengthening his own churchly
denomination, but because he worked with a
Baptist organization in the founding, and also be
cause the original university of Senator Douglas
was a Baptist institution. But the fact that the
big new institution was so distinctively Baptist in
its control did not check the enthusiasm of Chicago,
for among the ten thousand financially active sup-
242

AN OXFOED OF THE WEST
porters may be noted the names of people of every
shade of belief. Nor was generous giving checked
by the knowledge that the credit was likely to go
almost together, in popular belief, to a man who
was not even a Chicagoan.
Even after the university had been decided upon
there was some question as to the best city for it.
Nor did the founder have any occasion to regret
his decision in favor of Chicago, for, as he expressed
it in an address at the university:
"It is due to you of Chicago, to your enterprising
business men, to your public-spirited men, to say
that in no other city on this continent, in no other
city in the round world, could there have been ac
complished what you have accomplished." And he
made the altogether delightful declaration: "I
am profoundly thankful that I had anything to do
with this affair. The good Lord gave me the money,
and how could I withhold it from Chicago?" And
it should be understood that it is customary for
EockefeUer to speak familiarly of the Lord, as of
a very real personage; and this is remindful of a
story told, by one of his most trusted lieutenants,
at a recent dinner given in honor of the fiftieth
anniversary of the founding of Standard Oil. It
seems that EockefeUer had been called upon to help
some new hospital, and that he noticed that no provi
sion had been made for its upkeep, but only for the
starting, and upon being told that it was expected
that the Lord would see to that, he replied, dryly:
"Possibly: but the Lord is very busy: I think we
243

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
had better provide a fund." And he assuredly fol
lowed this principle in providing a fund for the Uni
versity of Chicago.
The broad-mindedness of Chicago, the public-
spiritedness, the mutual friendliness, the absence of
destructive rivalry, the steadiness of the city, are
shown by the fact that the president of the board
of trustees has held the post since 1892, that the
vice-president has held his place since 1894, and
that the first treasurer of the board, selected in 1890,
still retains the position.
The first president of the university held the
presidency until his death. He has been described
as a steam-engine in trousers, for never was a man
more full of energy : and it might be suggested that
instead of being a steam-engine, he was an example
of perpetual motion. To build up a great univer
sity in Chicago involved immense difficulties, in get
ting pupils, in getting professors of the proper
standing, in getting the entire project set forth to
the world with the necessary importance. The city
was setting out not only to rival Western colleges
but to put itself abreast of Yale and Harvard and
Princeton, and it was imperative that a man of im
mense organizing power be in charge. The very
fact that huge sums of money were behind the pro
ject made the selection the more difficult. WiUiam
E. Harper was the man whom EockefeUer chose;
and even the most severe critics of the oil magnate
have never questioned his ability to pick men. In
this case he needed one with all the characteristics
244

AN OXFOED OF THE WEST
of a masterful, driving, far-sighted business leader,
who at the same time must be of high and recognized
standing for scholarship. It was a seemingly impos
sible combination of qualities, but Harper possessed
them, and EockefeUer recognized them.
And Harper had the glorious asset of what, for a
university president, was youth. He was but thirty-
five years of age when he became the president of
the unformed institution. He was a man of pre
cocious success. He had entered a country college
at the age of ten. When he was only nineteen he
was given the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by
Yale University. He rapidly made name and fame
as professor and lecturer and organizer. He was a
man who could bring things to pass. And if, at
times, he was ready to be ruthless, ready to take ad
vantage of technicalities, it is not impossible that
the possession of such practical qualities would but
the more endear him to the greatest business man
of the world. A position at Yale was assured him,
backed by a specially raised and permanent endow
ment, but in spite of Yale's strong effort to hold
him the Chicago University won.
And the strangest thing in regard to him, all-alive
man that he was, the very personification of energy
and of up-to-the-minute Ufe, was that he had won
his way, primarily, through being a student and pro
fessor of Hebrew and Assyrian, of Syriac, of Arabic
and Aramaic! This worker of miracles rose from
the dead languages.
And there were quaintly odd qualities too. It is
245

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
remembered that he was a cornet player, and that
as a young man he played as a member of a band,
and that after becoming a university president in
Chicago he did not forget his early musical love but
would often play his precious cornet for recreation
(his own, of course). As another recreation, thus
the tale has sifted into university lore, he would
take a fast train to New York, merely to turn about
and take another fast train back to Chicago. Being
a steam-engine, he needed safety valves.
He succeeded in setting the university in motion.
He indefatigably dictated, managed, organized.
Under the years of his administration the univer
sity went successfully on. And he personally won
intense admiration for his abiUties.
Then, one day, two of the faculty with whom he
was on terms of special intimacy, were summoned
to his home. They hurried over, and greeted with
cheerfulness — even with hilarity, as one of them has
recorded — their round-faced, spectacled, stoekily-
built chief, for they were in high spirits in anticipa
tion of some special news. And it was indeed
special news that they were to be given.
Harper, calm and quietly master of himself, said :
"I have asked you to come, to say that I have to
day received my death sentence from my physi
cians. ' '
Thus was the grim news given. He Uved on for
over a year, doing in that time what was even for
him a tremendous amount of work, for he knew that,
for him, night was near at hand. It was cancer.
246

AN OXFOED OF THE WEST
And in 1906 he died, after but half a century of super-
strenuous life.
Fortunately there was a man ready and fitted to
take his place. Harper had from the very beginning
chosen Harry Pratt Judson as his right-hand man.
Judson was of fine scholarship and of managerial
ability. He now became president. He could not
have done what Harper did, in beginning, organiz
ing, setting in motion, grinding into workable shape.
Harper could not have done what Judson has done,
in rounding and smoothing and adjusting. The uni
versity has been extraordinarily fortunate in having
two such men, alike and yet so unlike, as its suc-
cessional presidents in the first thirty years of its
Ufe. The first building of the university was begun in
1891, and students began to come in 1892; unmind
ful of the obvious jests regarding the expected "re
fining" influences of the oil-founded institution.
And the number of students has steadily increased,
until now the university reports show an annual
total of about ten thousand.
As the university began, there came the oddest
of building apparitions beside it. For adjoining the
flrst university buildings there was constructed the
fenced-in Midway Plaisance. The unexpected
proximity of this branch of the Great Fair caused
amazed hilarity. Of those first days, those begin
nings, one of the students gayly wrote :
247

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Oh, there were more profs than students, but then we didn't
care;
They spent their days in research work, their evenings at
the Fair.
And life upon the campus was one continual swing ;
We watched the Ferris Wheel go round, and didn't do a
thing.
The land hereabouts was low and swampy, re
quiring to be filled in, and for thq filling there were
used great quantities of the debris from the build
ings of the World's Fair, and it was long remem
bered that for years, in wandering about, one might
see fragments of "staff," largely of classic design,
sticking up through the grass, giving a queer im
pression of walking over classic ground as, say, of
the Eoman Campagna.
And that chance effect as of the ancient calls at
tention anew to the actual aiming at the ancient:
to the attempt of the new university — new, but now
numbering among its teaching staff some who were
born since its founding! — to make itself look like
Oxford, doubtless with the idea that following the
outward and visible sign would come inward and
collegiate grace. And this city of miracles did the
work of five centuries in a quarter of a century.
The university buildings are within the city
limits, and only seven miles from the business center.
Yet here has arisen an Oxford with a splendidly
beautiful Gothic architecture. (And the love and
appreciation of this very new city for ancient Gothic
is itself surprising.) 248

SOME TOWERS OF THE UNIVERSITY

AN OXFOED OF THE WEST
There was no thought of going off to some pic
turesque locality to gain picturesque surroundings.
The university was to be in and of Chicago. Flat !
Of course it was flat! And on an area of flatness
has arisen beauty.
Approach the clustered buildings from the direc
tion of Cottage Grove Avenue and you are amazed
to notice the steep roofs, the mulUoned windows, the
stone gables. It seems incredible; but the effect is
deepened and strengthened as the buildings are
neared and reached, and still more deeply strength
ened as you go about among them, through the Ox
ford-like quadrangles. To Charles A. Coolidge, as
architect, most of these buildings, which so repro
duce an ancient scholastic age and so represent an
ancient environment, are due; and they are far in
advance of Oxford in possessing the most modern
appliances for health and convenience and comfort.
With corbels and crockets and pinnacles, with
floors of oak and stairways of oak, with feudal-look
ing entrances and passages, with sun-dials and
gargoyles and stone turrets and wrought-iron gates,
with friezes of stone, with oriel windows and
windows casemented, with buttresses and pinnacles,
with ancient-seeming stone bridges between build
ings, there is wealth of fascinating detail.
It is partly by copying that the general appear
ance of Oxford is secured, and partly by working
under Oxford influence. And, as one of the pro
fessors put it whimsically, "It's like the Scotchman
who was asked if it always rained in Scotland.
249

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
'No,' was his reply; 'whiles it snaws.^ So, whiles
it is not Oxford but Cambridge. ' '
Most noticeable of the buildings is the Harper
Memorial Library; a beautifully massive stracture,
with massive stone towers, a building really superb.
It is two hundred and sixty feet long, having been
planned for ample space for library needs. Al
though among the newest of the buildings it has
already begun to acquire a gentle patina as of time ;
it would be admired as a beautiful and fitting build
ing if it were actually at quadrangled Oxford, and
therefore it should be recognized as a beautiful
building here in quadrangled University of Chicago.
And if it be said it has not the Usts of men that
come with the centuries — ^why, time will remedy that.
For men will come and men will go, and, so the city
hopes, the university will go on forever.
There is spaciousness for books and reading, and
there are mighty stacks of books resting their
weight, not on the floor, but down upon the very
foundations, and there is a great reading-room which
is itself a glory. It is a great hall of stone, with
fan tracery in the high stone ceiling and with a line
of seven great Gothic windows, stone mulUoned and
heavily leaded, and all of clear glass, on either side.
There is a marvelous effect of gray; everything
seems to be of an exquisite silver gray; gray stone,
gray lead and glass, gray Unen at the windows of
the same gray hue as the stone, to draw down on the
sunny side, and even the floor of gray. You are told
250

AN OXFOED OF THE WEST
that it is planned to make an end of this gray beauty,
marvel of restraint that it is, with colored mural
decorations, "when there is money enough"; this
last phrase being entirely without intent of humor,
such being the mental standpoint of any institution
which has always depended upon donations, al
though in this case the founder has announced, in
all good feeling, that he has himself given his last
payment to it. But a donation-supported institu
tion never thinks that it has enough. One can only
hope, in regard to the unhappy project of changing
the effect of exquisite gray, that the time will never
come when there shall be "money enough."
At each end of the library hall is a stone gallery,
with rail and reredos expressing the gorgeousness
of the Gothic, and through each reredos is an en
trance-way. Books are ou oaken shelves along the
walls, beneath the windows, and there are massive
reading tables and solidly comfortable chairs. And
at either end, as I write, is a stand of colors; not
the colors of foreign lands, but glorious American
colors, seven flags in each stand, arranged more
superbly than any that I have ever elsewhere seen.
Leaving the library, there is in every direction
something to be seen that is distinguished or strik
ing; and the eye rests with pleasure upon Mitchell
Tower, modeled as it is after charming Magdalen.
There is a chime of ten bells in this tower and their
ringing has been made an impressive feature of the
university life, for solemn and sweet the towered
251

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
chimes are for various occasions sounded, and every
night, at five minutes after ten, they ring the "Alma
Mater." Within Hutchinson Hall, adjoining, is a noble
dining hall, remindful of the dining-hall of Oxford's
Christ Church. The great room is dark and somber,
with timber roof, and with eight tall Gothic windows
on each side, set high like a clerestory. The walls
are of gray stone, paneled in brown oak. There
is a carved frieze of oak, with the arms of various
colleges, in colors, beneath the windows. There are
appetizing odors from the adjoining kitchens. And
the only unbeautiful feature, but an amusing one, is
the huge crockery water-pitchers, such as one sees
in the dining-room at West Point. There are two
real fireplaces, in stone. The hall is finely given a
hundred and fifteen feet in length, forty feet in
width, and fifty feet in height ; and, as with the Ox
ford original, and the dining hall at Harvard which
was inspired by that original, there are lines of por
traits along the walls, of men importantly connected
with the university.
There is a EockefeUer by Eastman Johnson, show
ing him a quiet business man seated in a Chippen
dale chair, with accessories simple and excellent;
and the books upon which his hand rests are not
elaborately bound. There is a portrait by Lawton
Parker, of Martin A. Eyerson, a leading citizen of
Chicago who has been a finely liberal and constant
friend of the university. There is a Gari Melchers
portrait of President Harper, presenting him stand-
252

AN OXFOED OF THE WEST
ing against a gray-green waU in gown of purple and
red and blue, and with gold-tasselled mortar
board. There is a President Judson, by Lawton
Parker, gray-mustached, and in purplish gown and
hood. There is a Frank W. Gunsaulus, scarlet-
hooded and with a red book in his left hand: and
there comes to mind an expression used by him in
a commencement address at Oberlin in 1920 : "Edu
cation," said Gunsaulus (himself not only a pro
fessor of the Chicago university but also President
of Armour Institute), "education is not what you
put into a man ; it is what you find in him and puU
out"; and therein seemed to speak the voice of
Chicago. There is a portrait of Charles L. Hutchin
son, by Betts, standing against a background of
gray-green. And there are numerous others.
One imagines visitors of the future, even of the
future of centuries hence, walking through this haU
and, guide-book in hand, picking out by name, and
noting what manner of men they were, leaders, in
finance and education, who stood behind the univer
sity in its formative years.
Among the other portraits in Hutchinson Hall,
are several by Ealph Clarkson, one of them being
of Silas B. Cobb, who was among the first of the
donors of great sums to the university. Cobb died
in 1900. He had come to Chicago in 1833. And
what made him especially interesting was — and it
points out, as dates alone could not point out, the
strikingly short period during which the city has
grown — ithat he liked to say that every building
253

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
standing in Chicago had been erected during his
residence there!
Greenery and shrubs and flowers and climbing
vines have become an important feature of the uni
versity grounds. Much of the growth is lush and
lavish. And when the oncewhile Midway space,
now a magnificent boulevard, six hundred feet wide
and a mile long, shall be converted into a long sheet
of water, there will thus be secured a glorious ef
fect. And even as it is, it is attractive; it may be
even beautiful; as one evening, when there was a
beautiful sunset such as Turner would have painted,
a sunset all dull red and glowing with splendid color
tones. There are no visible university limits, no walUng
up or fencing in. The university merges with the
city; and this, I take it, is indicative of a purpose
to merge with modern life.
The general atmosphere is that of earnestness,
softened by geniality and humor. This is not par
ticularly illustrated by the colloquial pronunciation
of Ida Noyes Hall ; a beautiful building, for women
students, and rather more in Tudor style than
Gothic; but merely as a genial example of college
humor it may be mentioned that instantly, on its
completion, this beautiful Ida Noyes Hall was just
naturally given, in college talk, the name of
Adenoids Hall.
The members of the university faculty now
number almost five hundred. This makes, to quite
an extent, for specialization; and it is a faculty
254

AN OXFOED OF THE WEST
story, as a special example of this tendency, that a
Biblical professor among them, when asked a ques
tion about St. Paul, repUed, with dignified dis
pleasure, "St. Paul is in the New Testament"; add
ing, in grave reproof, and with marked accent on
the "my," "My field is the Old Testament." And
a correlated story is of the college scrub woman
who would not answer a question as to the loca
tion of a professor's room, and doggedly refused
even to point out the office of the president; her
determined words of finality marking the last word
in college specialization; for "I only know about
scrubbing," she said.

255

CHAPTEE XVIII

THE DUKES OF CHICAGO

T was long ago remarked
that he that ruleth his
spirit is greater than he
that taketh a city; but cer
tain men, in Chicago, have
not only ruled their own
spirits but a great many
very tumultuous spirits be
sides, and have at the same
time taken charge of the
city of Chicago and
ruled that too; thoroughly
"bossed" it, to use a familiar American word.
There have been a number of such men, and they
have held the mayoralty office for a total of many
terms, and I like to think of them as the Dukes of
Chicago. Not in the sense in which the term is
understood in England, as meaning a set of
enormously wealthy individuals, with great houses,
still astonishingly intent upon finding means of get
ting more money. Nor do I use the expression in
the sense in which it would be understood in Phila
delphia; it was but a few years ago that a young
woman of that city, traveling in England, declared
256

THE DUKES OF CHICAGO
to some English acquaintance that, if her city were
part of England, her father would be Duke of Phila
delphia ; and, indeed, just to go back a few genera
tions, one Wharton, in the time of the Eevolution,
whose estate was used for the Mischianza, was com
monly referred to as "Duke Wharton," because
he was very wealthy and a leader of what is known
as society. But when I use the phrase, "Dukes of
Chicago" I use the word "duke" in its strong
original sense of "dux" the leader, the man who
controls, the man who commands and is obeyed.
And in that sense this city has been ruled for many
mayoralty terms.
It is among the most extraordinary of civic
phenomena; or rather, among the most singular —
to observe a distinction made somewhere by one
of the characters of Dickens — that Chicago loves to
be arbitrarily ruled. Perhaps one may fairly de
clare it to be both extraordinary and singular.
Strong though the city is, assertive, full of energy,
forceful, vehement, stubborn, eager, mighty, potent,
in general impatient of control, she yet accepts the
control of her ruler. It shows how easy it is to rule
people, by merely insisting upon it — and insisting
with politic understanding.
To judge from public clamor, when Chicago is
under the control of some such ruler, the citizens
wish nothing so much as to get rid of his rule.
There will not only be free criticism, and the very
harshest of denunciation, but likely enough the en
tire press of the city will be arrayed against him.
257

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
But, when the votes are counted, he will be found
again to have a majority of them.
The man who most strikingly carried out the idea
of strong-handed rule, the elder Carter Harrison,
followed a remarkable example of how to do it suc
cessfully. Doubtless he had instinctive ability for
the role of ruler, but the inspiration, and the sugges
tion of the very heart of his method came from
France. As a young man he was in Paris, at the
time of the successful coup d'etat of Napoleon the
Third. He was tremendously interested in the
scenes of violence and was in constant expectation
that the people would resist. He could not believe
that a brave and high-tempered and advanced people
would permit the overthrow of their republic by a
chief magistrate who wanted to increase his power.
But a distinguished French woman with whom he
eagerly spoke about it, only shrugged her shoulders
and said: "But you do not understand! The
people will only thank Napoleon for giving them so
magnificent a show."
That was the most important practical lesson of
his life. It gave him the secret of ruUng the unruly.
And he clearly saw that in connection with keeping
the people amused, and giving them a show, must
be the constant and assured exercise of power.
Whether or not this would always and everywhere
be a winning system, he saw that it won in Paris
and he later found that it won in Chicago. He
never forgot Napoleon the Third. Like Napoleon,
Harrison amused his public. He gave them shows.
258

THE DUKES OF CHICAGO
Whether standing as representative of his city in
welcoming distinguished visitors, whether riding
down the street on horseback, doffing his broad felt
hat to right and left, whether leading a parade or
being a parade all by himself, whether saying some
thing striking and quotable, he kept the city in
terested — and interested in himself! He was
literally the "man on horseback."
It is worth while noting that this city, disregard-
ful as it is of the formal claims of "family," this
city, whose people do not spend their time in climb
ing up family trees, who stand on their own legs
and not on those of their grandfathers, does after
all pay a good deal of attention to ancestry although
apparently unaware of doing so; it likes to know
that its distinguished folk could, if they so wished,
refer to ancestry of distinguished folk; that "they
could an' if they would." Chicago cares little to
talk of such things, and always a man must justify
his ancestry by his own abilities, by his ovra achieve
ments ; but, with ability and achievements obviously
existent, a touch of ancestry may add a desirable
tang. Born in Kentucky, Carter Harrison came of a long
line of distinguished Virginians. There was, too,
in his blood, and this is especially odd in regard to
Chicago, with its early Norman connection, a flavor
of Norman descent; and this helps to explain his
being a natural ruler. The name of a Harrison,
in ancestral connection, is listed among the dead
on the Hastings-like "Battle EoU" of Tippecanoe,
259

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
and the commander himself at Tippecanoe, General
Harrison, was also a connection ancestrally. Carter
Harrison was descended, directly and collaterally,
from long lines of fighters and leaders.
When he went to Washington as Congressman, he
found that he did not much care for being there.
Like Big Tim Sullivan, of New York, who found that
Washington was much too far from the Bowery, so
Harrison found that Washington was much too far
from the block bounded by West Eandolph, North
Clark, West Washington and North La Salle Streets.
But he managed to get a good deal of joy out of his
Washington life and to keep the people at home
interested in what he did and said.
Chicagoans, even yet, chuckle over his speech in
regard to the proposed abolishing of the Marine
Band, for after picturing the Eepublican Presidents,
and their friends, in the city of Washington, in white
vests and white cravats, listening to the "dulcet
tones poured forth from the silvered throats of sil
vered instruments by twenty-four gentlemen in scar
let coats, ' ' he deemed it unfair, as he declared, to de
prive the next President, who, he was sure, was to
be a Democrat, of the pleasure of enjoying in com
pany with his white-tied and white-vested Democratic
friends, the silver music from the silvered instra-
ments of the twenty-four scarlet-coated players.
"ShaU the coming Democratic President be deprived
of this music! No, sir! never!"
When he was mayor, Harrison amused the people,
as old-timers tell, by gravely presenting the "free-
260

THE DUKES OF CHICAGO
dom of the city" to Colonel Mapleson— "Colonel
James Henry Mapleson, of Her Majesty's Theater"
— and, without serious meaning as it was, still.
Colonel James Henry Mapleson, of Her Majesty's
Theater, saw good advertising in it, and exploited
the fact that he was the first of Englishmen to re
ceive such an honor from Chicago; and, so he de
clared, retuming courtesy for courtesy, the city of
Chicago was certain, within a few years, to become
the first city of the United States and probably of
the world. Thus Mapleson and his friends were all
pleased, and every Chicagoan was pleased, and
everybody was at the same time amused, and Harri
son added as usual to the number of his friends and
admirers. He married, in Kentucky, and the wedding trip
was at the same time a search for the town which
was to be the home of his wife and himself. At
that time they knew nothing of Chicago. St. Louis
drew and almost held them, but. Southerners
though they were, they found the atmosphere of slav
ery unpleasant, and turned their thoughts to the then
promising Galena. But at Galena there were too
many mosquitoes! On such odd things do impor
tant decisions at times depend !
They went to Chicago, still not seriously thinking
of it as their home-town, but taking it on their jour
ney. They found the city full of unpleasantnesses,
and swampy. It needed the eye of faith. But Har
rison possessed the eye of faith. He saw beyond the
swamps to the future glories of the city. He recog-
261

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
nized the unusual character of the people even at that
early time. Newly though he had come from view
ing the cities of Europe, and liable though he thus
was to misjudge a raw city of our West, he was clear
sighted and clear-headed. Comparing the finished
cities of Europe with the then rough-looking Chicago,
with its probabilities of greatness, he deemed those
cities finished indeed whUe Chicago was but begin
ning. He bought land at the junction of Clark and
Harrison Streets, perhaps somewhat influenced in
his choice by finding a street with his own name,
although it of course represented the great William
Henry. He put up a hotel, and lived there for a
time. Throughout, one notices the gravitation of
Chicagoans of prominence toward the ownership of
hotels. And hotel-owning was especially fitting for
a Duke of Chicago, for I remember that in London
(at least it was so previous to the World War),
EngUsh dukes owned London hotels in business
rivalry, and an American might, for example, patron
ize one of the hotels of the Duke of Bedford or be
welcomed at a hotel of the Duke of Westminster.
When Harrison was at length elected mayor, he
made himself so liked that he was elected for term
after term till he had been chosen for four terms in
succession. He had promptly become a profoundly
worshiped idol. He was known to be absolutely
fearless. He stood for good government, in the
sense of maintaining order in the city and seeing
that the various departments of the municipal gov
ernment did their duty. But he used the immense
262

THE DUKES OF CHICAGO
patronage power of mayoralty as a means of rewards
and punishments. He believed in personal liberty.
Press and pulpit attacked him, but the people raUied
to him. In essence he was following what he had
long ago learned from Napoleon the Third— he was
giving the people a show; and in two senses! For
they knew that he was "giving them a fair show,"
and he knew that he was at the same time keeping
them interested.
After the four terms he decided to drop out for a
time, and sailed for the Orient, not only to see more
of the world, but to study arbitrary government in
the eastern lands where nothing else had ever been
known. To understand Harrison is to understand the spirit
of Chicago; and the impress of Harrison is still
strong upon the city. Eeturning, he ran again for
the mayoralty. Heatedly charged with being a boss,
he quietly responded that the charge was true. Of
course he was a boss! And actually, he was quite
ready to admit that his opponent was not in the least
a boss. "But," he grimly declared, "my opponent
is bossed by the boss of his party. But I am my own
boss and the boss of my party too!"
He knew his city, street by street, house by house,
man by man. And he saw to it that the entire city
knew him in return. Nose longish and straight, ears
close-set, eyes within which, far back, was the glint
which marks the ruler — no wonder it was said of him
that when he looked sternly at a man it was like
aiming a pistol at him. But he was to find that even
263

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
this look might have practical shortcomings as com
pared with a literal pistol.
In 1893 Chicago was to have a show that would
astonish the world. The people demanded that their
favorite again take leadership. They wanted him
to stand for them when the world came flocking to
the Fair. He was elected amid scenes of wild excite
ment. And at once he began to fasten his control
upon the city, even more firmly than before.
As the city's executive he well played his part.
He met visitors and visiting associations. He ad
dressed myriad bodies and delegations, from all
parts of our ovm country and of the world.
Though he was sixty-eight years of age he still
felt in the full vigor of his strength. But his star
was about to set.
The great Fair drew toward its end. The great
mayor still went about, making a friend whenever he
doffed his broad-brimmed hat. On October the
twenty-eighth, 1893, after addressing mayors who
had gathered from all over the country (fitting finale,
for him, the most prominent of all mayors !) he went
to his home, and was there sought out by a disap
pointed office-seeker, and was shot and killed in his
own house.
But, as if in fact an hereditary ruler — and this is
the most wonderful evidence of his power — he had
so won control that he was able to leave the ruler-
ship to his son. And notable though his record was,
of five elections, still more notable was it that his
son, also bearing the name of Carter Harrison, was
264

THE DUKES OF CHICAGO
likewise elected mayor for five terms; father and
son thus uniting in ten terms of a great city's
mayoralty !
No wonder that many a puzzled Chicagoan has
firmly believed that it was the first Carter Harrison
he was voting for, when he was really voting for the
son. " 'I voted f 'r Carter Haitch,' said Dugan. 'I've
been with him in six ilictions and he's a good man,'
he says.
" 'Why, man alive,' I says, 'Carter Haitch was as
sassinated three years ago,' I says.
" 'Was he?' says Dugan. 'Ah, well, he's lived
that down be this time.' "
The first Harrison did not learn his politics alto
gether from his observations in France. He had
also observed that the general run of Chicago may
ors had been firm men, rulers, not themselves to be
ruled. He had seen, in Chicago as well as in Paris,
that a democratic community will yield surprisingly
to a man determined to rule.
Of the other strong and arbitrary mayors who
have shown Chicago how it may be governed with
a strong hand. Long John Wentworth was the most
striking. He it was who brought back from the
House of Eepresentatives, in Washington, the story
of how old John Quincy Adams leaned across the
aisle to ask him how they pronounced the name of
that "queer place out there." He it was who used
the first fire engine of the city to sweep into the lake
the houses of an unsavory neighborhood.
265

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Long John made no secret of the fact that he held
a good opinion of himself. When an ambitious local
writer sent him a history of Chicago, asking for his
opinion of it, Wentworth calmly marked out every
part that did not refer to himself, and sent it back
with the comment that now it was a correct history
of the city.
It was Wentworth who ruled in 1860, when the
Prince of Wales — long afterwards to be Edward the
Seventh — visited the place. And this big mayor
bossed the prince just as naturally as he bossed
Chicagoans. It is curious, by the way, that the
Prince of Wales went there, not to see the city but
only with the intent to shoot prairie chickens ; itself
a comment on the recent development of the place;
and he frankly found the city surprisingly full of
interest. Long John introduced him from a hotel balcony,
thus doing the royal visitor full American honor.
His speech of introduction was brief.
"Boys, this is the Prince of Wales. He's come
here to see the city" (he said nothing of prairie
chickens!), "and I'm going to show him around.
Prince," with a wave of his long arm, "these are
the boys." Can't you stiU hear them cheer!
Long John was so free and easy that the Prince
of Wales did not at first quite understand him, and
the result was that he also became free 'and easy.
But when he spit into a load of grain on board a
ship getting ready to saU from Eush Street Bridge,
Wentworth, who stood in no awe of royal blood
266

THE DUKES OF CHICAGO
and especially when royal blood did not mind its
manners, instantly yeUed a decisive waming:
' ' Stop that, young man ! Don 't you know any better
than to spit into a load of grain?"
Wentworth, like every successful Chicagoan, had
a full share of confidence in his city. One day some
men were speaking of what had been done for the
place by this, that or the other leading citizen,
whereupon Long John put a blunt end to the discus
sion by saying: "I never heard of any man who has
done more for Chicago than Chicago has done for
him." When he knew that he was dying, he directed that
no name be put upon his monument. "You don't
need to, for everybody will know that it is John
Wentworth," he said, passing to his end with that
serene and typical self-confidence. Some time after
his death, however, his name was put upon the
stone. Mayor Thompson has been another strong-handed
ruler, and, as with Carter Harrison, his ancestral
line stretches nobly back to the earliest Colonial
days ; not to Virginia, however, but through a line of
New England leaders and administrators, from the
ancient Plymouth times. A strong man, he has
faced denunciation and opposition — ^until election
day has shown him to be a favorite after all !
The very first of the mayors of the city, William
B. Ogden, was the first one to illustrate what it meant
to be a strong ruler. He was one of the men who
really governed. He was at the same time a man of
267

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
culture, a man of fine and Uberal tastes. It was he
who first built his home from the plans of an archi
tect instead of letting the builder be the architect.
It was he who secured for Chicago the artist, Healy.
He traveled in Europe, and there he made an ad
mirable impression among people of standing and
discernment. Aud the historian Guizot, so it has
been said, declared in regard to him :
"That man is the representative American. He
built Chicago."

268

CHAPTEE XIX

A MARQUETTE CROSS

MONG the charming
ancient features of
some old English
towns is the mar
ket cross, a cross
of stone, set up in the
center of business activ
ity centuries ago, and
now offering the appeal
of picturesqueness and
time. American towns will never have them, no
matter how many centuries may elapse, for market
crosses came from conditions of society and business
of a vanished time. And this makes it the more in
teresting that Chicago, although it has not indeed a
market cross, has a Marquette Cross ; and although
the cross is not itself ancient it marks a place that
was anciently made a place of note.
Father Marquette, missionary and explorer, im
mensely notable in a period of notabilities, spent the
winter of 1674-5 on the site of the future Chicago,
and the cross has been erected on the spot where his
hut was built, as nearly as it can be ascertained from
269

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
his description of the locaUty, taken in connection
with the probabilities of the case. How it takes us
back into the glimmering beginnings of Chicago his
tory! It would not be deemed, by most people, that the
trip into the Illinois country, a joumey of hardships,
from which Marquette was returning, could by any
possibility be deemed successful, for he writes that
he is not quite sure that he had saved even a single
soul. Had there been only one, he says humbly, he
would have deemed his fatigues well repaid. And
then his heart lightens as he sets down that he thinks
there was one soul saved, after all, for just before
reaching the Chicago Eiver a dying child had been
carried to him and he had baptized it.
The stop at Chicago was made perforce. Mar
quette was very ill. The news spread through the
Indian country, and the Indians were profoundly
affected, for they loved him and trusted him, even
though so backward about being formally converted.
Fortunately, there were with Marquette two faithful
followers. Frenchmen, and in a few days another
Frenchman appeared. For the news of the mission
ary's sickness reached a French surgeon, who was
some eighteen leagues away. Who the surgeon was,
the record does not tell, nor how it happened that he
was in that distant land. He figures shadowily in
the narrative as a man of mystery. He is just "the
surgeon." And, hearing of the illness, the surgeon
instantly sets out for the Chicago, with a supply of
blueberries and com. He stayed with Marquette for
270

A MAEQUETTE CEOSS
some days, and then returned whence he had come—
coming out of mystery, to vanish into mystery again.
And he sent to Marquette "a sack of corn and other
delicacies." It was a terrible winter. The Indians themselves
were suffering from cold and hunger, as deep snows
and intense cold kept them from hunting. When
Marquette's companions managed to kiU some deer
the animals were so lean as to be uneatable and were
abandoned. Through miles of snowdrifts came a party of
young Indians, bearing more com, and dried meat,
and pumpkins, and beaver-skins, "on behalf of their
elders ' ' ; and we read that Marquette gave them from
his diminished stores, a hatchet, two knives, three
clasp-knives, ten sets of gold beads — how deUght
fuUy particular Marquette could be ! — and, what the
Indians dearly loved, two mirrors; "in order to re
ward them for their trouble and for what they had
brought me."
All the Indians loved him. They wanted him to
live ; but if he must die, they solemnly told him that
they wanted him to remain in their country till the
end. Late in March the ice in the Chicago Eiver began
to break up, and the water suddenly rose, and he and
his two companions tried desperately to rescue their
belongings by getting them up into trees. From the
brief description of their efforts, in the darkness, to
save their lives and goods, one sees a case of des
perate misery, even had Marquette not been ill.
271

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
On March 31 they managed to get away and
plunged again into the Indian country, and on April
6 is the pleasant note, "We have just met the sur
geon, going up with a canoeload of furs. ' ' One pic
tures the friendly greetings !
With April 6 the joumal ends ; Marquette became
pitifully weak. He headed northward and made
feeble efforts to get to Mackinac; but his illness (and
one is deeply sympathetic on learning that it was
stomach trouble) held him back; and on May 18, on
the shore of Lake Michigan, where now stands the
city of Ludington, he died.
As nearly as can be ascertained, the spot where
Marquette lived in the bitter winter that was the last
winter of his life, was at what is now the junction
of the Drainage Canal with the Chicago Eiver, at
the foot of Eobey Street. The neighborhood may be
reached by the Blue Island Avenue trolley, the cars
going through miles of two-story shabbiness, with
hardly a blade of grass, hardly a tree, to be seen, not
a park to relieve the dreariness of miles, and with
other miles, likewise suggesting dreariness of aspect,
stretching off on either side. And this portion of
the city is essentially Chicago, quite as much as the
portions of beauty and grandeur; it represents a
dour and bitter and unhappy Chicago. In one quar
ter is noticed from the car window, a long line of
junk-shops, with barrels and bottles and rubber and
brass and feathers and bones — a shivery lot. At
length you get into a district skirting a manufactur
ing and shipping region, and then, soon, you are at
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A MAEQUETTE CEOSS
Eobey Avenue, where you leave the ear and walk a
mile to the southward, along a public street occupied
by railway tracks, and with no sidewalks except, for
part of the distance, boards laid in mud.
There are railway cars, factories, close-piled lum
ber, planing mills, and, odd and interesting, cutters
of veneer. A veneer cutting company has a yard
piled with huge logs, squared, from thirty to fifty
inches square ! The logs are seasoning out of doors
but are preciously covered with great strips of bark
and protective planking. They are mahogany;
queer-looking mahogany, from Africa, logs very
dark, some with what seem hieroglyphics on the
ends ; and you picture them handled by the slaves of
the Congo.
The monument cross stands beside the water in
what was intended to be a tiny park. The water of
the river flows backward, with current steady and
full. A miracle, the pious Marquette would have
held it to be ; and it is !
On a base of three diminishing levels of concrete,
forming steps from all four sides, stands the Mar
quette Cross, in somber dignity. It is fourteen feet
high, and of wood — perhaps, when one thinks of it, a
cross really ought to be of wood — but such wood!
Black, sombrous, impressive ; and it is of the mahog
any from Africa. The inunediate surroundings are
lonely. The water is dark and gloomy. There is
no path to the monument. It is in nobody's way.
Yet a previous cross of wood was sawed down and
carried off, and an iron cross was overthrown by a
273

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
switch-engine, which barely missed going into the
water in doing it, and another iron cross was cut
down with a hack-saw and disappeared. And now
the cross is made again of wood, but of this black
and heavy wood, and its edges are bound with tool
steel, so tough that a hack-saw cannot touch it, and
the steel is fastened with countersunk steel screws.
How long, long ago it all seems ! And how long,
long ago it all was ! Here lived Father Marquette,
here came "the surgeon," here came the visiting
Indians, bearing gifts.
And the days of the Indians might be but yester
day, if one were to judge from the city maps ; for the
latest map still marks, partly within the city limits,
at the northwest, and partly stretching outside, a
tract of sixteen hundred acres described as "BiUy
Caldwell's Indian Eeserve"; Billy having been a
half breed whose title was not extinguished when
those of the Indians were done away with, he being
held to be white. His tract was until very recently
quite unbroken, and even yet is practically so.
And diagonally across the southern part of the
city, crossing Lake Calumet on its way, is what is
termed an "Indian Boundary Line."
And it is merely an odd chance which makes my
eye strike among some advertisements — and any one
who would understand a city must read its adver
tisements! — among "positions wanted," the notice
that a place is desired by a "neat American In
dian"; and he wants a position as chauffeur; thus
far present-day conditions having led him. And in
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A MAEQUETTE CEOSS
this same newspaper was an advertisement of an
"Indian Fellowship League," announcing that "any
person of the white or red race is eligible to mem
bership." Eeally, a foreigner might be excused for
going about Chicago preparing to dodge tomahawk
wielders. The Marquette Cross, commemorative as it is of
the French of long ago in Chicago, brings to mind
another West Side connection with the French ; but
here the French of recent times. For one day I
came upon the church of "Notre Dame de Chicago" :
and how quaintly delightful was the unexpectedness
of the name !
It is at Oregon Avenue and Sibley Street, and may
be reached by the Harrison Street trolley. It is not
a rich part of the city; from appearances it never
was a rich section.
The interior of the church seemed to me the quiet
est place in Chicago; so curiously and almost un
commonly quiet it was. The great central nave,
rising high under a lofty dome, has much of dull
ish chocolate pink in walls and ceiling; but in the
stained glass windows, including two huge Gothic
wheel windows, and around the main altar, itself of
white marble, are touches of green and blue and or
ange and maroon, albeit extremely florid; and the
exterior of the building shows as a great domed mass
of mellowed yellow brick.
Every Sunday there are services in French; and
the church represents an important coming in of
French Canadians, likely enough descended from the
275

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
old couriers de bois whose canoes came out as far as
this, and farther, years and years ago, although they
have been quietly living in Quebec for many and
many a year.
Around the corner from "Notre Dame de Chi
cago" I came, with entire jmexpectedness, upon the
church of "Our Lady of Pompeii"; a modem and
unattractive building, but interesting from contrast
with the church of the French close by.
The Italians have come to Chicago in swarms ; and
not far from "Our Lady of Pompeii" one finds a
"Caffe della Grotta Azzurra" — this reminder of
Capri and its azure grotto being in a neighborhood
now dirty and squalid. And near by is wonderful
Halsted Street, that thoroughfare of many nations,
with its more than twenty miles of little stores. Ital
ian signs are frequent, and in particular I noticed
the Banca de Napoli; vrith the proud boast lettered
upon its front: "II pin' antico institu del mondo"
— the oldest bank in the world ; and, indeed, the home
house was founded in 1539.
De Koven Street is at no great distance; and it
was there that the Great Fire began. To commem
orate the spot where the fire started a tablet has been
placed on the front of the building, number 558,
which stands in front of the site of Mrs. O'Leary's
barn, but the house is not the original house, and the
tablet is inadvertently misleading as to this.
It is a neighborhood of rear tenements and out
side wooden stairs, and wooden sheds, and narrow
passages between buildings, and yards that are much
276

A MAEQUETTE CEOSS
below the sidewalk, this being one of the regions in
which, although the level of the city has been raised,
as to streets and sidewalks, many of the property
owners have never filled in their own land.
There is much in the neighborhood to give a sense
of drab despair, especially from debris and Utter and
mud; but it is a March aspect that I have in mind,
when the region was looking its worst and where
here and there a tottering wooden house on rotting
wooden foundations seemed more decayed and tot
tering than usual. But much of the West Side is of
dreariness, in contrast with its many streets of com
fort and happiness. And as to the undesirable por
tions, some of which are menaces to the city's health,
Chicago, ostrich-like, puts her head in the sands of
the Lake Front and Lincoln Park and imagines these
other regions hidden and harmless.
The Great Fire began on an October night. There
had been a dry and scorching summer. The wooden
houses and sheds were baked to an infinite dryness.
A man and his wife, named O'Leary, owned the
house and bam behind it. Part of the house was
sublet to another family, who that night had a gay
time with some friends. In the barn were a horse
and half a dozen cows.
A terrific gale was blowing when the fire began.
There is no reasonable doubt, there is really no doubt
at all, that it was a case of Mrs. O'Leary and an over
turned lamp. But naturally, the O'Learys them
selves tried to escape the terrible blame. At nine
o'clock the alarm was given. With such incredible
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THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
speed did the fire go that in less than an hour the en
tire city was threatened. At ten o'clock the court
house beU began to toll a general alarm, and it sol
emnly boomed for four hours, till the fire seized
upon the building. The dreadful destruction, the
panic-stricken throngs, the frantic efforts to save
life and the hopeless effort to save property, the
miles of fire, destroying everything in its path, even
the strongest and supposedly fireproof buildings,
the miles of fire-swept desolateness when the fire was
over, united to make a tragedy of world importance ;
and here on DeKoven Street, one stands at the spot
where it began.
On the great West Side, organized charity goes on
its well-organized way. Some of the settlement
houses are here ; notably Hull House, that has made
its name widely known, and that of its founder, Jane
Addams, who modestly began the work some thirty
years ago.
An aggregation of buildings of dull red brick, oc
cupying the space between Polk Street and Gilpin
Place, on Halsted Street, collectively makes Hull
House. The tone of the place, and of the work that was to
be done in the place, seems to have been set, uncon
sciously, by the use of the name of "Hull"; for it
glorifies nobody ; it was entirely without pretension ;
it was merely that a man named Hull had owned the
house that was bought for the beginning of the work.
The old house (old, for Chicago, probably having
been built about 1860) still exists, though not in-
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THE MARQUETTE CROSS

A MAEQUETTE CEOSS
stantly to be picked out from the mass by the casual
observer. And the treatment of that house displays,
again, an attractive spirit. The rooms, big and
square, might have been given a barren and public
aspect, but instead, as you enter, you find that there
has been such treatment as to give a homelike air,
with pervasiveness of a soft and intimate patina-
like green. There is furniture of the period of the
house, and some still older. There are great old
sofas and likable pictures. The dining-room is
highly attractive. And outside is a courtyard, with
effects, in the moonlight, ahnost mediaeval, with the
soft light shining on gables and stone balustrades
and mulUoned windows and a terrace which looks
very far away and foreign: for the buildings that
have been built around the nucleus have been pleas
antly planned, and always with a studied simplicity,
with gables stone-edged or of brick, and with quoined
comers, and diamond-panes, and a balcony above a
triple-arched arcade ; and all without attempt at or-
nateness or ostentation. In one of the newest build
ings is an assembly hall, with dark-wood paneling,
plain and austere, and Tudor-like windows, and walls
rough-surfaced in gold and brown, and a gallery,
plain yet remindful of the musicians ' gallery in some
banqueting hall of old. It is one of the most digni
fied assembly halls that I ever entered, and leaves an
impression, simple though it is, somewhat akin to
that of the Salone, in Padua, and of one or two an
cient monastic refectory haUs elsewhere in Italy.
And it is illustrative of HuU House, that even this
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THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
hall is not too fine to be used; everything in Hull
House is for use ! And not long ago, the hall was
filled and emptied four times in one single evening,
so that four separate throngs might see and hear a
woman from Eussia who was looked upon, by those
of her own race, as a deliverer.
The work of Hull House has broadened out into
many channels, making it quite the best-knovm set
tlement house of the world, and the original head is
still its head. Miss Addams would be surprised to
be compared with Locke's "Beloved Vagabond";
yet that unique character, when in doubt and trouble,
went to the statue of Henri Quatre and believed
that he got it from some necessary inspiration ; and
Miss Addams has told that, in the dark days of 1894,
when traffic was tied up by strikes and Federal
troops were in charge in Chicago although their
presence was resented by both city and State, and
when there was gloomy trouble threatening Hull
House, which had then not much more than begun,
she walked (as no cars were running) the long dis
tance to Lincoln Park "in order to look at and gain
magnanimous counsel, if I might, from the mar
velous St. Gaudens statue of Lincoln. ' '
At Hull House, as at other places, it is often the
unexpected that happens, as was the case at the
close of a meeting which had been addressed by a
rich woman, exquisitely gowned. "Now," she said
in conclusion, "ask me any question that occurs to
you." There was a diffident silence. "Don't hesi
tate. Just ask me any question which occurs to
280

A MAEQUETTE CEOSS
you." Whereupon a woman breathlessly stam
mered, "Please tell me where you get your corsets"!
The West Side holds within its far-flung bounds
immense numbers of foreigners, and it is in these
regions that so many Uve, with their own centers of
business and pleasure, that they seldom if ever get
to the Loop and never have had a glimpse of Lake
Michigan !
There is more than a population of foreigners.
For example there are a number of great hospitals
that have established themselves in a group on the
West Side, and you will not be surprised to know
that it is "the greatest group of hospitals in the
world," as I think it really is.
Certain portions of the West Side are still pleas
urably remembered by people who, as children, Uved
there when those sections were lived in to some ex
tent by "exclusives." And there are still many
houses of size and comfort. And on Ashland
Avenue, one of the oldest of Chicago streets, laid out
even before it became a city, the first Mayor Harri
son made his home. But West Side "exclusive
ness" was overborn by the South Side, just as the
South Side has since yielded prestige before the ad
vances of the North Side.
But it is for its great foreign sections that the
West Side is now generally known. And at one
of the large settlement houses, not far from HuU
House, it was thriUing to hear, in a big haU packed
with the children of foreigners, the enthusiastic
"Tramp, tramp, tramp! The boys are marching!"
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THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
And when, at the end of the verse, the children were
told that the song had been written by a Chicagoan,
they went at the next verse with intensity of en
thusiasm. They had caught the spirit of Chicago !
The West Side has, of course, its "Death Cor
ner," and its "Little Italy," where the life and
habits and superstitions and language are of a veri
table Italy, except that the low houses of frame are
very different from the tall stucco houses of Italy.
There are a few Chinese, but, small though their
numbers are, they have the faculty of making their
Uttle section a place different and apart. They
were, until recent years, on Clark near Van Buren,
and a vague Oriental touch still lingers upon the
buildings that they have left. But now they center
on the West Side, in a Uttle section at Wentworth
and Twenty-second Streets. And their passive
silence, their unfathomableness, their plum-colored
or blue tunics, their dark clogs with twinkling white
soles, are already 'giving a tinge of orientalism to
that highly un-Chinese section, with its railroad
tracks and its vacant lots and its unattractive build
ings. Chinese homes never catch fire ; or so seldom
as to seem never ; and this is fortunate, for the frame
buUdings of their present region show, markedly,
what one sees in much of Chicago, wooden galleries,
extending the length of sever^al houses, with wooden
stairways connecting the galleries, and reaching
down as fire-escapes. And this is a city that has
peculiarly suffered from fire!
The West Side has its so-called Ghetto, and at
282

A MAEQUETTE CEOSS
a Sunday forenoon market, centering on broad Max-
weU Street between Halsted and Jefferson, the
Ghetto dweUer may be picturesquely seen. Then
the street is packed and jammed with carts and
boxes and stands, loaded with every variety of cloth
ing, new and old; and one wonders where so many
second-hand derby hats can possibly come from!
There is cloth in every shade of green and blue and
orange and red and purple and maroon; for these
are color loving folk. There is every variety of
household utensU. There are dresses and jackets,
and piles of cloth heaped directly upon the concrete
pavement, and other piles on boards or paper. It
is the most colorful street in Chicago, bright, bril
liant, with every variety of glow. Even the men,
and more particularly the women, wear caps and
jackets delectable of hue, in fetching greens (par
ticularly greens) and olives and reds and blues.
These many colors moving animatedly about among
the piles of every-hued merchandise make a scene
of kaleidoscopic activity. There is food in boxes
and trays: beans and peas and coffee, fish, fruit
and vegetables, the bright yellow of oranges, the
bright green of cabbages, aU adding to the varie
gated colors. There are crates of fowl, there are
guinea hens, awed for once into silence, there are
chickens in variety of color. Always color! With
always a curious chirring murmur from the ambu
latory throng.
One is likely, through looking on at a market as
at a show, to think that it must be just a show to
283

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
the participators. But I remember a night market,
also a street market, of the Ghetto folk, when there
was rain, and drizzly dripping snow, and misery.
The street lights seemed somehow to be poorer than
usual. One noted sinister-seeming passages leading
off into darkness. The dealers, men and women,
stood in persistent misery, every one wanting to
quit, but every one hoping for one more sale.
The magnificent boulevard system, sweeping
through all the sections of the city, cuts its broad
swath through this West Side as well as through
the show parts of the city; but it is well seen to
that those who motor on the forty miles of boule
vard of which the city is so justly proud, do not see
the undesirable.
The West Side has, too, some highly attractive
parks; and one of them, Garfield Park, claims to
have the largest conservatory and the rarest col
lection of orchids in the United States. It also has
an unusual collection of ferns, and many brilUant-
hued tropical plants.
Here, one day — at least, so they will tell you —
an obviously rich woman came in and, looking
around, became fascinated by the names that she
saw upon the plants.
"They are — Latin names?"
"Yes, madam."
Encouraged by her success she continued: "And
have all the flowers Latin names?"
"Yes, madam."
"Even the Uttle simple flowers?"
284

A MAEQUETTE CEOSS
"Yes, madam."
Then, with a gentle smile of rumination: "Ain't
nature wonderful!"

285

CHAPTEE XX

OUT IN THE SUBURBS

INGULAELY enough,
the mud of early
Chicago, so long ago
done away with, had a
great deal to do with
the life and the location of
the home of Frances Wil
lard. Her father migrated
westward, with his family,
from New York State, three
quarters of a century ago, she
being then a mere child. But child though she was,
she was deeply impressed by the mud of early
Chicago ; she never forgot it ; its memory vividly re
mained. Where there ought to have been roads, in
the region approaching the new city, there were
ominous signs of "No bottom"; there had been
heavy rains, making what seemed the hopelessly
swampy regions still more hopeless; it was an ex
ceptionally bad period in a bad season of those early
days without macadam, and her father edged his
canvas-topped emigrant's wagon away from the
place which, had it not been for its mud, would have
286

OUT IN THE SUBUEBS
become his home. He strained every nerve in aim
ing for dryer roads and a safer region, until, with
infinite trouble, he worked into safety, whereupon
he continued in his search for dry roads, until he
was over the border of the State and found himself
in Wisconsin, and made a home there.
But fate was to make Frances Willard a
Chicagoan in spite of the mud; for when she be
came old enough, her father sent her to Chicago
for an education ; or, at least, he sent her to Evans
ton, which has always been looked upon as part of
Chicago, although never actually acquired by the
insatiable city. Frances Willard was given a col
lege education at Evanston, in that faraway time
when, for a woman, a college education was looked
upon as a distinction — and perhaps, by many, a
doubtful one!
It is probable that her life would have been more
of a loving home life than one of public distinc
tion, had she not been faced with a bitter disap
pointment. For she fell in love, fell in love with
intensity; and when disappointment came, with its
wreck of promised happiness, it threatened to wreck
her life through her capacity for feeling. But she
had will-power as well as feeling, and pulled her
self together, and put away all thought of marriage,
and, facing life from a new angle, decided to adopt
the noble career of teaching; and as a teacher she
was a splendid influence upon those fortunate
enough to be in her classes. The Northwestern
University, of Evanston, made her formaUy a pro-
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THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
fessor, and then selected her to be the dean of its
Woman's College.
But, for a second time, her life career was
changed. One day in 1874 she saw a party of weU-
dressed women kneeling in front of a saloon, in
Chicago; and she listened and inquired and
pondered; and soon she herself was one of a kneel
ing band.
For the kneeling women were the Crusaders of
that striking and even romantic movement which,
throughout the land, took women, rich and poor
alike, to march to saloons and strive, with prayers
and singing, to move the hearts of saloon-keepers
and their customers. Almost forgotten though it
now is, the remarkable movement swept the land,
and, reaching Chicago, achieved its greatest and
most unexpected triumph in the winning of Frances
Willard for leadership in the prohibition cause : and
in time she became a mighty force, as president of
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and
founder and president of the World's Christian
Temperance Union,
Miss Willard stood also, and strongly, for
woman suffrage, in that long ago time, which is
reaUy so recent as national affairs go; and hosts
of people will remember a most impressive argu
ment that was used at the Chicago World's Fair.
It was a large placard, placed prominently — ^I think
it was in the Woman's Building — with a plainly
lettered sign reading: "The Disfranchised Classes,"
and above this line four pictures: one, that of an
288

OUT IN THE SUBUEBS
idiot, one of a criminal, one of an Indian, and the
fourth, the fine womanly cultured face of Miss
Willard. I think that practically every visitor to
the Fair, whether or not ready to be a woman suf
fragist, carried away a vivid impression of that
pictured argument, whose force was due to the fine
womanliness of the face of Miss Willard.
The Evanston region, which developed Miss
Willard, developed also Myrtle Eeed, who won a
great following for her books, whose sweetish
sentimental qualities attracted readers of a certain
order of mind. She lived in Edgewater, a trifle
northwest of Evanston, in a place caUed "Para
dise Flat," but the end of her weU-meant Ufe was
unhappy and tragic.
Chicagoans are enthusiastically, even vehemently,
laudatory of their ovm suburbs. They do not hesi
tate to declare that there never were such wonder
fully beautiful suburbs of any other city, ancient or
modern, foreign or American. They do not, one
notices, err on the side of moderation. Yet it might
be remarked that, after all, of Chicago suburbs there
are very few, the city having so enthusiasticaUy
adopted the poUcy of annexation, and having so
buUt its homes, within the city Umits, as to give
to the excellent residential portions of the city what
may be termed a suburban character. The city is
so much a city of homes, vrith a grassy space around
each house in the more fortunate regions, and with
at least an open space, even though perhaps used
for debris and ashes, beside many a home in other
289

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
regions, that it does not greatly need suburbs.
What the people of other cities go to their suburbs
to secure — spaciousness and air — Chicago has with
in her corporate Umits. But she has, also, suburbs
of a great deal of attractiveness, and with much of
composed and charming living.
Evanston is really a continuation of the city, and
at first impresses one as not being noticeably differ
ent from the city, but after a while one comes to
realize that it has an individuality all its own, and
a general aspect as of churchliness ; and I noticed
three church spires close enough together to be re
mindful (although not otherwise similar to the
English spires) of the three which inspired Tenny
son to make poetry out of "waiting for the train
at Coventry."
Evanston gives such an impression of quiet that
it was interesting to read, after the Armistice, a
telegram from Washington which stated that, closely
hidden and guarded, somewhere at the capital, was
a tiny vial of the deadliest poison ever known,
which was perfected just as the Armistice was
shown, otherwise it would have caused hitherto un
dreamt-of devastation in the destruction of entire
armies and populations; and this poison, thus as
serted to be the deadliest of all poisons, was stated
to be the invention of a professor in the university at
Evanston, And was it not from Evanston that a frantic mes
sage went to the postmaster of Chicago a few years
ago, signed by a woman's name and begging that he
290

OUT IN THE SUBUEBS
hold till her arrival two letters which the telegram
described? — the telegram being promptly followed
by a highly excited young woman, who breathlessly
explained that she had had two proposeds of mar
riage by letter, and had answered them by the same
mail, and feared that she had got the letters in the
wrong envelopes !
A short series of towns immediately to the north
of Evanston, are associated in a general way and
in the general mind with Evanston itself, including
the charming Glencoe and Winnetka and Wilmette
— Wilmette having its name, so the Wihnettians
would have you know, from a Frenchman named
Ouilmette who lived in that locality in 1803, and
married an Indian woman, and had a daughter who
married the first Irishman in Chicago; and they
stUl preserve his name, Michael Welch. The village
hall of Wilmette is in the form of a little Greek
temple and is most excellently done.
One who is acquainted with the rocky soil and
stone-walled fields of the suburban regions of
Boston, Philadelphia and New York, notices the
striking absence of stone hereabouts. I was taken
by the owner of a particularly attractive lakeside
home, to see a rock in the garden, which with diffi
culty and pride had been acquired and was the envy
of the neighbors ; and the honored object was about
the size of a bushel basket.
Lake Forest, near these very attractive suburbs,
is mostly inhabited, so it is said, by the extremely
rich; and you are told that one of them spent mil-
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THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
lions of dollars upon his estate, and — such being one
of the methods of measuring financial greatness —
that "he has five separate telephones."
A Uttle to the north of these suburbs, all of which
are upon the Lake Michigan front or very close to
it, are Fort Sheridan and the Great Lakes Train
ing Station; this latter having capacity for forty-
five thousand men, but vrith no place provided for
even a single boat. However, the station has a re
markable record of a vast number of men efficiently
trained, in spite of this great handicap. Men who
were trained here had to be carried in motor trucks
to Waukegan before they could embark on Lake
Michigan; Waukegan (its name calling attention
to the free use of the active "walky" in names of
this region; as, Waukesha, Milwaukee, Pewaukee,
Waukegan) being a manufacturing tovsm, still
farther north, which retains, in spite of its steel
mill development, a number of houses which are
unusually old for this region, with hints of quaint
old-fashionedness. With the idea of preparedness for a possible next
war, Chicago is now urging Congress for large ap
propriations for the purpose of making the great
but harborless training station a naval station in
fact, by building a fine harbor there.
Zion City may be mentioned, among suburbs,
though its people were never suburbanites in any
suburban sense, but held themselves strictly aloof
from Chicago. It was Dowie who founded this Zion
City, and made it famous; John Alexander Dowie,
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OUT IN THE SUBUEBS
a Scotchman who traveled over pretty much all the
world and established Zion here in the early 1890 's.
He built a tabernacle, which he declared to be the
largest building in the United States devoted exclu
sively to religious worship. He established lace-
making and other industries. He made himself a
severe dictator for his town, forbidding even smok
ing. He made a religious and industrial center;
but he died; and the importance of Zion City has
waned. And still farther to the northward, and perhaps
too far away to be classed literally among suburbs,
is charming and much-loved Lake Geneva, and be
fore me is a description by a Chicago woman whose
summer home is beside it! "A long lake with
deeply-dented shores that slope into its shining
waters. A lake which captivated us." The list of
flowers and birds is amazing, and one of the joys
of charming country living is found to be "to take
possession of the sunrises and the starlit nights."
Although the principal suburbs are to the north
ward, there are towns of pleasant Uving toward the
west, and there are also towns to the southward,
such as Blue Island, important as an active manu
facturing and railway center, and worth while, also,
as the place where, following a town ordinance, a
newspaper announced that "Hereafter it will be un
lawful for persons to be on the street after eight
o'clock without their tail lights burning."
There is a very real sentiment for suburbs, among
Chicagoans, in spite of the fact that most of them
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THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
do not live in suburbs. Although such a thoroughly
practical folk, most of them have a deep sentiment
for things of out of doors. As I heard a distin
guished Chicagoan, an apartment dweller, express
it, with a sincerity which took away petulance:
"I want a home in the country. I want to be carried
out of my own door when I die. I don't want to
be wheeled out on a tea-wagon!" And one of
George Ade's "Fables" is of a rich business man
of Chicago who wanted to quit business and become
a gentleman farmer and raise chickens. "He
figured how many Eggs he could get per Hen, and
sometimes, when the Pencil was working weU, he
estimated that he could make the Place self-sup
porting. ' '
ParalleUng the Evanston region is a north and
south valley known as the Skokie. It is a wildish
desolate district, with marsh and stream and
pictorial trees. Artists paint pictures of the
Skokie. Young poets write poems about the
Skokie. Plainer citizens tramp along the Skokie.
Golfers play beside the Skokie. And everybody
wants to keep it untouched by modernity. So,
again one notices the possibiUties of sentiment in
this practical city. For capitalists have freely
given their names in promise to join in plans of
preservation, and the city itself is actually preserv
ing considerable part of the region and will probably
get more.
The love of Chicago for the Skokie is remindful
of the love of the Philadelphian for the Wissahickon ;
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OUT IN THE SUBUEBS
although water and sky are perhaps pretty much
all the two valleys have in common. Chicago nature
lovers speak affectionately of the Skokie as if it rep
resents the Elysian Fields. They bring out the
name with a loving purr. ' ' The Skokie ! ' ' Strang
ers are fascinated by the word and by the general
devotion. One city dweller tells you, as if it were
a secret of sacredness, that the lotus grows there.
In reaUty, it is the plain friendly yellow water lily.
Another informs you that in winter time there is
a wonderful warm red-brown color on the Skokie.
Another declares that blue herons, five feet from
tip to tip, fly commonly over the Skokie.
The portions of the region that have been secured
by the city are to be part of a development alto
gether charming and unexpected. For Chicago
possesses Forest Preserves ! — technically, it is Cook
County — partly within the limits of the city and
partly just outside.
The Forest Preserves thus far secured amount to
over flfteen thousand acres, and their acreage is
increasing, and they include a dozen or more wild
and desirable spots.
The general plan for these preserves is for some
thing very different from parks, for the preserves
are to be vrithout formal and artiflcial features.
The idea is to preserve the vrildemess of wild and
timbered districts, to encourage vrild game, and to
stock with fish. A few roads wUl be cut to make
some places accessible that now cannot be reached,
and there are facUities for camping.
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THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
The Prairie Club, an active body, has organized
a system of walks, to explore picturesque regions,
and especially to follow out old Indian trails. And
I noticed, the other day, an item in a newspaper, a
short paragraph, telling, just as if it were an
ordinary 'and quite unpicturesque fact, that the
Prairie Club walk for the next day would be led by
a Chicago woman who was an Indian chief's
daughter, her father having been friendly to the
whites in early days, and she herself still having
her home on land given to her father by the Treaty
of Prairie du Chien.

296

CHAPTEE XXI

THE EXTRAORDINARY MAKING OF GARY

HE making of the city
of Gary was a huge
and remarkable achieve
ment. And its name
comes from that of a
^ man who was born in the
little town of Wheaton in
Illinois, twenty-five miles
west of Chicago.
That Wheaton spent
sixty thousand dollars on
its water-works is the out
standing financial fact connected with the place, as
gleaned from a recent local description that lies be
fore me ; the far more important financial fact being
entirely overlooked that Wheaton was the birthplace
of Elbert H. Gary, one of America's greatest
financiers, who for years displayed his grasp of
enormous financial problems as the directing spirit
of the billion dollar steel corporation, the greatest
single business organization in the world.
After staying in his Uttle home tovm long enough
to attain prominence there and the titles of mayor
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THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
and judge, he naturally gravitated to nearby
Chicago and, as a lawyer, showed the strong
financial bent of his mind by beginning to give
special attention to problems of big business; be
fore long, he even became an organizer of business ;
and at length he ceased to be a Chicagoan and be
came a New Yorker. Yet he still felt that close
ties bound him to Illinois and Chicago, and when
it was suggested that the great steel corporation
was in need of new facilities, for manufacturing and
shipping, in the heart of the Middle West, and that
on the whole it seemed best to found an entirely new
town, he entered into the project with joy : for was
not the heart of the Middle West the neighborhood
of Chicago!
A place was needed where the corporation could
bidld great steel mills, and make homes for many
thousands of steel workers and their famiUes. In
the selection of the site, and in the plans and ar
rangements for the new place, Elbert Gary showed
such constant interest and gave such advice and
exercised such leadership, that his business as
sociates named the place in his honor. The in
tended greatest steel-making center was to be known
as Gary.
Gary stands where most people, except Chicago
ans themselves, think that Chicago stands: at
the southern end of Lake Michigan. The location
was selected in order to gain real geographical ad
vantages, with its really central situation, its harbor
possibilities, its possibiUties of railway connections,
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THE EXTEAOEDINAEY MAKING OF GAEY
the ease with which raw material could be gathered
and with which manufactured products could be
shipped. Gary is so completely down at the foot
— or head — of the lake — Lake Michigan stands on
its head — that it is actually over the line in Indiana,
suburb of Chicago though it is. It is only twenty-
six miles from the heart of the great city, and
reached by rail down beyond the Calumet Lake
region, passing an oddly dreary district where, in
spite of the dreariness, there are suggestions of
parts of Holland, with amphibious houses and
amphibious-seeming folk, and great levels of alter
nate land and lake and canal and stream, with the
water brimming to the verge, and with boat land
ings and little boats; and yet, after all, with but
little of prettiness. But these almost picturesque
amphibious characteristics vanish before the city of
Gary is reached.
Gary was begun iu 1906. Almost at once, so it
seemed, a population of thirty thousand was at
tained, and the place went on increasing, with the
prophecy that by 1925 it would have at least a hun
dred thousand — toward which figure it is well on its
way as I write.
Enormous steel mUls went up as if by magic, and
workmen were sent by thousands. Their families,
too, were sent, for homes went up as the mills
went up, and from the first there was comfort in
family living. An area of thirty square miles ; one
hundred and fifty miles of water and gas mains;
street pavement, eighty miles; cement sidewalks,
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THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
one hundred and twenty-five miles : such are among
the figures that are given. The city started, un
hampered by the mistakes of past generations.
It has been more wonderful than even the making
of St. Petersburg, of Petrograd. For Gary was
built on shifty shifting sand: it was built in the
sandy dune country. It was set up in a bit of
savagery. And even now, in spite of the miles of
street pavement and sidewalks, in spite of the thou
sands of orderly homes and business blocks, the
sand is all about and in between, and is always and
vastly threatening. Let a householder but stir with
a stick in his back yard, on a windy day, and the
treacherous sand begins to move and cloud and
whirl. And, close hemming the city, are areas of
sand, shifting and blowing and always threatening.
And the fancy comes, that if the people were to be
taken away for a little while, and the town left to
itself, it would be blotted out; one feels that its
houses would become hills and knolls of sand, that
its streets, now thronged by day and brilUantly
lighted by night, would become sand valleys, that
scrub-oaks and pines would begin to grow here, and
that the city of Gary would vanish from sight as
magically as it arose, with only a few mill chimneys
standing up mysteriously to puzzle wondering
travelers, until even those last signs of human life
should rust and topple and disappear. The
imagination is moved by mystical ancient tales of
vanished towns; and, also, there comes to mind the
humorous wonder-tale by "Q," about Perranzabuloe
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THE EXTEAOEDINAEY MAKING OF GAEY
and its ever-shifting sands, and of how Saint Piran
and his faithful flock lost all trace of their church,
which had become a sand dune and was hidden from
sight under their very eyes.
An amazing feature about Gary, built as it is on
shifting sands, is that it is actually so solid, so per
manent, so strong. There is nothing suggestive of
the shoddy or the temporary. Schools, libraries,
clubs, commercial buildings, homes, churches, meet
ing places, all have the aspect as of having been
built for permanence. The city has arisen so
swiftly, so solidly, just because a great corpora
tion ordered it! It is vastly more of an achieve
ment than as if it had been ordered by an arbitrary
monarch, with absolute control of a nation and of its
resources. And as to the threatening waves of sand
— the thought comes of King Canute vainly order
ing back advancing literal waves of water ; but here
a corporation ordered back sand waves and was
obeyed. And in spite of being a city built upon the
sand, the city has already grovsm a great quantity
of trees and shrubs and grass and flowers. Yet
always the mind comes back to the constant menace
of sand ; I have seen men of Gary shoveling it from
their walks as if it were snow. And one of the
oddest of sights is that of great balls of wild
tumbleweed rolUng, wind-blown, through the streets,
from the unconquered sand regions that hem the
city in.
I went to Gary prepossessed against it. I was
familiar with duke-owned towns of England, as they
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THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
were before the World War, where the titled men
actually owned factories and stores and homes and
controlled every means of labor and life, and I re
membered the sad hopelessness of aspect of the
workingmen, and I feared to find something of the
same unhappiness and dolor in the atmosphere of
this corporation-owned city of Gary. But I found
only a breezy manliness, an atmosphere of satisfac
tion, of positive happiness ; and instead of the black
and dismal streets that I had known in Sheffield,
the most important of the cities that were owned
by so-called nobility, I found, in Gary, clean and
wide and open streets, with prosperous-looking busi
ness buildings and alert and happy people. And
it is not a negligible item, that the eating is of a
much better average, judging from food and fruit
shops, and from restaurants, than in smallish Amer
ican cities in general: and this is probably due to
corporation influence, from seeing business ad
vantage in a properly and abundantly fed popu
lation. And here is a curious fact in regard to Gary.
City of stupendous miUs though it is, it would be
quite possible for a visitor to go there and barely
know that mills are in the neighborhood. For there
are two districts: the mill district and the district
of homes and schools and churches and stores ; the
two districts are not far enough apart to make for in
convenience, but are far enough apart to permit the
home section to be happy-looking and clean instead
of grimy and dirty. If smoke clouds now and then
302

THE EXTEAOEDINAEY MAKING OF GAEY
drift over, it is not often enough to make much of
an impression. At night the sky is often lightened
by flames from the flaming mill chimneys.
Not all of the property is corporation-owned;
much of it is owned by individuals, the founders
having deemed the combination of the two kinds of
proprietorship to be best for the place. But there
are highly important safeguards as to kind and de
sign of houses to be built, and this feature, reserved
for rulership, explains the consistently excellent
average of the looks of the buildings of the city.
There are gas and electricity, water and sewers,
fire department, police and newspapers; and, as a
citizen proudly expressed it to me, expatiating on
his city's advantages and advance, "The police
make over five thousand arrests a year, and the fines
and costs amount to a mUlion and a half dollars!"
— than which local pride could not well say more.
A few of the policemen — of course I should here
say "police officers" — are women. Some of its
policemen are able to speak ten languages: and it
is also said that the policewomen have no difficulty
in making themselves understood in one. At the
same time, the fact that the various nationalities
of the city number fifty-two makes it a convenience
to be a linguist.
The alleys of Gary are an interesting feature,
for it is through its alleys that the water-mains
and gas-mains run, so that, when digging up is
necessary, as it seems so often to be necessary in
every city, the digging is done in these aUeys in-
303

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
stead of through the expensive street pavements, so
that Gary not only does away with the expensive
ness of ruining such pavements, and ruining the
sidewalks, but at the same time conducts repairs
and makes new connections with a minimum of
interference vrith traffic 'and business.
Busy though the place is, I noticed one indication
of restful peace: an advertisement sonorously and
rhetorically declaring that : "After the vicissitudes
of life's eventful career, one's mind resorts to a
quiet and peaceful final resting place"; and, after
naming the place, the advertisement concludes with
the statement that it is "artistically divided into
eight thousand family lots."
The very existence of Gary is the most remark
able fact in regard to it; but the city has also won
wide fame through what is known as the Gary system
for schools.
The system provides for practical vocational edu
cation in addition to what may be called the usual
school education. It represents an effort to run the
schools on a business basis.
\ The Gary system does not hold down the am
bitious or capable child to a dull average level, but
provides for the natural and rational advance of the
more capable or more studious children.
The schools open at a quarter after eight and con
tinue till a quarter after four; attendance for five
of these hours being required, leaving two hours
optional, with an hour at mid-day to be given up to
luncheon and play. There are also Saturday
304

THE EXTEAOEDINAEY MAKING OF GAEY
schools, for the catching up of ambitious but back
ward children and for such as have fallen behind
through sickness.
The pupils are not tied absolutely to one room
for the day, but shift about in changing from teacher
to teacher; the teachers having each a specialty or
specialties which are taught to different classes in
turn. It is a pleasant sight to see the children pass
ing cheerfuUy through the halls, on their way from
room to room, for their look and bearing, the com
posite look and bearing, are so composed, and so
indicative of a quiet happiness. The rooms are
so arranged that, in walking through the halls, the
children may look in at other classes, studying or
reciting. It is all open, as if the school rooms were
a set of open workshops : and there are literal work
shops, too, where chemistry, for example, is prac
tically applied, where the children's hands are
trained in various practical lines.
The frequent changes from room to room brighten
the day. A small number of desks is noticed, as
tables and chairs largely meet the pupils' needs.
The children are medically examined twice in every
year. The buildings are admirable in exterior de
signs, with pleasant interiors. One notices unos
tentatious efforts to make charming surroundings.
The children seem to develop finely: they are self-
poised, unaffected, natural, Ukable.
It seemed interesting that even such a thing as
chicken raising was taught: children are told, for
example, how to set a hen (what a mystery, tiU one
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THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
learns !), and then they go out and set the hen. And
they are taught about flowers and shrubs and plants,
and then how to care practically for them.
Considering the practicalness of the Gary schools
there comes the thought of a teacher, a Dickens crea
tion, who long ago had hold of at least this practical
feature of teaching, far though he otherwise was
from Gary principles.
" 'B-o-t, bot, t-i-n, tin, bottin, n-e-y, ney, bottiney,
noun substantive, a knowledge of plants. When he
has learned that bottiney means a knowledge of
plants, he goes and knows 'em. That's our system,
Nickleby.' "

306

CHAPTEE XXn

THE SOLITARY DUNES

ITH enchanted
forests and en
chanted glades, with
beauty of hills and
valleys and water,
with strange and
beautiful birds and
plants, with all the
feeling of fairy
land, of dreamland,
the solitary dunes
offer themselves to
Chicago.
Nor is their charm owing to their being near one
of the largest of the world's great cities. That,
naturally, adds to the charm through unexpected
ness ; but the charm is not dependent on it. Nor is
it that there has been effort to give more credit,
more prominence, to the sand dunes than they prop
erly deserve. Chicago, as represented by those who
seek for beauty in nature, loves the dunes because
they are lovable, admires their beauty because it is
admirable, and visits them because they are so
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THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
readily visitable. The accessibility of the dunes is
in itself a charm; they have the merit of accessible
seclusion. The dunes are never thronged. For great part of
the year ; that is, for most of the winter ; they are
lonely. At other times, campers are there, and
transient visitors go flittingly. Even when, once
in a while, a large party go in company, or when
there is one of the dune pageants that are a yearly
feature, the visitors occupy but a small part of the
dunes for a few hours.
In a general way the dunes may be said to begin
about where Gary stands ; but that immediate region
has been so altered by city streets and mills as to
destroy the aspect of dunes, even though there stUl
remains the permeative impression of sand.
So it is now a little east of Gary that the dunes,
the solitary dunes, the beautiful dunes, begin, and
they extend, unspoiled, for some score of miles
farther eastward. They occupy a narrow strip
averaging some two miles in width, with Lake
Michigan on one side, and on the other side railway
tracks, and the road which takes the place of the
early Indian trail, and some scattered and unfertile-
looking farms, vrith soil part sand and part clay,
for the sand gradually loses its power as it strives to
reach inland, though it hungrily and reluctantly
yields; and I noticed that one of the farmers had
bravely set out an orchard, and that the trees had
attained to several years of growth, but I also
noticed that the sand in the orchard had unfor-
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THE SOLITAEY DUNES
tunately become broken and stirred, and that half
of the trees were already smothered and the other
half doomed.
The effectiveness of impression, of the dunes, is
out of all proportion to their width. Enter the
dune region at any point, and wander as fate and
fancy lead, and in a few minutes you are hundreds
of miles from civilization, in an unknown kind of
land. Men have become confused in that narrow
strip, and have wandered, dazed, bewildered, lost,
in the intricacies of these strange forests.
It is a region of scattered and successional sand
hills. In places the sand has been blown into ridges
and heights of two hundred feet in altitude. And
it is curious to see, as one may often see, the white
sand stirring and moving and blowing in clouds,
even from the tops of some tall hills, threatening
the hills themselves with destruction and promising
to form other hills. And I have seen, far up, great
trees being slowly uncovered at their roots, and the
blown sand beginning to gather about the trunks of
other trees and mounting against their trunks. It is
a shifting, changing, moving region. It is in this
sense an uncanny region. "Unstable as water" is
an ancient comparison; but nothing could easily be
more unstable than sand.
Single trees and thickets sparsely cover the sand
hills and sand hollows, the trees being large and
small, tall and short. There are masses of cedars ;
there are pines, deeply and darkly green, some of
them being three and a half or four feet in diameter,
309

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
and towering to heights of a hundred or a hundred
and fifty feet; there are oaks; there is dogwood,
flowering finely in white; there are grim tamarack
swamps that quake beneath you as you walk. There
are lakelets and pools, some of them of wonderful
blueness, and beside these lakelets there may be
little thickets, with creeping juniper and gnarled
poplars and spruce trees, with possible ehn or syca
more, and with clumps of antlered sumac, vivid of
hue. There are masses of arbor-vitae. There are
willows in manifold variety. There are ranks of
red osiers. Yet always, even when there is most
of beauty, there is a lurking grimness, a sinister
quality, a sense as of ferocity, of threat, of some
thing terrible.
Every moment something is changing. It fascin
ates. It captivates. It binds you with its spell:
the spell of the drifting sand, and the roaring of
great winds, the vivid contrast of the whitest of
white sand and the bluest of blue water, the
opalescent distances, the heights and ridges of gray
or black or white — sometimes a white which becomes
of a strange and gleaming tawniness.
An electric line skirts the dunes, running from
Gary to Michigan City, and there is choice of several
stations at which one may get off, that are admirably
situated for dune exploration. Mineral Springs is
among the best for those who can make but a short
visit yet who wish a rich and full impression. Here
you leave the tiny railway station and walk dovm a
lane of vivid green, deep-ratted in brown. Several
310

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THE SOLITAEY DUNES
fields stretch off on either hand. There are two or
three little farm houses in sight. There is a field
with a few cattle. There is a field across which two
horses go gallantly galloping. Before you, as you
walk on, and in long lines to right and to left, the
dunes rise and sweep. And soon you are in the
secret depths.
You wander, perhaps pretty much at random, and
yet following a direction which ought to lead you to
the lake ; and soon you know that you are approach
ing the lake — Lake Michigan, I mean, not the little
lakelets, for these little ones you ''come to and pass.
You do not for some time see the lake, but you know
that you are nearing it because you hear a soft boom
ing, a gentle roaring, which you recognize as the
sound of surf beating upon a shore ; and you continue
farther, over the uneven dunes, and now you are
deep among the trees and thickets, and now you
mount a higher ridge — and there is Lake Michi
gan, spread out gloriously before you: the highest
sand hills standing in an uneven line close to the
edge of the lake.
And now, the summit of the waterside attained,
the soft murmur of the surf becomes a violent roar
ing, a splendid rush of water against the shore, and
the lake, in myriad colors, spreads out in captivating
miles ; and over yonder you see Chicago. Why, you
have been feeling as if you were hundreds of miles
from Chicago !
The immense loneliness — that is what you never
get away from; with the ceaseless sound of the beat-
311

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
ing surf, and the sinister mountains of sand, and the
beautiful and terrible impressiveness, and the Ughts
and shadows and a great solemnity.
You turn, and plunge again into the depths of
duneland. Here is the trailing arbutus, the tenderly
beautiful mayflower of the Pilgrims, wasting its
sweetness on the desert air; here are orchids, fringed
with yellow or white or red ; here are masses of the
glorious triUium, the wake-robin; here is cactus,
flowering in profusion and hugging close the ground
in ungainliness. There are white pond-lilies, a sheer
delight, and there are pond lilies of yellow ; there are
fringed and closed and open gentians; there is the
blue lobelia. Here the cardinal-flower thrusts up its
flaming torch ; here are lupines in fields of immensity
of blue; here are banks of bracken; here, in lush
quantity, are huckleberries.
Here and there is a camping spot or a tiny hut,
where perhaps some artist established himself for
work or some lover of beauty and of nature set him
self down to enjoy the lonely loveliness. And there
are still spots to be found where Indian hunters
camped, where still it is possible to find the arrow
head of flint, or the spear-point; and where, pre
served in the ashes of long-ago camp-fires, you may
be so fortunate as still to find fish-hooks and needles
of bone.
The dunes are not like those of Provincetown, on
Cape Cod, where the walking is so difficult that one
plunges with every step, and where there are great
bare sweeps, with groves of ancient dwarf trees
312

THE SOLITAEY DUNES
nestled in sand hollows ; for here, on the Lake Michi
gan dunes, the walking is fairly easy, and there are
tall trees. (The Provincetovpu dunes originally had
tall trees also, when the Pilgrims made their first
landing in the New World there, before sailing on
to their permanent landing at Plymouth; but these
Cape Cod dunes long ago lost their trees for house
building or for firewood.)
Great masses of ice are blown down here, at the
end of the lake, in winter time ; and when, for a mov
ing-picture play, some scenes in Alaska were needed,
with a ship wrecked in the ice, and Esquimaux in
costume, these Lake Michigan sand-dune shores gave
the necessary setting.
The lake, here, gives quantity and variety of fish
to tempt the fishermen. There are lake trout and
white fish and herring; there are great sturgeon;
and there are salmon, descendants of salmon brought
to Chicago for the fisheries' exhibit at the World's
Fair and put in the lake at the close of the big show,
whereat the salmon made their habitat dovm here.
But there has come a curious change : at the World's
Fair they were red salmon, but they are no longer
red, for the fresh water has changed their hue.
White gulls go soaring in beauty above the beauti
ful white sand. Crows go blackly flapping by.
There are the fork-tailed tern, and the sentinel
heron, and the solemn owl. Great birds fly out of
the sedge and soaringly flutter away. Far overhead
you see an eagle swinging in the sky. Thfere are
hawks. There are the friendly robins. There is
313

THE BOOK OP CHICAGO
the red-headed woodpecker in contrast of most brU
liant red and most brilliant white.
Nor are the smaller vrild animals lacking, for still
may be seen the weasel, stUl may be seen the musk-
rat, still, but more rarely, may be seen the fox.
Always the billows of sand, always the browns
and yellows and blues and blacks and greens : always
the sense of allurement: for mystery and charm
are there, and haunting distances are there, with
fair and radiant views.
You think of Touchstone: "In respect that it is
solitary, I like it very well"; for always a chief
characteristic is solitude. Except on the rare pa
geant days or when the Prairie Club has organized
an exploring walk, you may go for miles and meet
not a human being. And one day, as I was again
thinking of this haunting solitude, I noticed that an
old man was hoveringly accompanying or foUowing
me. He seemed to be one of the farmers of the
fringe; perhaps he owned the doomed orchard; I
slowed, and he came up vrith me, and for a little he
was silent: then he said, pointing to a tree with
drooping branches, a tree all knots and gnarls :
"We call that bitter gum."
He said it almost deflantly, as if expecting con
tradiction and ready to meet it. But I merely as
sented to the thus oddly volunteered name, and
after a little he went on :
"There isn't any place in this region where that
kind of tree grows except here."
Again the pause of almost defiance, again a mere
314

THE SOLITAEY DUNES
assent, again a continuance, and this time a longer
one, with a hurried rush of words in full sweep :
"It grows in Ohio though. And it's tough wood.
An ax won't touch it. And one day, when President
Garfield was a lad, and was working with some men
in the woods, they set him to work on a bitter gum,
just for a joke. Well, he worked for hours, but
the tree didn't seem to mind it. And up came a
thunder storm, with a big rain, and he stood close
against the trunk, and a stroke of lightning hit a
tree close by and smashed it into smithereens, and
Garfield he was knocked dovm, but in a few minutes
he came to, and he looked at that smashed tree and
then at his own bitter gum, and he said, solemn and
slow, ' Oh, Lord ! Please try your hand on this tree
next.' "

315

CHAPTEE XXIII
WHY CHICAGO IS !
IVEEYBODYwas awakened in old
Philadelphia one
night in the long
ago, audi every
body came pour-
out into the streets
the darkness,
weeping, laughing,
cheering, almost
frantic with joy,
for one of General
Washington's staff.
Colonel Tilghman, had come galloping in with the
news that Cornwallis was taken and that the long
war was over. And thoughts came flocking, of that
night of passionate joy, when I read a brief para
graph in a Chicago paper (this was a year or two
ago) which told of the death of a Chicago merchant
named William TUghman, a descendant of Colonel
Tilghman, of the staff of General George Washing
ton. And within that paragraph lay half of the ex-
316

WHY CHICAGO IS!
pknation of how and why the greatness of Chicago
has come.
For it is not enough to say that the rise and
progress of Chicago, a rise and a progress quite un
exampled, are due to its geographical position, or
merely to say that the remarkable characteristics of
the city have come from the characteristics of its
people. As to the natural location — well, I have
before me a recently published declaration that
"Nature was prodigal with Chicago; it prepared a
place for a perfect city"; and this of a city set
originally on a swamp, below the level of the
adjacent lake ! Nor is it enough to expatiate on the
enterprising character of the inhabitants, or the
tremendous energy which has made the city's
motto, "Chicago flrst, last and all the time!" and
which has justified the motto with mighty deeds.
Always, one feels that, as an explanation, some
thing is wanting, something is missing, something
is lost, omitted, needed. Always, one feels that
there has been no getting back to a flrst cause.
On the day on which I read, in Chicago, that para
graph concerning the Chicago descendant of a dis
tinguished Southern family I met a friend, a
Chicagoan, who is a lineal descendant of the John
Eliot, the "Apostle to the Indians," who landed at
Boston close to three centuries ago and made great
name and fame.
And the conjunction of the two facts suddenly
fused and clarified an idea that for some time had
been indistinctly offering itself to my mind. Now,
317

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
aU at once, the idea became clear. And it was, that
the explanation of Chicago's greatness, her unique
qualities, her amazing rise and advance as a city,
came from an unusual and balanced combination of
the best blood of New England and of the South.
The people of one section alone could not have
done it. But the extraordinary union, a union un
known in such degree in any other city, of people
from both sections, accomplished the unique build
ing up of this mighty city, met and overcame all
obstacles, attained to marvelous success, wrought
out the impossible. St. Louis tried with men and
women of the South. Cleveland with men and
women of New England. Neither city, although
making admirable success, could make a success
comparable to that of Chicago.
It was the best blood that flowed into the new set
tlements. It was the most ambitious people, the
most daring, the most courageous, who left the
known regions of the East for the unknown wilder
ness of the West; it was the strongest, the most
forceful, the best educated, and those most imbued
vrith imagination; it was those who could look into
the future and discern somewhat of what could be
wrought in the future. New England sent west
ward the pick of her sons and daughters. Virginia
likewise sent westward the best of her people.
Many from New England first settled in portions of
New York State and thence made their farther move
onward into the region of the Great Lakes and the
Ohio Eiver. Many Virginians, with some from
318

WHY CHICAGO IS!
Maryland, settled in Kentucky, and thence they or
their descendants crossed the Mississippi to St.
Louis, or the Ohio Eiver into the Illinois country.
In Illinois, Northerners and Southerners met and
mingled ; not only in totals, but in quality and time
liness. The greatest of all Americans since Wash
ington, Lincoln, was bom in Kentucky and grew up
among the fortunately amalgamated folk of the
Illinois country. And his political rival, the "little
giant, ' ' Douglas, born in Vermont, married a grand-
niece of the famous Dolly Madison of the South.
In Illinois the two races met, in notable quality
and numbers. There they united. They fused.
They blended. And the result was Chicago.
The result was Chicago because to Chicago
naturally went the leadership of the lUinois country,
for it was at the spot, in that country, that was best
fitted for leadership. The acquisition, from the
South, of the gallant spirit of the Cavaliers, the
acquisition from the North of the unswervable
bravery of the Pilgrims, developed a remarkable
blend. At the entrance of the Art Institute of Chicago
is a statue of George Washington: just within the
entrance is a statue that symbolizes the PUgrim:
and the juxtaposition of these two statues illus
trates, unintentionally but strikingly, the principal
reason for Chicago's development.
In Chicago, almost everything has been done
within the memory of men or women now living.
It is centuries condensed into a lifetime. Before
319

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
me is a newspaper paragraph, teUing of a birthday
celebration of a woman who was born in Chicago in
1829: eight years before the place became a city!
And her children and her grandchildren and her
great-grandchildren were swarmingly present.
Why, she was a girl, approaching the age of ten,
when Harriet Martineau (how large that name
loomed in the long ago) visited Chicago and wrote:
"It is a remarkable thing to meet such an assemblage
of educated, refined and wealthy persons as may be
found there, Uving in small, inconvenient houses
on the edge of a wild prairie"; and also, "I never
saw a busier place than Chicago was at the time of
our arrival."
Such were even from the beginning the influences
of the blending of North and South ; a natural blend
ing, which kept on for years.
And the Chicago patriarch of 1829 was a young
woman when clear-eyed Fredrika Bremer, the
Swedish novelist, visited Chicago, by this time ad
vanced to the dignity of a twenty-five thousand pop
ulation, and wrote that she found there "the most
agreeable and delightful people she had ever met
anywhere. ' '
The people of Chicago, to use the ancient phrase
of Joel, dream dreams and see visions; they have
from the first dreamed dreams and seen visions;
and they have made their dreams realities, and their
visions become true. It is a city of deep-rooted
ideaUsm. Chicago talks in superlatives, as : " Chicago and
320

WHY CHICAGO IS!
its surrounding territory constitute the most
prosperous section in the United States and there
fore in the world." The faith of Chicagoans in
their city is absolutely unquestioning. On a rail
way train, a Chicagoan, in animated conversation
with a stranger from the East, talked glowingly
of his city. "Good-by," said the stranger, in
parting ; "I am glad to have met the president of the
Ananias Club." And the Chicagoan 's feelings were
deeply hurt, for he had not thought of exaggerating:
and the Easterner was ignorant of Chicago,
Turning the leaves of a description of Chicago
written in 1873 I noticed that Chicago then
possessed "the finest streets and the most magnifi
cent buildings in the world." One smiles; and then
comes the thought of the advantage of hitching one's
wagon to a star.
"Not boasters, but boosters," say Chicagoans of
themselves ; and anyhow, as Henry James long ago
remarked, although there are boasters who annoy,
there are other boasters whom one loves for their
very boasting.
Chicagoans say of themselves that they have the
' ' I will ' ' spirit. And if the city is really the biggest
and best and finest and strongest and most amazing
they think that they ought to say so.
The city very seriously wants everything in sight.
When a Chicagoan looks out over Lake Michigan
and, considering it a detriment, wishes that the
space it occupies could be made into extensions of
the city, except for a canal for necessary shipping,
321

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
he is really very much in earnest; just as Walter
Scott's Baillie Nicol Jarvie was in earnest in
wishing that exquisite Loch Lomond could be filled
in, except for a narrow canal down the middle.
The versifier is unknovra. to fame who wrote:
"The men who travel from coast to coast declare
they love Chicago most," but he expressed an idea
with which every Chicagoan coincides.
A Chicago poet of years ago, named Taylor, with
the two excellent given names of Benjamin Franklin,
loved to write of his city with solemnity of beUef.
Of the food shipped out from Chicago he wrote :
" 'Give us this day our daily bread,' the planet's Christian
prayer ;
Chicago, with her open palm, makes answer everywhere."
And of the city'^s charter he declared:
"The Lord's recording Angel holds the charter in his
hand —
He seals it on the sea, and he signs it on the land!"
It is not in the least a joke that Chicago wishes
to fetch the capital of the United States to some
near-by spot on the shore of Lake Michigan. After
all, the city of Washington is not in the heart of the
country, is not in the center of national population !
Chicago is where the influence of New York and
the East ceases; that is, the influence of the East
as marking any sense of inferiority in the Middle
West. Until Chicago is reached, city after city
yields homage to New York, and shrinks with shame
322

OXFORD-LIKE CHARM

WHY CHICAGO IS!
when given the description of Middle West. But
Chicago is proud of being in the Middle West ! Is it
not the natural situation for a city that dominates !
And from this central location have recently come
new advantages through the unexpected annexation
of some important printing establishments from
New York, with more quite possible to come, and
with the new zone system of the United States post-
office department a promisingly strong factor.
The Chicago blend made and still makes for an
alert and American city. You see a gathering of
Chicago business men; they are men among whom
pomposity finds no worshiper ; they are young, com
pared with those of similar gatherings in older
cities; and the memory comes of the description,
by Bernard Shaw, of some English officer who
could heliograph his orders to distant camps by
merely nodding, for here is a roomful of heUo-
graph heads. (But, after all, you do not catch a
Chicagoan nodding!)
An American city, this ; a city which stands for a
Ughtening and brightening of the somber clouds that
hang on the national horizon : a city which stands for
noble advancement in noble things, for art and
beauty, for human feeling, for family affection and
homes, for the love of children.
Chicago is, because she has been ; she will be, be
cause she is ; and the love of children will keep her
traditions alive. Her many schools, her magnificent
public playgrounds, with their swimming pools and
music and gymnastics, her bathing beaches, with
323

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
especial regard for the needs of ehUdren, her
libraries and books, with special attention to the
advantages for children, her great parks, without,
so she proudly claims, a single keep-off-the-grass
sign — such things aU tell of a broad and wise
humanity. And here, in a newspaper, coming op
portunely as if to point these ideas with a concrete
example, is a photograph of children and a para
graph of description: the picture being of a large
group of happy children, photographed because
some one had discovered that there, in a single block
on Lincoln Street (name of good omen, that!) there
were sixty-five youngsters, "from bottle-size to
high-school age," and that "every family in the
block boasts of being American-born on both sides" !
It was no mere chance that made a child-poem the
classic of Chicago. The mind and heart of the
author, Eugene Field, had been developed in this
city of feeling, and Chicago will never forget his
"Little Boy Blue":
"The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and staunch he stands ;
And the little toy soldier is red vsdth rust,
And his musket molds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blu«
Kissed them and put them there.
" 'Now, don't you go tUl I come,' he said,
'And don't you make any noise ! '
So, toddling off to his trundle-bed, 324

WHY CHICAGO IS!
He dreamt of the pretty toys ;
And, as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue —
Oh, the years are many, the years are long.
But the little toy friends are true.
"Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place.
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face;
And they wonder, as waiting the long years through
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,
Since he kissed them and put them there."

325

CHAPTEE XXIV

THE GOLD COAST
IVING to an incredible age,
there died, at length, in
Chicago, the last survivor of
j one of the most im-
jj portant gatherings in
the history of America ;
the Boston Tea Party!
Darid Kennison was the
man who lived the longest of
the ninety men who, dis
guised as Indians, boarded
the tea ships in Boston harbor and threw three hun
dred and forty-two chests of tea into the water.
When he died, in 1852, he had reached the age, so
it is recorded, of one hundred and fifteen years,
three months and seventeen days. Chicago seems
to have accepted him and his claims without ques
tion ; and indeed I do not know that there was ever
any ground for question. The city did not, how
ever, pay much attention to him while he was alive ;
for, after all, he represented Boston history and
not that of Chicago. And his name is not to be
found in Boston books of history, for Boston never
knew, as a matter of record or even as general
326

THE GOLD COAST
knowledge, the identity of the ninety patriotic law
breakers ; nor, so it has always been supposed, did
any of the Boston leaders of agitation, such as John
Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, take any part
in the tea episode; they preferring to leave actual
dangerous participation to men of what were deemed
the humbler classes; so it naturally happened that
although the deed itself was looked upon as of im
mense consequence, as it really was, the actors in
it were little thought about. But they ought to have
been thought about; and Darid Kennison, of
Chicago — ^how incredible it appears! — was the last.
In the rooms of the Chicago Historical Society is
a vial containing tea, and with it is a formal state
ment, in which David Kennison declares, "upon his
sacred honor, ' ' that the vial contains some tea saved
from what was thrown into Boston harbor in 1773.
The statement was written in 1848, with five
Chicagoans of standing witnessing it, upon his 112th
birthday; the last witnessing name, one notices,
being that of Henry Fuller, father of the author
of "The Cliff Dwellers."
Kennison died poor; Chicago not having prac
tically realized that it possessed an absolutely
unique pre-Eevolutionary relic, a human one.
When he died his body was put casually away, mis
laid as it were; at least, the place of burial is un
known : but at the right of the Wisconsin Street en
trance to Lincoln Park, and shaded by cottonwoods,
is a largish red bowlder, marked vrith a bronze
tablet. For, a good many years after his death,
327

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
the Sons of the Eevolution and the Sons of the
American Eevolution (as if it were a different Eevo
lution!) and the Daughters of the American Eevolu
tion, united to do him honor, the inscription on the
tablet stating that he was buried as near the spot
where the bowlder stands as can be knov?n.
Lincoln Park stretches for miles along Lake
Michigan, and is bordered by thousands of homes,
which face out upon the lake, or are built upon the
streets that lead away from it; and in that region
there is so much of wealth, so much of the kind of
beauty of living that comes only from the lavish ex
penditure of wealth, that the name of the Gold
Coast has been aptly given to it. And so happy
and charming a region is it that one feels that there,
if anywhere, "they fleet the time carelessly, as they
did in the golden world."
The park itself is a noble park, and this home
region, so close against it and close to it, is a region
of fine and costly buildings, finely set.
There are beautiful doors and charming stone
balconies, there are many a house and garage
planned together as an architectural whole, there
are admirable windows, there are quoins and
balustrades, there are pillars, there are stone-topped
high brick walls, there are Italian gardens, there
are marble terraces, there is many a home built
with a second-floor drawing-room so that, English
fashion, the people "go down to dinner." There
are houses that are masterpieces in stone. And aU
the houses are modem, and with almost all there is
328

THE GOLD COAST
evident a fine sense of restraint. The Chicago
town-houses of to-day offer to the world models
of good taste ; they have nothing of the exuberant or
exotic. Costly though these homes are, and large and im
posing as some of them are, and permeative as is
the sense of beauty, it is a curious fact that not one
is the equal of the three best in New York: but,
after all, those three best New York houses were
built by three Pittsburghers, Camegie, Schwab and
Frick. Among the streets of very finest effectiveness is
Astor Street, between North Avenue Boulevard and
SchiUer Street ; and, although its houses are not the
costliest of the Gold Coast, they are fine without
ostentation and there is an atmosphere of home-
likeness. The street is ehn shaded, the houses are
mostly of brick with stone trimming, they are of
three or four stories in height and set near together
but not shoulder to shoulder, and each has its sunny
bit of greenery. It is a street of charm and dis
tinction. And there remains, in particular, the
memory of a house with pillared colonnade, looking
into a garden hidden from the street by a wall of
brick. Here there is the perfection of present-day
architecture, distinctly and distinctively American,
apparently inspired by the brick mansions of
Ajinapolis and Williamsburgh.
Some of the houses of the Lincoln Park region
are inspired by the English Georgian, some show
the inspiration of the Italian Eenaissance, some
329

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
have a French atmosphere about them. I particu
larly remember one delightful building facing the
lake, a building Palladian-fronted, with fluted
pilasters. And there is even a Venetian palazzo,
also facing the water, carefully reproduced. Where
Bellevue Place joins Lincoln Park there is an ad
mirable house of French design of smooth gray
stone. And not far from this is that forty-year
ago idea of a French house, the Potter Palmer home,
which was provocative of so much of jest and raillery
— and of so much extravagant praise ! — and to which
some of the lines of James Eussell LoweU seem
cheerfully applicable.
"All up and down and here and there,
With Lord-knows-whats of round and square
Stuck on at random anywhere, —
It was a house to make one stare,
AU corners and all gables ;
And all the oddities to spare
Were set upon the stables."
But Chicago long ago admirably passed the stage
of towered and turreted uneasiness. And the
Potter Palmers could bear with architectural
criticism with much of equanimity, not only because
of the co-existent praise, but because they them
selves were people of acknowledged leadership of
many years' standing. A letter written from
Chicago in 1888 by Susan Hale, sister of Edward
Everett Hale, told of a luncheon given in her honor
at which she sat between the hostess and Mrs.
330

THE GOLD COAST
Potter Palmer, "a north-side magnate of great im
portance, a very pretty little woman, married to an
ancient millionaire."
This north-side region near the lake has more
wrought-iron entrance gates than has all of ancient
Nuremburg. It seems to love wrought-iron gates!
Some are fantasies of black iron garlands and
tendrils. Some are twenty feet in height with
fences of twelve feet, set in great bases of block
stone. But these gates and fences have been given
extravagance of size for the small areas that they
shut in, which are often only a driveway or a small
ordered garden, and would more flttingly front great
estates. The park stretches for miles to the northward,
well on toward the limits of the city; but the region
to which the name of Gold Coast is applied does
not anywhere extend for more than a little inland.
And, although there are mainly residences, there are
also numerous apartment houses that have recently
been built, a few of them being large and tall build
ings, but the general type being not high, of four
stories, or three stories and a basement, with deeply
recessed center and projecting wings, and with the
space between the wings charmingly cared for with
grass and walks and shrubbery. Some of these
apartment houses are beautiful, many are extremely
costly, almost all are at least of high excellence.
"People want a stylish home, with elevator boys
in uniform, that couri; between the wings, and the
little fountain, and the grand entrance— all just
331

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
right," as it is expressed in "The Common Lot."
In this part of the city also have developed
kitchenette apartments, where gas-stoves and dishes
and knives and so on are supplied, and where ice
and garbage are cared for from the outside, and
where there is a vast deal of comfort with minimum
of space, and where the bed is a thing of household
magic, a sort of glorified "folding bed," a part of
the building, a thing of science, with French doors
and mirrors and a big bed of metal which swings
on a pivot and works with an oscillating lever and
comes only when wanted. This contrivance is so
clever that it takes up the bed and walks.
But the prevailing buUdings of the immediate
neighborhood facing the parkway and the lake on the
north side are the family residences, buUt with an
air of uncramped spaciousness both as to outward
setting and interiors.
Now and then, too, there is uniqueness of plan, as
with the homes of three wealthy families, inter-re
lated, who live in houses that are built together as
a group, and an extremely distinguished group;
each house being complete in itself, but the three
households uniting in garage and heating plant and
servants' quarters.
' ' Queen of the West I by some enchanter taught
To lift the glory of Aladdin's Court"—
so wrote Bret Harte of Chicago, and one thinks of
such lines when passing along the golden beauty
of Lincoln Park and its adjoining homes. And one
332

THE GOLD COAST
also thinks, here, of the lines of John Boyle
0 'Eeilly on Chicago :
"Proud like a beautiful maiden.
Art-like from forehead to feet" ;
for all is so restful, so perfect. Here one thinks of
Chicago as a city exceedingly fair ; and assuredly it
is also a city of savoir faire.
The park, with its long sweeping north and south
drives, is the great avenue of approach by motor
from all the suburbs along the north shore and from
all the northside dwelling contingent who motor in
to the Loop for business and pleasure. The proces
sion sweeps southward in the morning, then north
ward at the end of the day; the long restful park
ride, in sight of the lake, with its zestful breezes,
being an anticipated and appreciated part of the
day''s life. Now that the fine new bridge is opened
the approach is directly into Michigan Avenue and
the Lake Front Mile. Heretofore there has been the
twisting and turning aside to approach the vortex
of the old Eush Street Bridge. And the new bridge
will also add immensely to the number of those who
will motor through the park for the sake of the park
itself. Along the Gold Coast yo.u are impressed by the
noiselessness. For it is mile after mile without rail
way, without trolley cars: nothing but automobiles
and horses and double-decked motor-buses — the
horses being not for carriages but for a vast amount
of horseback riding: long Lincoln Park has been a
333

THE BOOK OP CHICAGO
paradise for those fast-vanishing and noble animals,
the dog and the horse. And the park walks are still
haunted by the also vanishing human pedestrian !
The long, thoroughfaring drives, the many paths
for saddle horses, the footpaths, the Uttle lakes and
lagoons, the stretches of vivid green grass between
lagoons and lake, the breakers rolling in, perhaps
out of a mist or perhaps from sweeps that go shim
mering gloriously into the far distances, all are
beautiful. All the toil of the city seems far away.
On summer days and summer evenings what
throngs, what gayety, with music and boating and
pretty clothes, and a great beach where thousands
gather at a time ! Not from the Gold Coast houses,
these, but from the massed homes that are near it
throughout all its length. The great long_park is
used. The grass is walked over and sat upon.
Families bring their lunch-baskets and stay all
Sunday. Many living not too far away walk to
the bathing beach in bathing suits with flapping
bath robes. All these, too, "fleet the time carelessly
as they did in the golden world."
An odd custom, in Lincoln Park— it happens often
enough to call it a custom—is for private motor-cars
to stop and take up, or offer to take up, strangers
who are waiting for a 'bus. A man will stop and
offer a seat to a maid or matron, and it is for her
to decide whether or not she will accept; in either
case there is no iU wiU on either side ; and usuaUy
the offering is from a man to another man or men.
One day, standing waiting for the 'bus, a heavy
334

THE GOLD COAST
shower came on. There were two well-dressed
young women near me. There was also a neat
colored woman, holding a baby in her arms. A
closed car, driven by a prettily gowned girl drew up
in front of us. The girl had eyes for only the
colored woman, who was quite evidently a stranger
to her. She asked her to get in, and the mother and
child were thus pleasantly saved from a wetting.
The park extends northward to St. Loyola's big-
domed pile, and for a long distance, toward the end
of the drive, houses are near the very edge of the
lake, with the waves rolling in to the garden walls.
Some of the churches of the Coast region are of
special interest. Far down at the southward end,
on Lincoln Parkway at Delaware Place, is the
Fourth Presbyterian, a church of what may be called
a sort of dainty Gothic; a building of light gray
stone, excellent in suggestions, but with an unfor
tunately inadequate little spire. More interesting
than the church itself is the delightful open cloister
adjoining, with little stone saints circled around the
top of the shaft of the fountain. The church, the
arcaded cloister, and the mulUon-windowed parish
house make a quiet, ecclesiastic group, very peaceful
and churchly in appearance, the architect being
Cram of Boston, a notable church-builder of our
time. A church of dignity and quiet impressiveness is
that of the Christian Scientists' on Wrightwood
Avenue, just off the park; a church that is
thoroughly classic, with its fronting pillars of stone,
335

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
its rounding dome, its admirable proportions. This
is the Second Church; and one thinks of the
Scientists' advertisement of services for each Sun
day, headed by the same topic for each church, and
beneath it the serried row of First Church, Second
Church, Third Church, and thus steadily and with
impressiveness on to the Sixteenth.
On Orchard Street is St. Paul's, an Evangelical
Lutheran church, a tall mass of red stone with
clustering protuberances, a church that rises in the
center with a roof remarkably steep, a churcdi re
mindful of an ancient church in the old city of Bonn.
There is St. Clement's, on Deming Place, with its
all-white interior, its great arches, its square pillars,*
its side-altar lights burning Ln open colored glasses,
as in Italy.
Far out on Sheridan Eoad is the charmingly
named St. Marys-by-the-Lake ; of almost cream-
white stone, with roof of dull red tile, and with a
detached campanile, tall and beautiful and red-tile
roofed, which has its open and arched windows made
larger and larger toward the top, following Giotto 's
example with his campanile at Florence.
There is an excellent fountain in Lincoln Park,
by St. Gaudens and MacMonnies: a striking com
bination of artists! — a fountain with bronze boys,
and tall bronze reeds as if swaying in the wind. St.
Gaudens engaged the then youthful MacMonnies, to
assist him in making it, and he afterwards wrote,
"He modeled the boys, and, though he created them
under my direction, whatever charm there may be
336

THE GOLD COAST
in them is entirely due to his remarkable artistic
abiUty, and whatever there is without charm can be
laid at my door."
There are many statues in the park. There is a
Shakespeare, with the slender skimpy legs of
sculptured and pictured tradition uncrossed, and he
is mercifuUy given a seat. There is a rather dapper
Benjamin Franklin. There is a General Grant, a
large equestrian by one Eobisso, set upon a taU and
perforated base. To Saint Gaudens this was simply
and briefly a bad monument. And it is. But it is
at least a large and prominent monument to a man
of large and impressive career; and at night, with
electric light thrown up from the four corners, thus
putting it into bright relief against the surround
ing darkness, it is quite effective.
There are numerous other statues; and among
them is a Goethe, which art lovers hope to melt up.
Not in the least because he was a German, for the
hope arose before the beginning of the Great War
and is based on united grounds of thrift and art.
The artists' objection is that it is an ugly statue,
presenting this modem gentleman and poet in the
"half -clad aspect of a heathen Pan, but without
pants" as a Chicago wit expressed it: or, as a little
school-girl said, with no thought of humor, "I did
not know, mother, that Goethe was a Greek."
The argument of thrift is merely to put good
bronze to good use by melting it up and using it for
something else ; as, some years ago, an unfortunate
bronze of Columbus, here in Chicago, went into the
337

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
melting pot (no metaphorical "melting pot" for
that pioneer Italian!) and reappeared as a dignified
McKinley. ' ' Thrift, thrift, Horatio ! ' '

338

CHAPTEE XXV
A CHILD AND ITS A-B-C
IHAT the best of aU the
I monuments to Lincoln
should be in Chicago, and
that the finest lines de
scriptive of the monument
. were written by a Chicago poet
^ — but that the Unes were not
written about the Lincoln
monument at all — are among
-the Chicago anomalies. Wil
liam Vaughn Moody wrote of
the Colonel Shaw monument in Boston, instead of
the monument in Chicago, to Lincoln, who inspired
Shaw; Saint Gaudens made both monuments; and
the noble opening lines remain ineffaceably in the
memory :

"Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe."
Those are probably the only two rememberable
Unes that Moody wrote; but it is an achievement,
in this world of forgetfulness, to build two lines that
may last. And the achievement of Saint Gaudens
will certainly last.
Chicago loves to tell of the visit to the city of
339

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Arnold Bennett of the Five Towns. He was taken,
so you are told, on a motor trip over the miles and
miles of the splendid boulevard system. He was
told one fact and another fact, facts were piled upon
facts, but he maintained an uninterested mouth-
breathing silence. From the Five Towns author
came naught of responsiveness. Cost, so many
millions, height, so many feet, annual business totals
so many billions, figures of wealth, education, parks,
business — ^nothing mattered to Bennett.
It is typical of the city that this is deemed a joke
on the novelist and not on the city. If Bennett
could be shown and told so much and feel no interest
in it, so much the worse for Bennett ! But even that
English novelist was for a moment stirred. The
motor-car swung curvingly in front of the Saint
Gaudens Lincoln, and Bennett both literally and
figuratively sat up. "Now, there is expression!"
he said.
Chicago has always considered Lincoln as a
Chicagoan. It was a Chicago convention that set
him on his way to the Presidency. He was of
Illinois, and all Illinois — that is, so much of it
as the city cares for — is taken, quite casually, as
being of Chicago. The city so ignores the State
as a separate entity that, whereas you will hear the
word "Chicago" on the lips of Chicagoans a thou
sand times a day, you will hear the word "Illinois"
scarcely once in a year.
A son of Lincoln, his son Eobert, a Harvard man,
became a Chicagoan, and rose to high place, as Sec-
340

A CHILD AND ITS A-B-C
retary of War, Ambassador to Great Britain, and a
possible candidate for the Presidency.
And I have heard a haunting story, in Chicago —
perhaps a myth, like myths that come in older towns
— of a woman who, in the wild night hours of the
Great Fire, was driven, huddled in an open wagon
and vrith a few scattered belongings around her
feet, to the door of a house where all were strangers
to her. She knew not where to go, she murmured;
would they let her in? She was Mrs. Lincoln, so
she dazedly said, the widow of the President. And
they took her in.
The impressiveness of the honors paid, on the
arrival of Lincoln's body in Chicago, are still re
membered as if they were of yesterday, and you are
thrilled as some Chicagoan tells of them; the dull,
drab day, the solemn tolling of bells, the sound of
muffled drums, the massing of throngs, of hundreds
of thousands, to wait in somber patience till the
catafalque should pass. And they tell of how,
while the body lay in state in a dimly-lit rotunda,
grieving people filed slowly by, for hour after hour,
day and night.
In other cities, before the body reached Chicago
on its slow and honored journey to its final rest
ing place, Lincoln's body had also lain in state;
and, when it lay thus in New York, a youth who in
after years was to become known as the sculptor.
Saint Gaudens, made one of the Une of immensity
of length that slowly edged its way to view the
dead man's face. He gazed in awe. Fascinated, he
341

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
returned to the end of the line and again moved
onward, inch by inch, for hours, till he was again
beside the great President and could again look
fixedly upon his face.
How little did Saint Gaudens — that brilliant son
of a French father and an Irish mother — then think
that, as a man and as an artist, he was to model
Abraham Lincoln to stand imperishably in Chicago !
— that, in making the noblest of the statues of Lin
coln, he was at the same time to accomplish the
finest of his ovmi distinguished achievements.
The monument is in Lincoln Park, close to North
Avenue Boulevard. Lincoln is standing, a serene
and thoughtful and kindly man, a man of firmness
and of wisdom. His head is slightly bowed in
thought. Behind him is a splendid chair in bronze,
a curule chair, the seat of a master of men ; and the
wonder of it is that this chair, looking Uke the seat
of some great ruler of ancient classic times, a chair
which represents the beauty and the dignity of
ancient art, should go appropriately with the figure
of this man of the formative days of America's
Middle West. Unshakable as the very bronze and
granite, steady, serene, self-poised, he would fit in
any environment, this man of the ages: and Saint
Gaudens recognized the fact and chose for this man
of the prairie and the backwoods a chair fit for some
mighty dignitary of old Eome.
Phillips Brooks used to tell of going, one day,
into the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, and see
ing Saint Gaudens absorbed before the cast of a
342

s^*'

THE LINCOLN MONUMENT

A CHILD AND ITS A-B-C
classic seat a masterpiece of ancient art. After a
while Bishop Brooks again passed, and stiU Saint
Gaudens was absorbed in contemplation of the chair.
Some time afterwards, meeting the sculptor, the
bishop told him of having seen him in profound
study of the chair, and Saint Gaudens repUed that
he had been studying it for use on a Lincoln monu
ment in Chicago.
Lincoln and the chair are upon a granite base
some seven feet in height, set within a great oval
space, reached by splendid, broad, and easy-mount
ing steps and enclosed vrithin a mighty roll of
granite which is fronted, throughout its curving
length, by a rounding granite seat.
The weather has dealt gently with the bronze,
giving it a silvery patina. A trifle above the level
of Lincoln's feet are the feet of the chair, on their
base of bronze, and this seemingly little point adds
effectiveness. Every point, every detail, was
pondered over: the long coat, the waistcoat,
crumpled like that of a man who sits much at his
desk, the familiar whiskers, the smooth upper Up,
the deep-set brooding eyes, the long straight nose,
the fine, strong, kindly mouth, the firmness without
obstinacy, the absolute strength with no particle of
self-assertiveness. The setting of the monument, within its oval space,
giving it a sweeping breadth and dignity, is superb,
with trees and shrubs and grass, with great stretches
of the greenery of the path, and with the near-by
lake stretching off in glory. 343

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
Strength and wisdom, greatness, always the kind
liness — and one day, as I looked, there came the
thought of that story told by Joseph Jefferson of
a kindliness offered when Jefferson was but a boy
and Lincoln was but a young lawyer.
Jefferson's father went vrith his family from
Chicago to Springfield, and there built a bare and
barnlike theater which took every dollar that could
by possibiUty be raised : only to be faced, just as he
was ready to open, by a suddenly passed ordinance
which placed a heavy license tax on any theater.
The situation, for the Jeffersons, was crushingly
hopeless. And this fact must somehow have become
knovra, for a young lawyer, named Abraham Lincoln,
caUed and offered to present the case to the town
council. He made only a single stipulation; which
was, that there should be no fee. And he went be
fore the council, and so argued the case, with such
a mixture of logic and humor, that the lawin:akers
at once reversed their unjust act.
The Chicago poet. Masters, wrote of Lincoln, and
the lines seem fittingly appUcable:
"And- 1 saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant
And throw himself over a deathless destiny."
A figure from the land of pure romance was Lin
coln : for what a romance was his life ! ' ' The tender
grace of a day that is dead" — how sweet and fine
a memory did he leave ! The Jefferson incident, in
its kindliness of heart, shows him as the same man
as the Lincoln of Gettysburg. What fine essences
344

A CHILD AND ITS A-B-C
and flavors of history come when one summons up
remembrances of Lincoln's past!
Even to non-Americans, the fineness of this rep
resentative American shows in this statue. I saw
a Swedish woman stop and look, and in a little while
a light of comprehension came into her eyes, and as
she walked away she held herself more erect and
looked as if she felt herself on a higher plane. No
wonder Jane Addams made a pilgrimage here one
weary, worried day, solely to get inspiration from
looking at this face. No one can look at this statue
of this unselfish statesman, and strive to understand,
without becoming himself a more unselfish citizen.
Gradually one realizes how strongly unselfishness
governed him. "Govemment of the people, by the
people, and for the people, shall not perish from the
earth": no words of his are more often quoted, and
they are quoted as if meaning that free govemment
has within it some forever continuing power, where
as, in reality, the noble phrase is governed by words
immediately preceding it, declaring that it depends
on the people themselves, who must first "highly
resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain. ' '
Come to this statue as twilight approaches, and
you feel that the romance and the history of his life
are now seen through the soft twilight that hovers
over all fine history and over all romance. And
yet you feel that the twiUght of history will not
greatly dim this great and lonely figure.
The statue stands where he would have liked to
know it would stand, there in the open spaces, yet
345

THE BOOK OF CHICAGO
so near the throbbing heart of the city, so near the
great and restless lake.
And one day in the late aftemoon, an afternoon
of sweet beauty, vrith a gentle rosy color from the
slowly sinking sun, and clouds of glory traiUng
slowly by, I stood for a little while, for people were
stopping and looking, as people so often stop; and
three soldiers, khaki-clad, two of them wounded,
looked up at him with a curious intentness ; and one
of them read aloud, in a low voice, from the letter
ing on the monument, "Let us, to the end, dare to
do our duty as we understand it."
A Uttle girl, who was stiU a child, intently watched
the soldiers as they looked and read, and as they
went thoughtfully away she mounted the steps of
the monument and walked reverently around the
statue on the sweep of the granite base. She
vaguely knew or vaguely divined that there was
something unusual about this man of bronze. She
was a quiet little girl, with the glow of intelligence
in her wide-open eyes : she walked with awe around
the man of bronze, then suddenly came to a stop in
his very shadow, for her eyes caught the great let
ters of his name deeply sunk in the great curve of
the enclosing granite wall. She could not read —
but she caught the "A" and her eyes flashed with
delight. And next to "A" came "B," and she
ran her fingers through the grooves of the letters,
and looked up happily as if to share her triumph
with the bronze figure towering above. She was
learning her letters from Abraham Lincoln! The
346

A CHILD AND ITS A-B-C
"C" at first eluded her. But along the line she
went untU the "C" was reached. It was a fasci
nating sight. For she had her ' ' A-B-C ' ' from Abra
ham Lincoln.

347

INDEX

— A.—
Adams, John Quincy, 181
Adams Street, 46
Adams, Wayman, 166
Addams, Jane, 4, 280
Ade, George, 141, 202, 212, 294
Advertisements, 19, 78, 173-7,
198, 210
"A. L. A. " 153
Alleys, 78, 94, 125, 234, 235, 303
American Library Association,
153
Ancestors and descendants, 22,
23, 316-20
Anderson, Eobert, 26
Apartment houses, 331
Apollo, 216
Architecture, 72, 74, 75, 96, 118,
119, 231, 236-8, 240, 248, 249,
279, 328
Art, 165-71
Art Institute, 42, 152, 156, 160,
161, 163-71
Artists: Adams, 166; Betts, 253;
Chase, 166; Clarkson, 111, 162,
253; Hals, 170; Healy, 24,
157-60; Henri, 166; Hobbema,
170; Homer, 166; Houdon,
164; Inness, 167; Johnson,
262; MacMonnies, 234, 336;
Melchers, 169, 252; Parker,
252, 253; Pennell, 88, 166;
Eaeburn, 166; Eembrandt, 169;
Eubens, 170; St. Gaudens, 46,
47, 76, 156; Stuart, 155, 158;
Taft, 165; Terburg, 175; Van
Dyck, 169; Whistler, 156, 157
Arts Club, 107
Ashland Avenue, 281
Astor Street, 329
Auditorium, 221

349

— B.— .
Banks, 74, 75
Baptists, 242
Baum, Colonel, 57
Beaubien, 216
Bennett, Arnold, 87, 340
"Best Sellers," 148; and see
"Novels"
Betts, 253
Black Hawk War, 25, 26, 63
Blaine, 29
Blue Island, 293
Board of Trade, 76
Boston Bags, 4
Boston Tea Party, 326, 327
Bremer, Fredrika, 320
Brooks, PhiUips, 342
Brown, John, 57; his fort, 211
Burnham, Daniel H., 231
— C—
Cahokia Court House, 235
Caldwell, Billy, 274
Calumet Avenue, 120
Carleton, Will, 146
Caton, Mary, 51
Central Church, 221
Chatfield-Taylor, 160
Cheney, Bishop, 44, 45
Chicago: Claimed by three
States, 16; almost in Wiscon
sin, 17; part of Virginia, 16;
unexpected location of, 19;
origin of name, 29, 30; a cos
mopolitan city, 19; zone of in
fluence, 9; as railway center,
9 ; likeness to Boston, 4, 44, 48
Chicago Athletic Association, 110
Chicago Church Choir Pinafore
Company, 219

INDEX

Chicago Club, 110
Chicago Eiver, 58-60, 64, 65, 156,
270, 271, 272; reversing cur
rent, 184, 187
Chicago Woman's Club, 104
Chief Chicagou, 29 ; in Paris, 29
Children, 205, 216, 320, 324, 325,
345
Chimes, 251
Chinese, 282
Christ Church, 45
Christian Scientists, 335
Churches: Central, 221; Christ,
45; Christian Science, 335;
First Presbyterian, 115;
Fourth Presbyterian, 335 ;
Notre Dame de Chicago, 275;
Our Lady of Pompeii, 276 ; St.
Ansgarius, 214, 215; St.
Clement's, 336; St. James's,
52 ; St. Mary's-by-the-Lake,
336; St. Paul's, 336; early
churches, 13
City Hall, 70
Clark, George Eogers, 16, 31
Clarkson, Ealph, 111, 162, 253
CliflF Dwellers, 111
Clubs, 101-13, 206, 296
Cobb, Silas B., 253
Coliseum, 117
Color effects, 87, 88, 283
Coolidge, Charles A., 249
Commercial Club, 112
Conventions, Presidential, 27-9,
64, 117, 127-8
Cook County, 17
Cordon Club, 105
Counties, for Chicago, 17; of
Illinois, 17, 18
Courtesy, 90, 91, 178
Crerar Library, 152
Curtis, George W., 199, 200
Curzon, Lady, 50
— D.—
Dana, Charles A., 147
Daviess, Jo, 18
Davis, Jefferson, 25, 26, 159
Davis, Jessie Bartlett, 220

350

Dearborn, General, 61, 155
Department Store, 179, 180
De Koven, Eeginald, 222
De Koven Street, 276, 277
Demidoff coUection, 170-1
Directory, the first, 11
Divorces, 210
Dogs, 11, 20
"Dooley, Mr.," 139-41, 265
Douglas, Stephen A., 26, 127-8,
319; monument, 126
Dowie, 292
Doyle, Conan, 149
Drainage Canal, 184-7
Drug stores, 13, 73, 74, 92
Du Maurier, 49, 50
Dunes, 307-15
Dunne, Finley Peter, 139-41, 265

-E.

Early Settlers, 23, 24, 60, 316-20
East Ninth Street, 46
Eleanor Clubs, 106
Evanston, 287, 289-91
— F.—
Field, Eugene, 134, 135, 136, 146,
202, 325
Field, Museum, 43; the old, 237,
238
Fine Arts Building, World's Fair,
237, 238
Fire, the great, 52, 53, 150, 151,
160, 179, 276, 278
First Presbyterian Church, 115
Firsts, of Chicago, 10-14, 23;
boat, 33; free lunch, 82; novel,
133; settlers, 60; trade agree
ment, 30
Forest Preserves, 295-8
Fort Dearborn, 26, 60, 61, 124
Fort Sheridan, 292
Fortnightly, The, 105, 106
Foundation of Library, 150
Fountain of the Great Lakes, 168
Fountain, MacMonnies, 234
Fountain, St. Gaudens and Mac
Monnies, 336

INDEX

Fourth Presbyterian Church, 335
Franklin, 337
Free Lunch, 82
French, the, 30, 37, 75, 269-74,
275
Friends of American Art, 161
Fuller, Henry B., 144, 198
Fuller, Melville, 44
— G.—
Galli-Curci, 220, 221
Garden, Mary, 220
Gardens, 7
Garfield Park, 284
Garland, Hamlin, 134
Gary, 297-306
Gary, Elbert H., 297-8
Gary Schools, 304^6
Ghetto, 282-4
Gilder, Eichard W., 236, 237
Glencoe, 291
Gold Coast, 326-38
Graceland, 98
Grant, General, 28; statue, 337
Grant Park, 40
Great Lakes Training Station,
292
Greeley, Horace, 199
Gross, S. E., 154
Guizot, 268
Gunsaulus, Doctor, 161, 169, 221,
253 — H.—
Hale, Susan, 330
Hals, Franz, 170
Halsted Street, 276
Harding, 208
Harper Memorial Library, 250,
251
Harper, William E., 244-7, 252
Harrison, Carter, 241, 253, 258-
64, 260, 265, 281
Harrison, Carter, the younger,
264, 265
Harrison, William Henry, 16,
259, 262
Heald, Captain, 56, 61, 121

Healy, 24, 157-60
Helm, Lieutenant, 124, 125
Herrick, Eobert, 72, 119, 120, 212
Hoar, George F., 200
Hobbema, 170
Hole, Dean, 115, 116
Hospitality of Chicago, 5, 104,
150
Hospitals, 281
Houdon, 164
Hough, Emerson, 55, 141, 142
Hughes, Thomas, 150
Hull, General, 61, 121, 217
Hull House, 278-81
Hutchinson, Charles L., 169, 241,
253
Hutchinson Gallery, 169-71
Hutchinson Hall, 252
— I.—
Ida Noyes Hall, 254
Indian boundary, 274
Indians, 25, 26, 63, 274, 275, 296,
312
Indian Eeserve, 274
Ingersoll, Eobert G, 28
Inness, 167
Insurance, Tontine, 35
Italians, 276, 282
— J.—
Jackson, Andrew, 159
Jackson Park, 229-38
Jefferson, Joseph, 10, 343
Joliet, 185, 187
Judson, Harry Pratt, 247, 253
— K.—
Kennison, David, 326-8
Kinzies, the, 23, 60, 65, 98, 122,
123, 124, 133, 157
Kipling, 84, 131-4, 157, 209, 230
Kitchenettes, 332
— L.—

La Eabida, 232

351

INDEX

La Salle, 30-7
La Salle Street, 76
Lake Calumet, 299
Lake Forest, 291
Lake Front, 6, 38-48; in early
days, 10
Lake Geneva, 293
Lake Michigan, deemed a draw
back, 6, 321, 322; Chicagoans
who never saw it, 6
Leiter, Mary V., 50
Level of city raised, 79, 80
Libraries: Crerar, 152; New
berry, 152, 160; Public, 150-3,
204; Eyerson, 152, 169; Uni
versity, 250, 251
Lincoln, Abraham: in Black
Hawk War, 25; Lieutenant
Anderson, 26; Stephen A.
Douglas, 26, 127-8; Inaugural
Address, 127; Nomination, 27;
Joseph Jefferson, 343
Lincoln Monument, 339-47
Lincoln Park, 33, 328-35
Lind, Jenny, 214, 215, 225
"Line o' Type," 136
"Little Boy Blue," 325
Little Eoom, 111
Logan statue, 46, 47
Loop, The, 67-83
Loop Hounds, 67
Lorimer, George H., 136, 137, 145,
202 — M.—
MacMonnies, 234, 336
Madison Street, 46
Magazine of Poetry, 145
Mail order business, 180
Mapleson, Colonel, 261
Mark Twain, 132
Marietta, 16
Marquette, Father, 30, 75, 269-74
Martineau, Harriet, 187, 320
Massacre, Chicago, 56, 62, 63,
120-5; monument, 124
Masters, Edgar Lee, 71, 144, 145,
344
McCormick, Cyrus H., 51, 52

352

McCutcheon, John T., 200
McKinley, 338
Medinah Temple, 54
Melchers, Gari, 169, 252
Melrose Park, 32
Merchandising, 178, 179, 180
"Merchant Prince of Cornville,"
154
Michigan Avenue, 38-48, 58
Midway Plaisance, 227-9, 247,
248
Mitchell Tower, 251
Monroe, Harriet, 145
Monroe Street, 31, 46
Monuments and statues: Barlow,
162; Douglas, 126; Goethe,
337; Grant, 337; Kennison,
327; Lincoln, 339-46; La Salle,
33; Logan, 46; Marquette
Cross, 273; Massacre, 124;
McKinley, 338; the Republic,
233; Washington, 164
Moody, Dwight L., 209, 210
Moody, William V., 18, 145, 339
Morgan, Anna, 222
Municipal Pier, 58
Music, 214-26, 246

— N.—
Nasby, Petroleum V., 127
Newberry Library, 152, 160
Negroes, 117
Norris, Prank, 52, 138
Northwest Territory, 16, 31
Notre Dame de Chicago, 275
Novels: 148; "Barriers Burned
Away," 143; "The Cliff Dwell
ers," 144, 198; "The Chevalier
of Pensieri-Vani," 144; "The
Common Lot," 72; "The Fat
of the Land," 143; "Fifty-four
Forty or Fight," 142; "The
Girl at the Half-way House,"
142; "Letters from a Self-
Made Merchant to his Son,"
136; "The Magnificent Adven
ture," 142; "The Mississippi
Bubble," 142; "The Octopus,"

INDEX

138; "The Pit," 52, 95, 138;
"Wau-Btm," 133

Ogden, William B., 159, 160,
267-8
"Oliver Optic," 153
Opera Company, Chicago, 221
Orchestra Hall, 223
Orchestra, Symphony, 222-6
Oregon, 162
Outlying centers, 89, 281
— P.—
Palmer House, 81, 167, 209
Palmers, Potter, the, 4, 81, 167,
330, 331
Parks: Douglas Monument, 126;
Garfield, 284; Grant, 40; Lin
coln, 328-35; Jackson, 229-38
Pennell, Joseph, 88, 166
Peristyle, 42, 46
Pinkerton, Allen, 14
"Pit, The," 52, 95, 138
Poets and Poetry, 8, 39, 65, 71,
126, 144, 145, 322, 325, 332,
333, 344
Policemen, 85, 86, 208
Pompeii, Our Lady of, 276
Pope, Nathaniel, 17
Portraits: Jean Cameron, 166;
Cobb, 253; Dearborn, 155;
Helen Dubois, 169; Mrs. Gor
don, 157; Gunsaulus, 253;
Harper, 253; Healy, 158;
Hutchinson, 169, 253; Judson,
253; Pennell, 166; EockefeUer,
252; Eyerson, 252; Spinola, 170
Post-Office, 70
Prairie Avenue, 114-30
Prairie Club, 296-314
Presidential Conventions, 27-9,
64, 117, 127-8
Pronunciations, 201
Public Library, 150-3
Publishers, 147, 148, 323
Pullman, George M., 80, 124

-Q—
Quadrangle Club, 109
— E.—
Eaeburn, 166
Eandolph Street, 46
Eeed, Myrtle, 289
Rembrandt, 169
Eestaurants, 82, 83, 92
Eobey Street, 272, 273
EockefeUer, John D., 239^4, 252
Eoot, George F., 217-9
Eostand, 154
Rubens, 170
Eush Street Bridge, 58-60, 268
Eyerson Library, 152, 169
Eyerson, Martin A., 152, 169, 252
— S.—
St. Clements, 336
St. Gaudens, 46, 47, 76, 156, 234,
336, 337, 339, 341, 342
St. James, 52
St. Loyola, 335
St. Mary's-by-the-Lake, 336
St. Mary's-of-the-Lake, 14
St. Paul, 336
Seal of the City, 6, 7
Settlers, Early, 23-4, 60, 316-20
Shopping, 15, 69, 73, 79, 89, 92,
93, 178, 179, 180
Sinclair, tjpton, 144
Skokie, 294, 295, 296
Skyscrapers, 6, 9, 70
Smoke, 15, 77, 87, 125
Soap, 15
Society, 202, 203, 204, 328-31
Soil of the City, 80
Songs, 218, 219
South Water Street, 64
"Spoon Eiver Anthology," 144
Sporting goods, 211
Stockyards, 18i-4
Streets and Ways, 84-100
Streeter, Doctor, 143
Streeter, George H., 188-97
Streeterville, 191-7
Stuart, Gilbert, 155, 158

353

INDEX

Subways, Freight, 178
Suburb*, 286-96
Sunday, "Billy," 209
Sunday Observance, 208, 209
Swedish Church, 214, 215
"Swinging around the Circle,"
127
Symphony Orchestra, 222-6
— T.—
Taft, Lorado, 168
Taft, President, 27
Taylor, B. F., 322
Taylor, "B.L.T.," 136
Terburg, 170
Theaters, 206-8
Thomas, Theodore, 223-€
Thompson, Mayor, 267
Tilghman, 316
Tippecanoe, 18, 24, 259
Tonti, 34-6
Tontitown, 35
Trade Agreement, the first, 30
Tremont House, 78, 80, 127
— U.—
Union League Club, 109
University Club, 112, 113, 206
University of Chicago: the first,
128, 241, 242; the present, 129,
239-55 — v.—
Van Dyck, 169
Vicereines, American, 50, 51
Victoria, Queen; gift to Library,
151
Vincennes, 16

Virginia, Chicago part of, 16
— W.—
Wales, Prince of, 266
Washington, George, 24, 33, 62,
164
Water Tower, 53
"Wau-Bun," 133
Wauhegan, 292
Wedgwood collection, 161
Wells, Captain, 56, 62, 122, 123
Wentworth, John, 181, 265-7
Westem Avenue, 90
Wheat Pit, 77
Wheaton, 297
Whistler, 156, 157
White City, 227-38
White Paper Club, 109
Whittier, 167
"Who's Who in America," 148
Wdlcox, Ella Wheeler, 146
Wilde, Oscar, 150, 230, 231
Willard, Frances, 4, 286-9
Wilmette, 291
Winnetka, 291
Wisconsin, 17, 19
Women of Chicago, 4, 49, 50, 72,
86, 87
Women's Clubs, 104, 105, 106
Wooded Island, 235
World's Fair, 227-38
Wright, Harold Bell, 148
Wyatt, Edith, 150
— Z.—
"Zenobia," 162
Zeisler, Fanny B., 222
Zion City, 292
Zone of Influence, 9

354

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