hould have to fall into feigned ecstasies over
the marvellous progress of Chicago since the days of the great fire, to
allude casually to the raising of the entire city so many feet above
the level of the lake which it faces, and generally to grovel before the
golden calf. But you, who are desperately poor, and therefore by these
standards of no ac-count, know things, will understand when I write that
they have managed to get a million of men together on flat land, and
that the bulk of these men together appear to be lower than Mahajans and
not so companionable as a Punjabi Jat after harvest.

But I don't think it was the blind hurry of the people, their argot, and
their grand ignorance of things beyond their immediate interests that
displeased me so much as a study of the daily papers of Chicago.

Imprimis, there was some sort of a dispute between New York and Chicago
as to which town should give an exhibition of products to be hereafter
holden, and through the medium of their more dignified journals the
two cities were yahooing and hi-yi-ing at each other like opposition
newsboys. They called it humor, but it sounded like something quite
different.

That was only the first trouble. The second lay in the tone of the
productions. Leading articles which include gems such as "Back of such
and such a place," or, "We noticed, Tuesday, such an event," or, "don't"
for "does not," are things to be accepted with thankfulness. All that
made me want to cry was that in these papers were faithfully reproduced
all the war-cries and "back-talk" of the Palmer House bar, the slang of
the barber-shops, the mental elevation and integrity of the Pullman car
porter, the dignity of the dime museum, and the accuracy of the excited
fish-wife. I am sternly forbidden to believe that the paper educates
the public. Then I am compelled to believe that the public educate the
paper; yet suicides on the press are rare.

Just when the sense of unreality and oppression was strongest upon me,
and when I most wanted help, a man sat at my side and began to talk what
he called politics.

I had chanced to pay about six shillings for a travelling-cap worth
eighteen-pence, and he made of the fact a text for a sermon. He said
that this was a rich country, and that the people liked to pay two
hundred per cent, on the value of a thing. They could afford it. He said
that the government imposed a protective duty of from ten to seventy
per cent on foreign-made