two hundred lives, and caused the loss of two
hundred millions of dollars. Within a year or so the wooden town was
transformed into a city of massive palaces built of stone and brick. It
is now fast changing itself into a maze of towering Babels, whose tops
support the pall of smoke that tells of manufacturing activity. It drove
tunnels beneath its river for street-cars. Its thirty-five bridges were
not enough for the constant rush. On its lake first swam the novel
whale-back boats. One sin will rise up against the city on the day of
doom: the twenty-mile line of lake shore has been largely prostituted
to railway interests instead of being conserved as an unrivalled
pleasure park for the people and an adornment to the city. It can plead
in mitigation of sentence that its six public parks cover more than
three square miles, besides some sixty linear miles of park-like
boulevards of which Paris might be proud. Of these Michigan Avenue has a
well-won fame. No business traffic is permitted on its wide and
well-sprinkled roadway, the morning and afternoon procession of
carriages taking its wealthy residents to and from business at times
recalls the Queen's Drive in the London season. If the Chicago man of
affairs works hard at his calling, he takes his pleasure zestfully and
plenty of it. On the grand occasion of the American Derby (for Chicago
has its Epsom and Ascot in one) it is a revelation to see the gay
caravan _en route_ to the race-course, as impressive a display of
metropolitan luxury as any capital can present. And on this day the West
can match the big crowds of England with this sixty thousand throng,
each person paying two dollars for bare admission to the ground.

In a city primarily devoted to business it takes time for the
development of the beautiful. Chicago has its "sights" for seekers after
the merely outlandish, who often miss the real greatnesses that are less
catchy to the eye. One of its achievements which impresses both the
trained and untrained observer is the undertaking which has the
uninviting name of Drainage Canal. The pure water of Lake Michigan used
to be polluted by the inflow of the Chicago River. To prevent this the
city has made an immense waterway by which the lake water is carried to
the Illinois River and the tide of the Chicago River is diverted from
its former course. The new canal is navigable and opens a route between
the great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. The territory involved e