tisfactory building, though with some beautiful details) I was
most of all impressed by the army of iron-bound boxes which are
perpetually speeding to and fro between the library itself and no fewer
than fifty-seven distributing stations scattered throughout the city. "I
thought the number was forty-eight," said a friend who accompanied me.
"So it was last year," said the librarian. "We have set up nine more
stations during the interval." The Chicago Library boasts (no doubt
justly) that it circulates more books than any similar institution in
the world. Take, again, the University of Chicago: seven years ago (or,
say, at the outside ten) it had no existence, and its site was a dismal
swamp; to-day it is a handsome and populous centre of literary and
scientific culture. Observe, too, that it is by no means an oasis in the
desert, but is thoroughly in touch with the civic life around it. For
instance, it actively participates in the admirable work done by the
Hull House Settlement in South Halsted-street, and in the vigorous and
wide-spreading University Extension movement.

At the present moment, Chicago is not a little resentful of the sharp
admonitions addressed to her by two of her aforesaid loving but exacting
children. One, Professor Charles Zueblin, has been telling her that "in
the arrogance of youth she has failed to realise that instead of being
one of the progressive cities of the world, she has been one of the
reckless, improvident, and shiftless cities." Professor Zueblin is not
content (for example) with her magnificent girdle of parks and
boulevards, but calls for smaller parks and breathing spaces in the
heart of her most crowded districts. He further maintains that her great
new sewage canal is a gigantically costly blunder; and indeed one cannot
but sympathise with the citizens of St. Louis in inquiring by what right
Chicago converts the Mississippi into her main sewer. But if Professor
Zueblin chastises Chicago with whips, Mr. Henry B. Fuller, it would
seem, lashes her with scorpions. Mr. Fuller is one of the leading
novelists of the city--for Chicago, be it known, had a nourishing and
characteristic literature of her own long before Mr. Dooley sprang into
fame. The author of _The Cliff-Dwellers_ is alleged to have said that
the Anglo-Saxon race was incapable of art, and that in this respect
Chicago was pre-eminently Anglo-Saxon. "Alleged," I say, for reports of
lectures in the American papers are alway