Chicago is "the limit." To me,
indeed, it seemed "the limit"--of the industry, energy, and enterprise
of man. In 1812 this vast city was only a frontier post--Fort Dearborn.
In 1871 the town that first rose on these great plains was burned to the
ground. The growth of the present Chicago began when I was a grown
woman. I have celebrated my jubilee. Chicago will not do that for
another fifteen years!

I never visited the stock-yards. Somehow I had no curiosity to see a
live pig turned in fifteen minutes into ham, sausages, hair-oil, and the
binding for a Bible! I had some dread of being made sad by the spectacle
of so much slaughter--of hating the Chicago of the "abattoir" as much as
I had loved the Chicago of the Lake with the white buildings of the
World's Fair shining on it, the Chicago built on piles in splendid
isolation in the middle of the prairie, the Chicago of Marshall Field's
beautiful palace of a store, the Chicago of my dear friends, the Chicago
of my son's first appearance on the stage! Was it not a Chicago man who
wrote of my boy, tending the roses in the stage garden in "Eugene Aram,"
that he was "a most beautiful lad"!

"His eyes are full of sparkle, his smile is a ripple over his face,
and his laugh is as cherry and natural as a bird's song.... This
Joey is Miss Ellen Terry's son, and the apple of her eye. On this
Wednesday night, January 14, 1885, he spoke his first lines upon
the stage. His mother has high hopes of this child's dramatic
future. He has the instinct and the soul of art in him. Already the
theater is his home. His postures and his playfulness with the
gardener, his natural and graceful movement, had been the subject
of much drilling, of study and practice. He acquitted himself
beautifully and received the wise congratulations of his mother, of
Mr. Irving, and of the company."

That is the nicest newspaper notice I have ever read!

At Chicago I made my first speech. The Haverley Theater, at which we
first appeared in 1884, was altered and rechristened the "Columbia" in
1885. I was called upon for a speech after the special performance in
honor of the occasion, consisting of scenes from "Charles I.," "Louis
XI," "The Merchant of Venice," and "The Bells," had come to an end. I
think it must be the shortest speech on record:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I have been asked to christen your beautiful
theater. 'Hail Columbia!'"