te, grow to manhood. "Playmate,
friend," she thought. "Why not more? Why not?" she repeated.

CHAPTER VII.

THE PATRICIANS.

Perhaps the only city of considerable proportions in which the rigorous
proprieties of a New England village exist side by side with the
gorgeous trappings of metropolitanism is Chicago. Its growth has been so
marvelous that in a single generation the simple garb of provincialism
has been exchanged for the more imposing mantle of a great city. Streets
and boulevards have spread forth like the countless antennae of some
mighty monster; gigantic structures have arisen almost as at the touch
of magic, and ten thousand lanky chimneys have begun to belch forth
black and sooty smoke, all within the memory even of the middle-aged
inhabitant. Fifty years ago Chicago was a frontier town; twenty years
ago a fearful scourge laid her in ruins; to-day she stands among the
first ten of the world's great cities. Countless forces have in a score
of years heaped up a mighty metropolis, and, perhaps, it is not
surprising to find almost buried beneath this gigantic pile the simple
and pure society of the early days.

During all these rapid changes the older families have altered little.
They have built more pretentious homes, they drive more modern
equipages, they eat more elaborate dinners, but even these innovations
have been reluctantly received, and the hearts of the old residents have
remained untouched by _fin de siecle_ looseness and cynicism. In no
older city are the social lines more strictly drawn, and year after year
the same faces appear at the select gatherings, unconscious of the rapid
change about them. Of millionaires there are many, but the foundations
of their fortunes were laid in the early days of pioneering, and if
occasionally a Croesus of recent growth creeps partly in, the
shoulders turned toward him are cold, and his golden key never quite
unlocks the inner doors. Chicago has perhaps suffered unduly at the
hands of cursory and captious critics, but its society should not be
judged by a hastily written paragraph or the clanking chains of the
parvenu's carriage. Whatever be its faults, and they are doubtless
many, it is thoroughly American, and slow to accept the lax scepticism
and hollow manners of the older world. It is still too young to be the
home of art and letters, and still too sensible to breed idlers. Happy
city, if its society could continue as it is, unaffected, progres