wn to Los Angeles. We are to
play for the rest of the winter like a couple of boys."

With mind entirely at ease I left them on the rose-embowered porch of my
uncle's home, and started east by way of Denver and Chicago, eager to
resume work on a book which I had promised for the autumn.

Chicago was now full in the spot-light of the National Stage. In spite
of the business depression which still engulfed the west, the promoters
of the Columbian Exposition were going steadily forward with their
plans, and when I arrived in the city about the middle of January, the
bustle of preparation was at a very high point.

The newly-acquired studios were swarming with eager and aspiring young
artists, and I believed, (as many others believed) that the city was
entering upon an era of swift and shining development. All the near-by
states were stirred and heartened by this esthetic awakening of a
metropolis which up to this time had given but little thought to the
value of art in the life of a community. From being a huge, muddy windy
market-place, it seemed about to take its place among the literary
capitals of the world.

Colonies of painters, sculptors, decorators and other art experts now
colored its life in gratifying degree. Beauty was a work to advertise
with, and writers like Harriet Monroe, Henry B. Fuller, George Ade,
Peter Finley Dunne, and Eugene Field were at work celebrating, each in
his kind, the changes in the thought and aspect of the town. Ambitious
publishing houses were springing up and "dummies" of new magazines were
being thumbed by reckless young editors. The talk was all of Art, and
the Exposition. It did, indeed seem as if culture were about to hum.

Naturally this flare of esthetic enthusiasm lit the tow of my
imagination. I predicted a publishing center and a literary market-place
second only to New York, a publishing center which by reason of its
geographical position would be more progressive than Boston, and more
American than Manhattan. "Here flames the spirit of youth. Here throbs
the heart of America," I declared in _Crumbling Idols_, an essay which I
was at this time writing for the _Forum_.

In the heat of this conviction, I decided to give up my residence in
Boston and establish headquarters in Chicago. I belonged here. My
writing was of the Middle Border, and must continue to be so. Its
spirit was mine. All of my immediate relations were dwellers in the
west, and as I had also definitely set