, and strung up with pride. Get ready, Henry, and we'll go."

When Witherspoon gathered up the lines and with the whip touched one
of the horses, both jumped as though startled by the same impulse.

"There's grace for you," said Witherspoon. "Look how they plant their
fore feet."

Henry did not answer. He was looking back at a palace, his home; and
he, too, was touched with a whip--the thrilling whip of pride. It
lasted but a moment. His memory threw up a home for the friendless,
and upon a background of hunger, squalor and wretchedness his fancy
flashed the picture of an Italian hag, crooning and toothless.

"We'll turn into Michigan here," said the merchant. "Isn't this a
great thoroughfare? Yonder is where we lived before we built our new
house. Just think what this will be when these elms are old." They
sped along the smooth drive. "Ho, boys! Business is creeping out this
way, and that is the reason I got over on Prairie. See, that man has
turned his residence into a sort of store. A little farther along you
will see fashionable humbuggery of all sorts. These are women fakes
along here. Ho, boys, ho! There's where old man Colton lives. We'll
meet him at the store. In the Colossus Company he is next to me. Smart
old fellow, but he worked many years in the hammer-and-tongs way, and
he probably never would have done much if he hadn't been shoved. Ho,
boys, _ho_! People ought to be arrested for piling brick in the street
this way. Colton was always afraid of venturing; shuddered at the
thought of risking his money; wanted it where he could lay his hands
on it at any time. Brooks, his son-in-law, is a sort of general
manager over our entire establishment, and he is one of the most
active and useful men I ever saw--bright, quick, characteristically
American. I think you'll like him. That place over there"--cutting his
whip toward an old frame house scalloped and corniced in fantastic
flimsiness--"was sold the other day at about thirty per cent more than
it would have brought a few years ago."

They turned into another street and were taken up, it seemed, by the
swift trade currents that swirl at morning, rush through the noon,
glide past the evening and rest for a time in the semi-calm of
midnight. Chicago has begun to set the pace of a nervous nation's
progress. It is a city whose growth has proved a fatal example to many
an overweaning town. Materialistic, it holds no theory that points not
to great results; advent