wisely emulate by adopting the same rule. Isolated in striking grandeur, the lofty Washington obelisk lifts the contemplative mind to heights above the level of material evidences of prosperity. Like the Stuart portrait, this memorial of Washington leaves the meaner measurements of a man’s stature for other seasons and moods, and by a touch of sublimity gives the nobler cue to patriotic devotion and whole-hearted enthusiasm for him who, though human indeed, in his life-work neared the divine.

Summer is not the best time to appreciate the social life of the capital. It lies low, the Potomac’s swampy margin is near and the street forests of trees aid humidity. The White House snugly reposes in beautiful grounds, with the great obelisk as a perpetual reminder of the first President’s example and reward. Another white portico gleams in the distance, Arlington, the resting-place of the nation’s hero-martyrs. In the winter season Washington blooms into cosmopolitan grandeur. It becomes the focus of the nation’s lights in statesmanship, art, literature, and social pleasures. The foreign embassies supply the grace of brilliant color so lacking in the gatherings of men in the sombre attire of the period. A continuous round of social festivities gladdens the mild winter days and nights. Here, as in royal capitals, society has its greater and lesser constellations. There are the senatorial, judicial, diplomatic, military, and naval groups, too sharply divided, to judge from audible criticisms in New York circles. Still literature, art, and commerce have as free a welcome in Washington salons as anywhere else, despite the plaints of overlooked suppliants. The White House knows nothing of artificial shibboleths. It happily dispenses its hospitalities—which are coveted honors—impartially upon all whom it is an honor to honor, and so sustains the true American principle of equal courtesy to citizens and sojourners of every degree. Washington is an inexhaustible field for the student of men, manners and movements, a theatre on whose stage the comedy of life plays itself, with all-potent moulders of opinion and legislation as the actors, backed by a supernumerary army of minor aids. Among its most eager auditors are outsiders, reporting every byplay to profoundly interested critics across the seas. The drama cannot be too deeply watched and pondered, for it is fraught with issues vital to the well-being of coming generations.

Chicago is usually figured as a conventionally insipid beauty, in flowing garments which would obstruct her progress and could never be kept white. This is a mistake. Most masculine of cities, most American of America’s great centres, its shield should portray a strong youth in the flush of adolescence, conscious power in his proud curled lip, fire in his eye, springing to the foreground in the first ray of dawn, in his right hand the sceptre of genius and his left grasping the key of destiny. The good people of Chicago are not conspicuously lacking in civic self-appreciation. They are accustomed to being twitted by rivals in the rear on their boundless faith in their city’s future greatness. They can afford to listen smilingly. If the child is father of the man, full-grown Chicago must some day tower above the up-stretched heads of its envious seniors like a giant among, say, a committee of venerable municipal Solons. Ordinary cities develop as babies do, slow growth to maturity, but this extraordinary late-comer into the family attained mental and muscular precocity in shorter time than its sisters required to cut their wisdom-teeth. Considered in relation to its geographical position and its express-speed rate of progress, Chicago has the promise and potency of an imperial greatness no easier to exaggerate than to limit. It was tried by fire in the day of small things, but quickly rose to a new life and it still carries the memorial glow in its heart as an inspiration to great things.

The word Chicago is a simpler form of the Indian name, Chacaqua, given to the river in honor of their deity, the Thunderer. The position of Chicago makes it the greatest lake port in the world. It is already the second city in the United States, though only born in 1830, and has hopes of becoming the first, by growth, and not by annexation policy. True, the newest city inherits the wealth and experience which the older ones had to gain for themselves, yet Chicago has done some fine original things. It hitched up an inland sea as its beast of burden and made a vast lake its pleasure pond. Finding itself only seven feet above the level of Lake Michigan it lifted itself bodily another seven feet, churches, warehouses, dwellings and all, with jack-screws, and shovelled a new foundation of dry earth beneath. Fifteen years later the great fire laid it lower than ever. On Oct. 8, 1871, began the disaster that made nearly a hundred thousand people homeless, destroyed seventeen thousand buildings and two hundred lives, and caused the loss of two hundred millions of dollars. Within a year or so the wooden town was transformed into a city of massive palaces built of stone and brick. It is now fast changing itself into a maze of towering Babels, whose tops support the pall of smoke that tells of manufacturing activity. It drove tunnels beneath its river for street-cars. Its thirty-five bridges were not enough for the constant rush. On its lake first swam the novel whale-back boats. One sin will rise up against the city on the day of doom: the twenty-mile line of lake shore has been largely prostituted to railway interests instead of being conserved as an unrivalled pleasure park for the people and an adornment to the city. It can plead in mitigation of sentence that its six public parks cover more than three square miles, besides some sixty linear miles of park-like boulevards of which Paris might be proud. Of these Michigan Avenue has a well-won fame. No business traffic is permitted on its wide and well-sprinkled roadway, the morning and afternoon procession of carriages taking its wealthy residents to and from business at times recalls the Queen’s Drive in the London season. If the Chicago man of affairs works hard at his calling, he takes his pleasure zestfully and plenty of it. On the grand occasion of the American Derby (for Chicago has its Epsom and Ascot in one) it is a revelation to see the gay caravan en route to the race-course, as impressive a display of metropolitan luxury as any capital can present. And on this day the West can match the big crowds of England with this sixty thousand throng, each person paying two dollars for bare admission to the ground.

In a city primarily devoted to business it takes time for the development of the beautiful. Chicago has its “sights” for seekers after the merely outlandish, who often miss the real greatnesses that are less catchy to the eye. One of its achievements which impresses both the trained and untrained observer is the undertaking which has the uninviting name of Drainage Canal. The pure water of Lake Michigan used to be polluted by the inflow of the Chicago River. To prevent this the city has made an immense waterway by which the lake water is carried to the Illinois River and the tide of the Chicago River is diverted from its former course. The new canal is navigable and opens a route between the great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. The territory involved embraces the city and forty-three square miles of Cook County. The main channel is twenty-eight miles long and the cost was about thirty millions.

In their commercial aspect the famous Stock-yards have greater interest than as a show place. They cover four hundred acres, the plant is valued at four million dollars, and about twenty millions of animals are killed and packed in a year. Similarly imposing are the statistics of