But as I wandered about I realized that the city was not my city any more, that life was a baseless, shifting thing, its seeming ties uncertain and unstable and that that which one day we held dear was tomorrow gone, to come no more. How plain it was, I thought and with some surprise, so ignorant is youth, that even seemingly brisk organizations such as the _Globe_ here in Chicago and some others with which I had been connected could wither or disappear completely, one’s commercial as well as one’s family life be scattered to the four Winds. Sensing this, I now felt an intense sense of loneliness and homesickness, for what I could scarcely say: for each and every one of past pleasant moments, I presume, our abandoned home in Flournoy Street, now rented to another; my old desk at the _Globe_, now occupied by another; Alice’s former home on this south side; N——’s in Indiana Street. I was gloomy over having no fixed abode, no intimates worthy the name here who could soothe and comfort me in such an hour as this. Curiously enough, at such moments I felt an intense leaning toward Miss W——, who seemed to answer with something stable and abiding. I am at a loss even now to describe it but so it was, and it was more than anything else a sense of peace and support which I found in her presence, a something that suggested durability and warmth—possibly the Whole closely-knit family atmosphere which was behind her and upon which she relied. She would listen, apparently with interest, to all my youthful and no doubt bragging accounts of my former newspaper experiences here as well as in St. Louis, which I painted in high colors with myself as a newspaper man deep in the councils of my paper. Walking about the Fair grounds one night I wished to take her hand but so overawed was I by her personality that I could scarcely muster up the courage to do it. When I at last did she shyly withdrew her hand, pretending not to notice. The same thing happened an evening or two later when I persuaded her and her sister to accompany me and a fellow-reporter whom I met in Chicago, to Lincoln Park, where was a band concert and the playing of a colored fountain given by the late C. T. Yerkes, then looked upon as one of the sights of the city. I recall how warm and clear was the evening, our trip northward on the newly-built “Alley L,” so-called because no public thoroughfare could be secured for it, how when we got off at Congress Street, where the enormous store of Siegel, Cooper & Company had only recently been opened, we there took a surface cable to Lincoln Park. It was barely dusk when we reached the park, and the fountain did not play until nine; but pending its colored wonders, we walked along the shore of the lake in the darkness, alone, her sister and my friend having been swallowed up in the great crowd.