An exception to the general slovenliness of this quarter is to be seen in the old Merchants' Exchange Hall on Main Street. Built nearly sixty years ago, this building, now disused and dilapidated, nevertheless shows a façade of a distinction rare in structures of its time. I was surprised to discover that this old hall was not better known in St. Louis, and I cheerfully recommend it to the notice of those who esteem the architecture of the Jefferson Memorial, the bulky new cathedral on Lindell Boulevard, or that residence, suggestive of the hanging gardens of Babylon, at Hortense Place and King's Highway. Take the old Merchants' Exchange Hall away from dirty, cobbled Main Street, set it up, instead, in Venice, beside the Grand Canal, and watch the tourist from St. Louis stop his gondola to gaze! But what city has respected its ruins? Rome used her palaces as mines for building material. St. Louis destroyed the wonderful old mound which used to stand at the corner of Mound Street and Broadway, forming one of the most interesting archeological remains in the country and, together with smaller mounds near by, giving St. Louis her title of "Mound City." With Dickens's statements concerning the St. Louis summer climate, the publication, "All About St. Louis," does not, for one moment, agree. In it I find an article headed: "St. Louis has Better Weather than Other Cities," the preamble to which contains the following solemn truth: The weather question is purely local and individual. Every person forms his own opinion about the weather by the way it affects him, wherever he happens to be. Having made that clear, the writer becomes more specific. He informs us that, in St. Louis, "the prevailing winds in summer blow over the Ozark Mountains, insuring cool nights and pleasant days." Also that "during the summer the temperature does not run so high, and warm spells do not last so long as in many cities of the North." The latter statement is supported--as almost every statement in the world, it seems to me, can be supported--by statistics. What wonderful things statistics are! How I wish Charles Dickens might have seen these. How surprised he would have been. How surprised I was--for I, too, have visited St. Louis in the middle of the year. Yes, and so has my companion. He went to St. Louis several years ago to attend the Democratic National Convention, but he is all right again now. I showed him the statistics. "Why!" he cried. "I ought to have been told of this before!" "What for?" I demanded. "If I had had this information at the time of the convention," he declared, "I'd have known enough not to have been laid up in bed for six weeks with heat prostration." * * * * *