"I was very lonely at first," she said. "One day a man came around selling pencils. I happened to see him at the door. He said: 'I'm an actor, and I'm trying to raise money to get back to New York.' As I was feeling then I'd have given him anything in the house just because that was where he wanted to go. I gave him some money. 'Here,' I said, 'you take this and go on back to New York.' 'Why,' he inquired, 'are you from New York, too?' I said I was. Then he asked me: 'What are you doing away out here?' 'Oh,' I told him, 'this is my home now. I live here.' He thanked me, and as he put the money in his pocket he shook his head and said: 'Too bad! Too bad!' "That will show you how I felt at first. But when I came to know Chicago people I liked them. And now I wouldn't go back for anything." There is testimony from both sides. With the literary man the situation is, perhaps, a little different. New York is practically his one big market place. I was speaking about that the other day with an author who used to live in Chicago. "The atmosphere out there is not nearly so stimulating for a writer," he assured me. "Here, in New York, even a pretty big writer is lost in the shuffle. There, he is a shining mark. The Chicago writers are likely to be a little bit self-conscious and naive. They have their own local literary gods, and they're rather inclined to sit around and talk solemnly about 'Art with a capital A.'" * * * * * Necessarily, when the adherents of two cities start an argument, they are confined to concrete points. They talk about opera and theaters and buildings and hotels and stores, and seldom touch upon such subtle things as city spirit. For spirit is a hard thing to deal with and a harder thing to prove. Yet "greatness knows itself." Chicago unquestionably knows that it is great, and that its greatness is of the spirit. But the Chicagoan, debating in favor of his city, is unable to "get that over," and is therefore obliged to fall back upon two last, invariable defenses: the department store of Marshall Field & Co. and the Blackstone Hotel. The Blackstone he will tell you, with an eye lit by fanatical belief, is positively the finest hotel in the whole United States. Mention the Ritz, the Plaza, the St. Regis, the Biltmore, or any other hotel to him, and it makes no difference; the Blackstone is the best. As to Marshall Field's, he is no less positive: It is not merely the largest but also the very finest store in the whole world.