I have never stopped at any of those hotels with which the New Yorker would attempt to defeat the Blackstone. But I have stopped at the Blackstone, and it is undeniably a very good hotel. One of the most agreeable things about it is the air of willing service which one senses in its staff. It is an excellent manager who can instil into his servants that spirit which causes them to seem to be eternally on tiptoe--not for a tip but for a chance to serve. Further, the Blackstone occupies a position, with regard to the fashionable life of Chicago, which is not paralleled by any single hotel in New York. Socially it is preëminently the place. General dancing in such public restaurants as Rector's--the original Rector's is in Chicago, you know--and in the dining rooms of some hotels, was started in Chicago, but was soon stopped by municipal regulation. Since that time other schemes have been devised. Dances are held regularly in the ballrooms of most of the hotels, but are managed as clubs or semi-private gatherings. This arrangement has its advantages. It would have its advantages, indeed, if it did nothing more than put the brakes on the dancing craze--as any one can testify who has seen his friends offering up their business and their brains as a sacrifice to Terpsichore. But that is not what I started to say. The advantage of the system which was in vogue at the Blackstone, when I was there, is that, to get into the ballroom people must be known; wherefore ladies who still have doubts as to the propriety of dancing in a public restaurant need not, and do not, hesitate to go there and dance to their toes' content. CHAPTER XII FIELD'S AND THE "TRIBUNE" Of course we visited Marshall Field's. The very obliging gentleman who showed us about the inconceivably enormous buildings, rushing from floor to floor, poking in and out through mysterious, baffling doors and passage-ways, now in the public part of the store where goods are sold, now behind the scenes where they are made--this gentleman seemed to have the whole place in his head--almost as great a feat as knowing the whole world by heart. "How much time can you spare?" he asked as we set out from the top floor, where he had shown us a huge recreation room, gymnasium, and dining room, all for the use of the employees. "How long should it take?" "It can be done in two hours," he said, "if we keep moving all the time."