The enthusiastic gentleman who escorted us kept pointing out the beauties of the way this work was done: the cleanliness, the system by which the rooms are washed with steam, the gigantic scale of all the operations. I heard, I noticed, I agreed. But all the time my mind was full of thoughts of dying pigs. Indeed, I had forgotten for the moment that other animals are also killed to feed carnivorous man. However, I was reminded of that, presently, when we came upon another building, consecrated to the conversion of life into veal and beef. The steers meet death in little pens. It descends upon them unexpectedly from above, dealt out by a man with a sledge, who cracks them between the horns with a sound like that of a woodman's ax upon a tree. The creatures quiver and quickly crumple. It is swift. In half a minute the false bottom of the pen turns up and rolls them out upon the floor, inert as bags of meal. Only after death do these cattle find their way to an elevated trolley line, like that used for the pigs. And, as with the pigs, they move along speedily; shortly they are to be seen in the beef cooler, where they hang in tremendous rows, forming strange vistas--a forest of dead meat. The scene where calves were being killed according to the Jewish law, for kosher meat, presented the most sanguinary spectacle with which my eyes have ever burned. Two rabbis, old bearded men, performed the rites with long, slim, shiny blades. Literally they waded in a lake of gore. Even the walls were covered with it. Looking down upon them from above, we saw them silhouetted on a sheet of pigment utterly beyond comparison--for, without exaggeration, fire would look pale and cold beside the shrieking crimson of that blood--glistening, wet, and warm in the electric light. I shall not attempt to conceal the fact that I was glad to leave the stockyards. * * * * * When, a short time later, the motor car was bearing us smoothly down the sunlit boulevard, the Advertising Gentleman who had conducted us through all the carnage put an abrupt question to me. "Do you want to be original?" he demanded. "I suppose all writers hope to be," I answered. "Well," he replied, tapping me emphatically upon the knee, "I'll tell you how to do it. When you write about the Yards, don't mention the killing. Everybody's done that. There's nothing more to say. What you want to do is to dwell on the other side. That's the way to be original." "The other side?" I murmured feebly. "Sure!" he cried. "Look at this." As he spoke, he produced from a pocket some proofs of pen-and-ink drawings--pictures of sweet-faced girls, encased in spotless aprons, wearing upon their heads alluring caps, and upon their lips the smiles of angels, while, with their dainty rose-tipped fingers, they packed the luscious by-products of cattle-killing into tins--tins which shone as only the pen of the "commercial artist" can make tins shine.