I had no opportunity to visit The Little Room, a small club reported to be Chicago's artistic holy of holies, but I did have luncheon at the Cliff Dwellers, which is the larger and, I believe, more active organization. The Cliff Dwellers is a fine club, made up of writers and artists and their friends and allies. I know of no single club in New York where one may meet at luncheon a group of men more alive, more interesting, or of more varied pursuits, and I may add that I absorbed while there a very definite impression that between men following the arts, and those following business, the line is not so sharply drawn in Chicago as in New York. At the Cliff Dwellers I met a gentleman, a librarian, who gave me some interesting information about the management of libraries in Chicago. "Chicago is a business city, dominated by business men," he said. "We have three large public libraries, one the Chicago Public Library, belonging to the city, and two others, the Newberry and the Crerar, established by rich men who left money for the purpose. "The system of interlocking directorates, elsewhere pronounced pernicious, has worked very beautifully in affecting coöperation instead of competition between these institutions. "About twenty years ago, at the time of the Crerar foundation, the boards of the three libraries met and formed a gentleman's agreement, dividing the field of knowledge. It was then arranged that the Chicago Public Library should take care of the majority of the people, and that the Newberry and the Crerar should specialize, the former in what is called the 'Humanities'--philosophy, religion, history, literature, and the fine arts; the latter in science, pure and applied. At that time the Newberry Library turned over to the Crerar, at cost, all books it possessed which properly belonged in the scientific category. And since that time there has been practically no duplication among Chicago libraries. That is what comes of having public-spirited business men on library boards. They run these public institutions as they would run their own commercial enterprises. The Harvester Company, for example, wouldn't duplicate its own plant right in the same territory. That would be waste. But in many cities possessing more than one library, duplication of an exactly parallel kind goes on, because the libraries do not work together. Boston affords a good example. Between the Boston Public Library, the Athenæum, and the library of Harvard University, there is much duplication. Of course a university library is obliged to stand more or less alone, but it is possible even for such a library to coöperate to some extent with others, and, wherever it is possible to do so, the library of the University of Chicago does work with others in Chicago. Even the Art Institute is in the combination."