Kroch’s International Book Store on Michigan Boulevard is to the West what Brentano’s is to the East. Shopkeepers have become teachers and publicity agents. Their clients don’t know what they wish to purchase. They are too tired or too ignorant to read literary reviews. They let Mr. Kroch tell them what to read. Mr. Kroch is an interesting little man. He wears a toupee and a broad kindly smile. He has the demeanor of a man who has risen from the ranks and is proud of it. He has kept pace with his success. Money has not turned his head. He knows that he owes gratitude to the authors whom he sells. The quainter his find, the more exclusive seems his taste, the more he pleases his clients, the greater will be his cash receipts. And so he has an open eye for authors who are not popular. What greater boast for a book salesman in Chicago than to have disposed of more than two hundred copies of Oscar Wilde’s Life and Confessions by Frank Harris? To have induced more than one hundred people to buy each month _Pearson’s Magazine_? And his clients are the very rich; he doesn’t tire showing them the other side of life. Frank Morris is still on deck, issuing catalogues, selling rare books, delighting his many friends and clients with the charm of his personality. The man with a literary past is a most amiable companion, presuming that his heart is filled with love, and that his compassion overlooks the faults of men. Frank Morris played an important part, if not a central one, in that lurid period of the early nineties, when Chicago was the literary Mecca of America. Powner’s Book Store is the gathering place of book hunters and collectors. “Gems can be found here,” seems the unwritten motto that attracts antiquarians, as a lighted candle attract moths. Young Mr. Powner is in the Service, somewhere-in-France. Mr. Powner, Sr., had to leave once more his ranch in Arizona, and assume the responsibilities of a Chicago shopkeeper. And then there is Janski, the old assistant of Frank Morris in his late Adams Street shop, established in a store of his own, selling books as ever, happy and contented to contribute his part toward the elevation of Chicago’s literary taste. On Van Buren Street, near the Boulevard, is also a new and important book store. Mr. Chandler, for more than thirty years of McClurge’s Publishing house, has set up his establishment there. Very few books are in his place, but each is a jewel. He is a sort of a George D. Smith of Chicago, but minus gambling inclinations. Books for him are not objects for speculation, but gilt-edged values.