And, of course, I paid a visit to my friend, George Engelke. He is a great occultist, who has not eaten meat for thirty years. He believes in the powers of Hanish of lamented memory and is a sincere follower of his cult. Engelke is like Alfred Stieglitz of 291 Fifth Avenue, N. Y. His soul seems to walk three steps ahead of his body, or three steps behind his body. His life is an eternally undecided race, between soul and body. The Radical Book Shop is right around the corner. It is a co-operative store with a large stock of ultra-radical pamphlets and magazines, the meeting place for all sorts of Bolsheviki, pleasant Bolsheviki, who want to intoxicate themselves with words rather than with deeds, who are more eager to have a good time under present conditions than to be martyrs for a new and better world. And when they want to amuse themselves, and be real radicals, they go around the block, to the Dillpickle. Mr. Johns, who is one of the co-operatives of the bookshop, is also one of the proprietors of the Dillpickle, a sort of restaurant, public forum, dance hall, and at present “the slum of Chicago,” because some of its hangers-on were arrested as supposed bomb manufacturers during the recent I. W. W. trial. It is a sort of debating club, _a la_ Greenwich Village, with automobiles in front of it after ten p. m. when the rich come to see the poor, the law-abiding want to have a peek at the lawless, the properly married to see the free-lovers.... Chicago is very young, you know! It is in its bootees. All these “new ideas” are here in flower of springtime. I once said, “Were there no Greenwich Village, one would have to be invented.” Chicago invented its own. The Dillpickle will have many competitors soon, under the signs of flowers, vegetables and animals. In a couple of years they will become stale canned goods. And then the empty cans will be consigned to the ash can. Greenwich Village all over again! 1919 In Boston Book stores are the intellectual barometers of our cities. Show me where people buy their books and I will tell you what sort of life they lead. Book stores always were and are mirrors of the habits and intellectual preferences of men and women. The private library has ceased to be the pride of the home. Homes have given way to apartments and flats with only little space to spare for book shelves. The garage has taken the place of the library. We see our friends in hotels and clubs, we spend our evenings only rarely at home. Our Age of Electricity and rapid transportation facilities does not permit us to acquire the placid habits of book collectors and of book lovers. Sure enough we read books, because we want to know what their authors have to say. But the author remains a stranger to us, the book once read is done with forever. We speak about automobiles, we look forward to owning a machine, we are building garages with the same enthusiasm that our fathers used to expend on their libraries and their books.