After ugliness, the worst foe of Chicago is dirt. A thick, black, sooty dust lies upon everything. It is at the peril of hands begrimed that you attempt to open a window. In the room that was allotted to me in a gigantic hotel I found a pair of ancient side-spring boots, once the property, no doubt, of a prominent citizen, and their apparition intensified the impression of uncleanness. The streets are as untidy as the houses; garbage is dumped in the unfinished roadways; and in or out of your hotel you will seek comfort in vain. The citizens of Chicago themselves are far too busy to think whether their city is spruce or untidy. Money is their quest, and it matters not in what circumstances they pursue it. The avid type is universal and insistent. The energy of New York is said to be mere leisure compared to the hustling of Chicago. Wherever you go you are conscious of the universal search after gold. The vestibule of the hotel is packed with people chattering, calculating, and telephoning. The clatter of the machine which registers the latest quotations never ceases. In the street every one is hurrying that he may not miss a lucrative bargain, until the industry and ambition of Chicago culminate in the Board of Trade. The dial of the Board of Trade, or the Pit as it is called, is the magnet which attracts all the eyes of Chicago, for on its face is marked the shifting, changing price of wheat. And there on the floor, below the Strangers' Gallery, the gamblers of the West play for the fortunes and lives of men. They stand between the farmers, whose waving cornfields they have never seen, and the peasants of Europe, whose taste for bread they do not share. It is more keenly exciting to bet upon the future crop of wheat than upon the speed of a horse; and far larger sums may be hazarded in the Pit than on a racecourse. And so the livelong day the Bulls and Bears confront one another, gesticulating fiercely, and shouting at the top of their raucous voices. If on the one hand they ruin the farmer, or on the other starve the peasant, it matters not to them. They have enjoyed the excitement, and made perchance a vast fortune at another's expense. They are, indeed, the true parasites of commerce; and in spite of their intense voices and rapid gestures, there is an air of unreality about all their transactions. As I watched the fury of the combatants, I found myself wondering why samples of corn were thrown upon the floor. Perhaps they serve to feed the pigeons.