Is it not a legitimate glitter of pride in the twinkling eyes of the great tree when it looks upon the vast and teeming loop of the city and remembers that, not so long ago but that men now living can remember, the whole prairie south of the river was a great bog, dry at times, but always at the mercy of every rainfall, and of the seepage from the erratic river that flowed now into the lake and now from it? Ten feet lower than the land to the north of the river it was–this spectacular loop of Chicago, which is unlike the same space of ground anywhere else in the world–and only the dreamers could see that it could ever be made into a city. Is the pride out of place when one remembers that the first civic accomplishment of the village was the gigantic one of raising the level of the south bank and its adjoining acres until it was no longer sick with sogginess? And may it not also be a matter of pride that that river, so gayly going its own unreasoning way, now north, now south, was tamed to the quiet dignity of flowing in one direction? Would it not give any city a Christmasy feeling of triumph to realize that the land which looks out upon its harbor, land which to-day is weighed in ounces of gold, where great hotels and shops harbor the riches and fripperies of the world, was, within the memory of men and women still actively a part of the city’s life, the pasture for the whole town south of the river? It has been many a year since a cow wore down the grass by the roadside of Michigan Avenue, or munched its way about on the prairie, but no more than sixty years ago all of the residents of the South Side took their cows out in the morning and went for them at night. The community practically ended at Wabash and Adams Streets, and the favorite grazing lands were the spots where the Blackstone and Stevens Hotels now have their roots. Even as late as 1871, the year when the world was shocked by the news of the great Chicago fire, cows were still wandering about contentedly in the prairies. Mayn’t the city well wear a mammoth Christmas tree as an adornment this Christmas morning when it looks upon its vastness, when it remembers that, from a mere handful of settlers less than ninety years ago, it has become the home of over three millions? In hundreds of thousands of homes in the vast miles that make Chicago as large and populous as many a monarchy, there are small replicas of the great tree, jeweled with many colored electric bulbs sheltering gifts, each single one of which would have dowered a bride in the older days. A diamond bracelet, dangling to the delight of some eager daughter or wife, is a bauble which, in those days, would have bought the entire loop. A house and an adjacent block of ground could have been purchased with the money that has been spent for one of the many shiny new motor cars that stand in front of hundreds of shiny little brick houses for the first time this Christmas morning.