“Well,” he said, “you know the train is limited and will probably be pretty full. There’s quite a number of people going west just now. However, don’t trouble; I guess I can fix that for you.” Now, I had never seen this man before, and the probability was that I should never meet him again, and yet when I got to the North-Western Depôt at Chicago there was a section in the centre of one of the newest and most luxurious cars reserved for me. “Mr. Griffith?” said the clerk, as I presented my transportation tickets. “That’s all right, sir. Your section’s engaged. Here’s your check, ‘2 D, San Vincente.’ Got a porter? Well, you can have your baggage taken down right away. She pulls out 3.30 sharp. Seventeen dollars, please.” II _CONCERNING CITIES, WITH A PARENTHESIS ON MANNERS_ I have seen cities in many parts of the world, from the smoke-grimed, flame-crowned, cloud-canopied hives of industry of middle and Northern England, of Belgium, and Northern France, to the marble palaces and broad-verandahed bungalows which sleep among the palm-groves by the white shores of tropic seas; but never—north, south, east, or west—have I seen a collection of human habitations and workshops so utterly hopeless, so irretrievably ugly as that portion of Chicago about which I wandered during my three hours’ wait for the starting of the Overland Limited. The roadways—really one cannot call them streets—would of themselves have been far inferior to similar streets in Manchester or Wolverhampton, because here at least the streets are paved. In Chicago they are not. Many years ago an attempt seems to have been made to pave them, but the stones have sunk, and the mud and slush have come up, and every variety of filth covers them except about the lines over which the tramcars rush, hissing and clanging on their headlong way. But the roadways of Chicago are also tunnels, for over them stretches the solid, continuous iron arch of the overhead railway whence come the roar of wheels, the snorting of steam-engines, the shriek of whistles, and the wailing groan of the brakes. Now and then you reach a crossing or open place where you emerge from the tunnel, out of semi-darkness into comparative light, and you see vast shapes of stiff-angled, steep-roofed buildings lifting their sixteenth or seventeenth storey up into the murky, smoke-laden sky. They are part and parcel of Chicago—huge, ugly, dirty, and exceedingly useful. There are big buildings in New York, but they are to the Chicago buildings as palaces compared to factories. There are others in San Francisco which are merely eccentricities and not altogether unpicturesque, but the Chicago sky-scraper is a sort of architectural fungus, an insulting excrescence from the unoffending earth, which makes you long to get big guns and shoot at it. Still, it is useful, and serves the purpose for which it was built, and that is why Chicago is not only content with it, but even proud of it.