Chicago (Ill.) -- Juvenile fiction; Family life -- Juvenile fiction; Girls -- Juvenile fiction
"Just you wait and see," promised Mr. Merrill. "Big waves! I should say it
has!"
"And all the green part of the map is parks," said Alice, quoting what her
father had told them when he first showed them the map.
"Then there must be a lot of parks," suggested Mary Jane with interest. "I
think I'd like to live by a park," she added thoughtfully.
"I think I should too," agreed Mr. Merrill, "and it's near a park we will
make the first hunt for a home."
"Oh, look!" cried Mary Jane suddenly as she glanced up from the spread-out
map; "what's that, Dadah?"
"That's the beginning of Chicago," said Mr. Merrill. "Let's fold up the
map now and see what we can of the city. This is South Chicago; and those
great stacks and flaming chimneys are steel mills and foundries and
factories--watch now! There are more!"
The train on which the Merrill family were traveling went dashing past
factory after factory--past an occasional open space where they could see
in the distance the blue gleam of Lake Michigan and past great wide
stretches where tracks and more tracks on which freight cars and engines
sped up and down showed them something of the whirling industry that has
made South Chicago famous. No wonder it was a strange sight to the two
girls--they had never before seen anything that made them even guess the
big business that they now saw spread out before them.
They had spent all their lives thus far--Alice was twelve and Mary Jane
going on six--in a small city of the Middle West and though they had had a
fine summer in the country visiting grandma and grandpa and had only the
winter before taken a beautiful trip through Florida, they had never been
to a great city. And now they were not going to visit or to take a trip.
They were going to live there. The great big city of Chicago was to be
their home.
The pretty little house they had loved so well was sold. The furniture and
books and dolls and clothes were all packed and loaded on a freight car to
follow them to the city and all the dear friends had been given a
farewell. Mary Jane had loved the excitement and muss of packing; the
great boxes and the masses of crinkly excelsior and the workmen around who
always had time for a pleasant joke with an interested little girl. But
when it came time to say good-by to Doris and to her much loved
kindergarten and to all the boys and girls in school and "on her block,"
going away wasn't so funny. In fact, Mary Jane felt a queer and
troublesome lump in her throat most of the morning when the good-bys were
said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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