There is in Chicago a certain street corner around which the Lake wind, which already has made some progress through the city, swings with a zest that might indicate an intention to illustrate in a grotesque continuous performance the Lake wind’s utter irreverence and frivolity. Most Chicagoans know the wind’s mood at this corner, and when you sit in the window of the club it is quite possible to pick out the frequenters of the district by the mechanical way they grasp their hats as they approach the known border of this current of air. You may tell those who are Chicagoans yet not frequenters of the district by the fact that this gesture is delayed until a hazardous last moment. The foreigner, hit unawares, often is placed in a pitiful plight. I myself, a foreigner to these scenes, staring through the club’s broad French plate, in the space of half an hour saw a dozen hats whirled at a uniform angle across the tumultuous street. It was while I was sitting at the club window, not a little uncertain whether it was not malicious thus to become the spectator of my fellow creatures’ misfortunes, and wondering whether the municipality did not owe it to itself to place a signpost or a large policeman at an effective angle to this corner, when I saw young Mrs. Fentley approaching. I had time to notice that Mrs. Fentley wore a pretty fall gown, one of those defiantly subdued rich gowns, and that she was holding it inelegantly, for her, as if she were in a hurry, when a most extraordinary thing happened. A great many hats had blown off; but they were not the hats of women, and no precedent or procession of disasters could have prepared me for such a mishap as the sudden careering of Mrs. Fentley’s hat. In the face of this unspeakable occurrence I sprang up and stood in a moment of doubt as to whether it would not be the more kind to Mrs. Fentley to sit down again; then rushed through the corridor and out-of-doors, across the street, under the nose of an express horse, and found Mrs. Fentley’s hat miraculously whole at the opposite curb, just as strange hands were about to seize it. This might have seemed tragedy enough; but when I looked up toward Mrs. Fentley I saw by an unmistakable gesture of her free hand that her hair was hopelessly loosened. The affair thus having reached its worst possible stage, I approached Mrs. Fentley, bearing the hat in that tenderly wrong way common to all men who attempt this office, and exhibiting in my countenance a properly profound distress. The first thing that Mrs. Fentley said was, “Please stop that hansom,” a request to which I attempted to accede without delaying the transfer of the hat. “You must come a little way,” she said as she slunk gracefully under the hood of the vehicle. I obeyed the command with some incoherent expressions of solicitude, leaving the driver to remind me that he did not know what he was to do with us.