The system of beautiful parks that environ Chicago, and the boulevards that connect them are the pride of the city, and the citizens have good reason for being so proud of them. Only a few years ago the whole country around about the city was a low level wet prairie, but now there are six as beautiful parks as are to be found in almost any city in the country; parks filled with lakes, cascades, brooks, hills, groves, grottoes, wild animals and tame ones, and everything almost that is to be found in places where nature furnishes things to order. In Lincoln Park, for instance, is a mound of earth, a hill I suppose they call it, that is probably the highest point of land for many miles near the city, but this, like everything else in these parks, is artificial. All through Ohio and Indiana there is much land that has not yet been cleared, and these clumps and strips of timber give a variety to the country that would otherwise have been very monotonous to me, riding for hours and hours as I did over nearly level roads. These woods have little if any underbrush, and the grass through them is kept closely cropped by cows, sheep, and hogs, so that these two States are filled with hundreds of beautiful groves that invite a lazy wheelman to stop and stay awhile in the cool shade. One day, wishing to get rid of the several days' growth of bristling beard on my face, I took out my shaving apparatus, hooked the leather strap to the brake handle, honed the razor, found an old can, brought some water from a brook near by, pinned the pocket mirror on a tree, and got as clean a shave as I ever had, washing my face with one corner of a handkerchief, and drying it with the other end.