It is characteristic of him that until his marriage he lived at the New Temperance Hotel (board and lodging $2.00 a week; clothes washed extra), instead of at the popular Saugenash Hotel on Market and Lake, where the innkeeper, that gay and genial Frenchman and pioneer, Mark Beaubien, would sometimes take down his fiddle and set feet to twinkling and stepping in the square-dance. None of this for Isaac Thrift. He literally had rolled up his sleeves and got to work. Little enough use he made of the fine bottle-green broadcloth coat with the gilt buttons, the high stock, and the pale gray pantaloons brought from the East. But in two years he had opened a sort of general store and real estate office on Lake Street, had bought a piece of ground for a house on Wabash (which piece he later foolishly sold) and had sent back East for his bride. That lady left her comfortable roof-tree to make the long and arduous trip that duplicated the one made earlier by her husband-to-be. It is to her credit that she braved it; but she had a hard time trying to adjust her New England viewpoint to the crude rough setting in which she now found herself. Her letters back East are so typical and revealing that extracts, at least, are imperative. "... The times are exceedingly dull in this city of Chicago; there is little business, no balls, no parties, some shooting, some riding, and plenty of loafers, and to-day, after the rain, a plenty of mud which completes the picture.... The water here is first-rate bad and the only way we get along is by drinking a great deal of tea and coffee--two coffees to one tea.... The weather has been very mild. There has not been snow enough to stop the burning of the prairies.... If the waters of Lake Michigan continue to rise for a year or two more Chicago and all the surrounding country will be covered with one vast sheet of water, and the inhabitants of this place must find a home elsewhere--and I, for one, will find said home farther East.... Everyone admires my pretty things from New York; my cherry-colored scarf; my gingham dress with the silk stripe in it, my Thibet cloth cloak of dark mulberry color; and my fine velvet bonnet which cost only $3.50 in New York. It is prettier than any I have seen here. A milliner here said that it would have cost $8.00 in Chicago but I think that is exaggerated. The ladies here wear only one flounce to their skirts. Even my third best--the brown-and-white plaid merino--has three.... The mud here is so bad that the men wear hip boots and we women must go about in two-wheeled carts that sink to the hubs in many places. There are signs stuck up in the mud with the warning, 'No bottom here'.... Our new furniture has come. A beautiful flowered red and green carpet in the chamber and parlor. When the folding doors are open the stove will heat both rooms.... They have most excellent markets in this place. We can get meat of every description for four