From my twenty years of experience with them, I believe that failure to treat of the human interest of the Lakes is one of the most inexcusable omissions of American literature. In the rush of modern progress the Lakes have been forgotten--except in the way of their vital importance to the commerce of the nation. And each year their picturesque and thrilling aspects are becoming more deeply engulfed in considerations of profit and loss and corporation finance. Not long ago I asked a romantically inclined young woman, who was about to spend the savings of several years on an ocean trip, why she did not take a more economical, and pleasanter, holiday by making a tour of the Lakes. She looked at me as if I had gone out of my head. “Take a trip on the Lakes when I can have one on the ocean!” she cried. After a moment of continued surprise, she added: “I want something that I can think about. I want to go where something has happened--where there have been battles, and pirates, and where there’s sunken ships, and treasure, and things under us! I’m reading a story now that tells of the ocean--_The Cruise of a Lonely Heart_--situated in the very part of the sea we’re to cross, and I shall read every word of it over again while we’re aboard the ship!” That is the great trouble. Historians, novelists, and short-story writers have neglected the Lakes. I did not waste my breath in telling this young lady that real pirates flourished in the days of King Strang and his Mormons on the Lakes; that some of the most picturesque “sea fights” of history were fought upon them, and that treasure untold, and mysteries without number, lie hidden within their depths. But I am determined that she shall read these few pages, and I pray that she, as well as a few thousand others of my readers, may hereby be induced to “take to their history.” For centuries the oceans have been regarded as the realm of romance and mystery. In this age, the youths of Chicago, of New York, Cincinnati, or Denver, and even of Lake cities, search public libraries for tales of the South Seas and of the great Pacific; even the youngster whose every day has been spent on the shores of one of the five Great Lakes seeks afar the material that satisfies his boyish imagination. And so is it with his father and mother, his big brothers and sisters. Instead of a glorious trip over the Lakes, they prefer the old and oft-made journey to Europe, to the Bermudas; instead of seeking out the grand scenery and actual romance that environ them, they follow beaten paths laid out in books and pamphlets descriptive of the ocean. [Illustration: A Remarkable Photograph Showing the Big Freighter “Stimson” in a Holocaust of Smoke and Flame.]