"Along in the prehistoric ages--which in Chicago means about the time of the World's Fair--we were trying to live up to anything and everything, but particularly the ambition to be the overwhelmingest biggest town in creation, and to make your old New York look like an annexed seaport. We had no cults, no woman's societies, nothing except a lot of men making money hand over fist, killing hogs, and building cars and selling stuff at retail by catalogues. We were not æsthetic and we didn't particularly care. We liked plain shows as long as the girls in them weren't plain, and we had a motto that a big lady carried around on a shield. The motto was 'I will,' and translated it meant to the bottom of the sea with New York or St. Louis or any other upstart town that tried to live on the same side of the earth as Chicago. We were going to have two million population inside of two years and--" He dives again into his cultish lunch and after a moment resumes: "The big lady has lost her job and we've thrown the shield--motto and all--into the lake. We're trying to forget the motto and that's why we've got the cult habit. We're class and we're close on the heels of you New Yorkers--only last winter they began to pass the French pastry around on a tray at my club. We learn quickly and then go you one better. We've finally given Jane Addams the recognition and the support that she should have had a dozen years ago. We're strong and we're sincere for culture--the university to the south of us has had some funny cracks but that is all history. Together with the one to the north of us, they are finally institutions--and Chicago respects them as such. "Take opera. We used to think it was a fad to hear good music, and only the society folks went to hear it--so that the opera fairly starved to death when it came out here. Now they are falling over one another to get into the Auditorium, and our opera company is not only an institution but you New Yorkers would give your very hearts to have it in your own big opera house." "You'll build an opera house out here then," you venture, "the biggest--" He interrupts. "Not necessarily the biggest," he corrects, "but as fine as the very best." The talk changes. You are frankly interested in the cults. You have heard of how one is working in the public schools, how the school children of Chicago work in classrooms with the windows wide open, and you ask him about it. "It must be fine for the children?" you finally venture. "It is," he says. "My daughter teaches in a school down Englewood way, and she says that it is fine for the children--but hell on the teachers. They weren't trained to it in the beginning."