From gowns she went naturally to the difficulty of knowing whom to meet in a city like New York--and how to meet them--and the watchfulness required to keep daughter Millie from becoming entangled with leading theatrical gentlemen. Amid Percival's lamentations that he must so soon leave Chicago, the train moved slowly out of the big shed to search in the interwoven puzzle of tracks for one that led to the East. As they left the centre of the city Higbee drew Percival to one of the broad side windows. "Pull up your chair and sit here a minute," he said, with a mysterious little air of importance. "There's a thing this train's going to pass right along here that I want you to look at. Maybe you've seen better ones, of course--and then again--" It proved to be a sign some twenty feet high and a whole block long. Emblazoned upon its broad surface was "Higbee's Hams." At one end and towering another ten feet or so above the mammoth letters was a white-capped and aproned chef abandoning his mercurial French temperament to an utter frenzy of delight over a "Higbee's Ham" which had apparently just been vouchsafed to him by an invisible benefactor. "There, now!" exclaimed Higbee; "what do you call that--I want to know--hey?" "Great! Magnificent!" cried Percival, with the automatic and ready hypocrisy of a sympathetic nature. "That certainly is great." "Notice the size of it?" queried Higbee, when they had flitted by. "_Did_ I!" exclaimed the young man, reproachfully. "We went by pretty fast--you couldn't see it well. I tell you the way they're allowed to run trains so fast right here in this crowded city is an outrage. I'm blamed if I don't have my lawyer take it up with the Board of Aldermen--slaughtering people on their tracks right and left--you'd think these railroad companies owned the earth--But that sign, now. Did you notice you could read every letter in the label on that ham? You wouldn't think it was a hundred yards back from the track, would you? Why, that label by actual measure is six feet, four inches across--and yet it looks as small--and everything all in the right proportion, it's wonderful. It's what I call art," he concluded, in a slightly dogmatic tone. "Of course it's art," Percival agreed; "er--all--hand-painted, I suppose?" "Sure! that painting alone, letters and all, cost four hundred and fifty dollars. I've just had it put up. I've been after that place for years, but it was held on a long lease by Max, the Square Tailor--you know. You probably remember the sign he had there--'Peerless Pants Worn by Chicago's Best Dressers' with a man in his shirt sleeves looking at a new pair. Well, finally, I got a chance to buy those two back lots, and that give me the site, and there she is, all finished and up. That's partly what I come on this time to see about. How'd you like the wording of that sign?" "Fine--simple and effective," replied Percival.