It is in summer that the Middle Western provinces most candidly present themselves, not only because the fields then publish their richness but for the ease with which the people may be observed. The study of types may then be pursued along the multitudinous avenues in which the Folks disport themselves in search of pleasure. The smoothing-out processes, to which schools, tailors, dressmakers, and “shine-’em” parlors contribute, add to the perils of the type-hunter. Mr. Howells’s remark of twenty years ago or more, that the polish slowly dims on footgear as one travels westward, has ceased to be true; types once familiar are so disguised or modified as to be unrecognizable. Even the Western county-seat, long rich in “character,” now flaunts the smartest apparel in its shop-windows, and when it reappears in Main Street upon the forms of the citizens one is convinced of the local prosperity and good taste. The keeper of the livery-stable, a stout gentleman, who knows every man, woman, and child in the county and aspires to the shrievalty, has bowed before the all-pervasive automobile. He has transformed his stable into a garage (with a plate-glass “front” exposing the latest model) and hides his galluses (shamelessly exhibited in the day of the horse) under a coat of modish cut, in deference to the sensibilities of lady patrons. The country lawyer is abandoning the trailing frock coat, once the sacred vestment of his profession, having found that the wrinkled tails evoked unfavorable comment from his sons and daughters when they came home from college. The village drunkard is no longer pointed out commiseratingly; local option and State-wide prohibition have destroyed his usefulness as an awful example, and his resourcefulness is taxed to the utmost that he may keep tryst with the skulking bootlegger. Every town used to have a usurer, a merchant who was “mean” (both of these were frequently pillars in the church), and a dishevelled photographer whose artistic ability was measured by the success of his efforts to make the baby laugh. He solaced himself with the flute or violin between “sittings,” not wholly without reference to the charms of the milliner over the way. In the towns I have in mind there was always the young man who would have had a brilliant career but for his passion for gambling, the aleatory means of his destruction being an all-night poker-game in the back room of his law-office opposite the court-house. He may appropriately be grouped with the man who had been ruined by “going security” for a friend, who was spoken of pityingly while the beneficiary of his misplaced confidence, having gained affluence, was execrated. The race is growing better and wiser, and by one means and another these types have been forced from the stage; or perhaps more properly it should be said that the stage and the picture-screen alone seem unaware that they have passed into oblivion. [Illustration: The Municipal Recreation Pier, Chicago.]