scattered
over an area of seventy-five square miles. Its population was not so
much thriving upon established commerce as upon the industries which
prepared for the arrival of others. The sound of the hammer engaged upon
the erection of new structures was everywhere heard. Great industries
were moving in. The huge railroad corporations which had long before
recognised the prospects of the place had seized upon vast tracts of
land for transfer and shipping purposes. Street-car lines had been
extended far out into the open country in anticipation of rapid growth.
The city had laid miles and miles of streets and sewers through regions
where, perhaps, one solitary house stood out alone--a pioneer of the
populous ways to be. There were regions open to the sweeping winds and
rain, which were yet lighted throughout the night with long, blinking
lines of gas-lamps, fluttering in the wind. Narrow board walks extended
out, passing here a house, and there a store, at far intervals,
eventually ending on the open prairie.

In the central portion was the vast wholesale and shopping district,
to which the uninformed seeker for work usually drifted. It was a
characteristic of Chicago then, and one not generally shared by other
cities, that individual firms of any pretension occupied individual
buildings. The presence of ample ground made this possible. It gave an
imposing appearance to most of the wholesale houses, whose offices were
upon the ground floor and in plain view of the street. The large plates
of window glass, now so common, were then rapidly coming into use, and
gave to the ground floor offices a distinguished and prosperous look.
The casual wanderer could see as he passed a polished array of
office fixtures, much frosted glass, clerks hard at work, and genteel
businessmen in "nobby" suits and clean linen lounging about or sitting
in groups. Polished brass or nickel signs at the square stone entrances
announced the firm and the nature of the business in rather neat and
reserved terms. The entire metropolitan centre possessed a high and
mighty air calculated to overawe and abash the common applicant, and to
make the gulf between poverty and success seem both wide and deep.

Into this important commercial region the timid Carrie went. She walked
east along Van Buren Street through a region of lessening importance,
until it deteriorated into a mass of shanties and coal-yards, and
finally verged upon the river. She walked brav