s not
fired, as it has been fired again and again by far lesser and far less
interesting places. Nobody could call Wabash Avenue spectacular, and
nobody surely would assert that State Street is on a plane with the
collective achievements of the city of which it is the principal
thoroughfare. The truth is that Chicago lacks at present a
rallying-point--some Place de la Concorde or Arc de Triomphe--something
for its biggest streets to try to live up to. A convocation of elevated
railroads is not enough. It seemed to me that Jackson Boulevard or Van
Buren Street, with fine crescents abutting opposite Grant Park and
Garfield Park, and a magnificent square at the intersection of Ashland
Avenue, might ultimately be the chief sight and exemplar of Chicago. Why
not? Should not the leading thoroughfare lead boldly to the lake instead
of shunning it? I anticipate the time when the municipal soul of Chicago
will have found in its streets as adequate expression as it has already
found in its boulevards.

Perhaps if I had not made the "grand tour" of those boulevards, I might
have been better satisfied with the streets of Chicago. The excursion,
in an automobile, occupied something like half of a frosty day that
ended in torrents of rain--apparently a typical autumn day in Chicago!
Before it had proceeded very far I knew that there was a sufficient
creative imagination on the shore of Lake Michigan to carry through any
municipal enterprise, however vast, to a generous and final conclusion.
The conception of those boulevards discloses a tremendous audacity and
faith. And as you roll along the macadam, threading at intervals a
wide-stretching park, you are overwhelmed--at least I was--by the
completeness of the scheme's execution and the lavishness with which the
system is in every detail maintained and kept up.

[Illustration: A RIVER-FRONT HARMONY IN BLACK AND WHITE--CHICAGO]

You stop to inspect a conservatory, and find yourself in a really
marvelous landscape garden, set with statues, all under glass and
heated, where the gaffers of Chicago are collected together to discuss
interminably the exciting politics of a city anxious about its soul. And
while listening to them with one ear, with the other you may catch
the laconic tale of a park official's perilous and successful vendetta
against the forces of graft.

And then you resume the circuit and accomplish many more smooth,
curving, tree-lined miles, varied by a jolting sectio