lated plantations. Farms on the St. Lawrence River and on the
Detroit River, where the French were settling, were very narrow and very
deep, the idea being to range the houses close together on the river
front; but on such rivers as the Potomac, the Rappahannock and the
James, no element of early fear is to be traced in the form of the broad
baronial plantations.

Nevertheless, when Baltimore began at last to grow, she became a
prodigy, not only among American cities, but among the cities of the
world. Her first town directory was published in 1796, and she began the
next year as an incorporated city, with a mayor, a population of about
twenty thousand, and a curiously assorted early history containing such
odd items as that the first umbrella carried in the United States was
brought from India and unfurled in Baltimore in 1772; that the town had
for some time possessed such other useful articles as a fire engine, a
brick theater, a newspaper, and policemen; that the streets were lighted
with oil lamps; that such proud signs of metropolitanism as riot and
epidemic were not unknown; that before the Revolution bachelors were
taxed for the benefit of his Britannic Majesty; and that at fair time
the "lid was off," and the citizen or visitor who wished to get himself
arrested must needs be diligent indeed.

CHAPTER IV

TRIUMPHANT DEFEAT

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

--MONTAIGNE.

Following the incorporation of the city, Baltimore grew much as Chicago
was destined to grow more than a century later; within less than thirty
years, when Chicago was a tiny village, Baltimore had become the third
city in the United States: a city of wealthy merchants engaged in an
extensive foreign trade; for in those days there was an American
merchant marine, and the swift, rakish Baltimore clippers were known the
seven seas over.

The story of modern Baltimore is entirely unrelated to the city's early
history. It consists in a simple but inspiring record of regeneration
springing from disaster. It is the story of Chicago, of San Francisco,
of Galveston, of Dayton, and of many a smaller town: a cataclysm, a few
days of despair, a return of courage, and another beginning.

Imagine yourself being tucked into bed one night by your valet or your
maid, as the case may be, calm in the feeling that all was secure: that
your business was returning a handsome income, that your stocks and
bonds were saf