f Chicago are met the most diverse
of men. On the one hand are the captains of industry, intent to amass a
fortune at all costs; on the other are the sorry prigs who haunt Ibsen
clubs and chatter of Browning. Miss Wyatt, with an exquisite irony,
makes clear her preference. In her eyes the square-dealing and innocent
boodler is a far better man than the sophisticated apostle of culture,
and this truth she illustrates with a modesty and restraint which are
rarely met with in modern fiction. She never insists; she never says a
word too much. With exquisite concision she sets her carefully selected
facts and types before you, and being the antithesis of priggishness in
a priggish city, she glorifies "the common growth of Mother Earth," and
compels your agreement. Her collection of stories--'Every One His Own
Way'--as free from pretence as from exaggeration, paints the citizens of
Chicago with the subtlest fancy and the simplest truthfulness.

Mr H. B. Fuller employs an ampler canvas. His intention is the same. He
also discards the artifice of exaggeration. He attempts to harrow your
feelings as little as to advertise himself. He displays not the _saeva
indignatio_, which won another novelist of Chicago so indiscreet a fame.
He is for gentler methods and plainer judgments. In 'The Cliff Dwellers'
he has given us a picture of the tribe inhabiting the Clifton, a
monstrous sky-scraper full eighteen stories tall, whose "hundreds of
windows," he tells you, "glitter with multitudinous letterings in gold
and in silver, and on summer afternoons its awnings flutter score on
score in the tepid breezes that sometimes come up from Indiana." His
picture is never overcharged; his draughtsmanship is always sincere. He
knows the tribe with an easy familiarity, and he bears witness to their
good and their evil with perfect impartiality. He is never a partisan.
His portraits are just, and he leaves his reader to sum up the qualities
of each. At his hands Chicago suffers no injury. She does not return his
generosity. A prophet is not without honour save in his own country, and
when I asked for his books at the biggest bookshop in Chicago, I was met
with a stare of ignorance.

And what you find in Chicago you may find in New England, in Kentucky,
in California, everywhere. The curiosity of this vast continent tempts
its writers to explore. Their material varies with the locality of their
choice. Their skill is a common inheritance. They cultiva