was married, in order to get livery on our coachman, and to
abolish the anachronism of a one-o'clock dinner."

"It seems to me, Marion, that your criticisms apply to the Chicago of
the past and not to the Chicago of to-day. I am sure I never endured a
noon dinner, and as for the turn-outs one meets, many of them are quite
as well appointed as one could desire."

"I grant you that, but then it is the same limited few that have wrought
all these changes, and, improved as the city is, we have had to overcome
almost insurmountable prejudices. I grant you that Chicago has passed
the chrysalis age. It is no longer a village but it is far from being a
metropolis."

"You have everything here which makes a city: opera, theatres, parks,
drives, shops, art galleries, libraries, restaurants, and even races.
What more do you desire?"

"People, Florence; people. We want people with the instinctive sense of
the fitness of things, people with refined tastes and cultivated minds,
people whose souls are not bound up either in dollars or in psalms."

"Why, Marion! I can name you, off-hand, twenty as advanced and
cultivated people as I ever met."

"Of course you can, and perhaps fifty more, but there you will have to
stop. Three or four score of people do not make society."

"If you talk that way I shall believe you are more bigoted than the
sanctified families you have just described. I really believe you go
about conjuring up imaginable faults in your friends merely to carry out
your ideas."

"Don't be nasty, Florence."

"No, my dear, I love you too much for that; but it is really dreadful
for you to get into such states of mind. I think I understand what you
feel; you have led a nomadic existence, and you were educated in a
different atmosphere. An acquaintance with three languages, a season in
London, a winter in Washington, and a strong love of variety all combine
to make you discontented with the life here. You want a kaleidoscopic
existence, an ever shifting scene, and because you are here, a thousand
miles from the nearest city worthy of the name, it is quite natural that
you should tire of meeting the same people day after day. You think of
London, New York, and Washington, where society is continually shifting,
where new people come and go, where every one does not know or care
about his neighbor's business; but, Marion, granting all this, are you
not a little too bitter?"

"Perhaps; but just think of the lack of _sav