ows, and Fate herself
presiding, or what seems Fate, at once partial and inexorable.

But, on this great scale, even success fails to bring smiles. The
winners sit "with hair on end at their own wonders," and half-fearing
that such golden showers have some illusion about them and may prove
fairy favors at last. Next to this fueling comes the thirst for more.
Enlarged means bring enlarged desires and ever-extending plans. The
repose and lightness of heart that were at first to be the reward of
success recede farther and farther into the dim distance, until at
last they are lost sight of entirely, confessed, with a sigh, to be
unattainable. How can people in this State wear cheerful countenances?
When one looks at the gay and social faces and habits of some little
German town, where are cultivated people, surrounded by the books and
pictures they love, with leisure enough for music and dancing and
tea-garden chat, for deep friendships and lofty musings, it would seem
as if our shrewd Yankee-land and its outcroppings at the West had not
yet found out everything worth knowing. Froissart's famous remark
about the English in France--"They take their pleasure sadly, after
their fashion"--may apply to the population of Chicago, and it will be
some time yet, I fancy, before they will take it very gayly.

At a little country-town, the other day, not within a thousand miles
of Chicago, a family about leaving for a distant place advertised
their movables for sale at auction. There was such a stir throughout
the settlement as called forth an expression of wonder from a
stranger. "Ah!" said a good lady, "auctions are the only gayety we
have here!"

Joking apart, there was a deep American truth in this seeming
_niaiserie_.

Chicago has, as we have said, with all her wealth, no public park or
other provision for out-door recreation. She has no gallery of Art, or
the beginning of one,--no establishment of music, no public
library,--no social institution whatever, except the church. Without
that blessed bond, her people would be absolute units, as independent
of each other as the grains of sand on the seashore, swept hither and
thither by the ocean winds.

But even before these words have found their way to the Garden City,
they will, perhaps, be inapplicable,--so rapid is progress at the
West. The people are like a great family moving into a new house.
There is so much sweeping and dusting to do, so much finding of places
for the