furniture, so much time to spend in providing for breakfast,
dinner, and tea, lodging and washing, that nobody thinks of unpacking
the pictures, taking the books out of their boxes, or getting up
drives or riding-parties. All these come in good time, and will be the
better done for a little prudent delay.

There is, to the stranger, an appearance of extreme hurry in Chicago,
and the streets are very peculiar in not having a lady walking in
them. Day after day I traversed them, meeting crowds of men, who
looked like the representatives of every nation and tongue and
people,--and every class of society, from the greenest rustic, or the
most undisguised sharper, to the man of most serious respectability,
or him of highest _ton_. Yet one lady walking in the streets I saw
not; and when I say not one lady, I mean that I did not meet a woman
who seemed to claim that title, or any title much above that of an
ordinary domestic. Perhaps this is only a spring symptom, which passes
off when the mud dries up a little,--but it certainly gave a rather
forlorn or funereal aspect to the streets for the time.

There is, nevertheless, potent inspiration in the resolute and
occupied air of these crowds. Hardly any one stays long among them
without feeling a desire to share their excitement, and do something
towards the splendid future which is evidently beckoning them on.
Preparing the future! It is glorious business. No wonder it makes the
pulse quicken and the eye look as if it saw spirits. It may be said,
that in some sense we are all preparing the future; but in the West
there is a special meaning in the expression. In circumstances so new
and wondrous, first steps are all-important. Those who have been
providentially led to become early settlers have immense power for
good or evil. One can trace in many or most of our Western towns, and
even States, the spirit of their first influential citizens. Happy is
it for Chicago that she has been favored in this respect,--and to her
honor be it said, that she appreciates her benefactors. Of one
citizen, who has been for twenty years past doing the quiet and modest
work of a good genius in the city of his adoption, it is currently
said, that he has built a hundred miles of her streets,--and there is
no mark of respect and gratitude that she would not gladly show him.
Other citizens take the most faithful and disinterested care of her
schools; and to many she is indebted for an amount of liber