the centre of attraction. With a voice of
silver and with imagery borrowed from the auction-room, he built up for
his hearers a heaven on the lines of the Palmer House (but with all the
gilding real gold and all the plate-glass diamond) and set in the centre
of it a loud-voiced, argumentative, and very shrewd creation that he
called God. One sentence at this point caught my delighted ear. It was
_apropos_ of some question of the Judgment Day and ran: "No! I tell you
God doesn't do business that way." He was giving them a deity whom they
could comprehend, in a gold and jewel heaven in which they could take a
natural interest. He interlarded his performance with the slang of the
streets, the counter, and the Exchange, and he said that religion ought
to enter into daily life. Consequently I presume he introduced it _as_
daily life--his own and the life of his friends.

Then I escaped before the blessing, desiring no benediction at such
hands. But the persons who listened seemed to enjoy themselves, and I
understood that I had met with a popular preacher. Later on when I had
perused the sermons of a gentleman called Talmage and some others, I
perceived that I had been listening to a very mild specimen. Yet that
man, with his brutal gold and silver idols, his hands-in-pocket,
cigar-in-mouth, and hat-on-the-back-of-the-head style of dealing with
the sacred vessels would count himself spiritually quite competent to
send a mission to convert the Indians. All that Sunday I listened to
people who said that the mere fact of spiking down strips of iron to
wood and getting a steam and iron thing to run along them was progress.
That the telephone was progress, and the network of wires overhead was
progress. They repeated their statements again and again. One of them
took me to their city hall and board of trade works and pointed it out
with pride. It was very ugly, but very big, and the streets in front of
it were narrow and unclean. When I saw the faces of the men who did
business in that building I felt that there had been a mistake in their
billeting.

By the way, 'tis a consolation to feel that I am not writing to an
English audience. Then should I have to fall into feigned ecstasies over
the marvellous progress of Chicago since the days of the great fire, to
allude casually to the raising of the entire city so many feet above the
level of the lake which it faces, and generally to grovel before the
golden calf. But you, who are