But just across the street the walk is
as deserted as though a pestilence lurked there. Here the Art Institute
rears its smoke-blackened face, and Grant Park's greenery struggles
bravely against the poisonous breath of the Illinois Central engines.

Just below Twelfth street block after block shows the solid plate glass
of the automobile shops, their glittering wares displayed against an
absurd background of oriental rugs, Tiffany lamps, potted plants, and
mahogany. In the windows pose the salesmen, no less sleek and glittering
than their wares. Just below these, for a block or two, rows of sinister
looking houses, fallen into decay, with slatternly women lolling
at their windows, and gas jets flaring blue in dim hallways. Below
Eighteenth still another change, where the fat stone mansions of
Chicago's old families (save the mark!) hide their diminished heads
behind signs that read:

"Marguerite. Robes et Manteaux." And, "Smolkin. Tailor."

Now, you know that women buyers for mail order houses do not spend their
Saturday afternoons and Sundays thus, prowling about a city's streets.
Fanny Brandeis knew it too, in her heart. She knew that the Ella
Monahans of her world spent their holidays in stayless relaxation,
manicuring, mending a bit, skimming the Sunday papers, massaging
crows'-feet somewhat futilely. She knew that women buyers do not, as a
rule, catch their breath with delight at sight of the pock-marked old
Field Columbian museum in Jackson Park, softened and beautified by the
kindly gray chiffon of the lake mist, and tinted by the rouge of the
sunset glow, so that it is a thing of spectral loveliness. Successful
mercantile women, seeing the furnace glare of the South Chicago steel
mills flaring a sullen red against the lowering sky, do not draw a
disquieting mental picture of men toiling there, naked to the waist, and
glistening with sweat in the devouring heat of the fires.

I don't know how she tricked herself. I suppose she said it was the
city's appeal to the country dweller, but she lied, and she knew she was
lying. She must have known it was the spirit of Molly Brandeis in her,
and of Molly Brandeis' mother, and of her mother's mother's mother,
down the centuries to Sarah; repressed women, suffering women, troubled,
patient, nomadic women, struggling now in her for expression.

And Fanny Brandeis went doggedly on, buying and selling infants' wear,
and doing it expertly. Her office desk would have intere