terest of the world in the coming Exposition of the arts and industries of all nations.

The arrivals and clearances of vessels at Chicago exceed in number those of the port of New York, although not equal to New York in tonnage, and in the business district are the offices of all the great marine transportation companies.

There is but one church, the First Methodist, in the business quarter, although two other large audiences are gathered each Sunday to listen to the ministrations of Prof. David Swing and Dr. H. W. Thomas in Central Music Hall and in McVicker's Theatre. These two brethren have been suspected of heresy, as not subscribing to a belief in the damnation of all unbaptized infants, and other cheerful and comforting doctrines of the ancient régime, and are thus outside denominational lines. It cannot be claimed that Professor Swing attracts his large and intelligent audiences by the graces and charms of the orator. His power is due to the fact that he has something to say, that he is a genial, wise, and scholarly teacher, and, as an essayist and a man of letters, is unquestionably the first in Chicago and the West.

The dozen leading hotels of the city are also located in the crowded business centre. No worker in this district has time to go to his home for lunch. The hotels, even when kept on the American plan, have café annexes, and these, with the clubs and scores of restaurants, are thronged for an hour or two in the middle of each day. Multitudes of saloons are also scattered throughout this district. The writer recalls reading in his youth a book called " Riley's Narrative," wherein were graphically depicted the perils of the captain and crew of an American brig wrecked on the African Coast, and their fearful sufferings from thirst while wandering over the great desert. This book had a mission, and since that time, even in a frontier town like Chicago, there are thousands of people who have forsaken other means of livelihood for the purpose of opening resorts where the agonies of thirst may be averted, and who devote their leisure moments to the study

of certain recondite problems of municipal government. Even should Lake Michigan go dry, no citizen of Chicago. need die from thirst, a parched and dusty death.

In the same limited area are also the half dozen principal theatres and opera houses. Amusements both good and bad are liberally patronized, but it is to the credit of our population that dramatic artists like Henry Irving and Booth, and singers like Patti and Materna play longer engagements and to larger audiences in Chicago than in any other American city. Like credit is fairly earned from the fact that, as has often been publicly stated by Mr. Phelps, our late Minister to England, Chicago supports by far the largest and most complete retail bookstore in the world.

The City and County Buildings occupy a square in this crowded quarter. Here hundreds of faithful as well as unfaithful public servants are busily at work, or actively avoiding work, and in and about. the vast buildings throng the grimy crowd of idlers and vagabonds, to whom courts and public offices are ever a fascinating resort.

The enormous business transacted in Chicago by its great jobbers of groceries, hardware, and metals is familiar to all those interested in such affairs.

The sales of the Illinois Steel Company of its own product for the last year exceeded $30,000,000, the company producing 1,000,000 tons of pig iron from 1,500,000 tons of ore, and of this metal itself converted 800,000 tons into finished steel products.

But it is useless, as well as almost impossible, to undertake to catalogue the endless variety of occupations which are represented in the heart of Chicago. The writer confesses, however, to a novel experience, on recently entering a small shop where nine or ten men were employed, and learning that the business carried on was solely the manufacture of shoes for corpses. The proprietor stated that he sold exclusively to undertakers, who required a tidy-looking shoe, the wearing qualities of which were not important.

The business centre of Chicago, until

a comparatively recent time, has been largely built with borrowed capital. The average Chicago man has been a large borrower, believing that he could afford to pay liberal rates of interest by reason of the growth in value of his property. The city has been largely settled from New England and New York, and our kinsmen of those parts have been willing to loan their capital for the purpose of the development and upbuilding of the city, so long as they could secure for it better rates of interest than prevailed at home. The maxims of the economist are numberless to the effect that the borrower is the slave of the lender, and bound to be by him ultimately devoured; yet in the large majority of cases in Chicago these maxims have been disproved by the rapid increase in the value of city real estate. Some years since, at a banquet of the Real Estate Board, a wellknown operator, feeling that confession was good for the soul, frankly admitted

Pullman Building.

that from the beginning of his business career he had been lying incessantly as to the prospective growth of the city; but claimed that the city had overtaken and

passed all his lies, and made them to rank with the inspired prophetical books of the Old Testament.

The business centre of Chicago is bounded on the east by Michigan Avenue; and between this and Lake Michigan is a strip of land 400 or 500 feet wide and a mile in length, extending along the shore of the lake, which is used as a public park. The beauty of this park is sadly marred by the continual passing along its front of the trains of the Illinois Central and Michigan Central railways. Negotiations are pending, the result of which, it is hoped, will be the moving of these railway tracks eastward about 1,000 feet, the filling of the lake to that point, and the addition of this land to the present park. This will be something unique in the building of a city, and will give immediately, beside the most crowded business district in the world, a spacious and picturesque park, beyond which will be the panorama of the lake, beautiful in itself, and rendered more beautiful by the continual passing of the hundreds of steam and sailing craft on its bosom.

The growth of Chicago, and of the manufacturing, commercial, and mercantile interests represented in its business centre has been phenomenal, and it is a question of interest whether this growth. is to continue or has nearly reached its limit. A city originates no wealth, but lives by adding new value, either in labor or transportation, to the products of the fields, forests, and mines. The principal business of Chicago is to the westward of the city, although the states of Michigan and Indiana are among its tributaries. The country lying west, northwest, and southwest is a region of unexampled fertility. In any of these directions a person may travel from 700 to 1,000 miles beyond Chicago and scarcely see an acre of unproductive land. In no other region in the world can be found so large an area yielding so rich a return to farmers. The growth of a city is necessarily dependent upon the growth, development, and prosperity of the country tributary to it; and looking at the matter from this standpoint, Chicago would seem yet to have large capacity for growth. Considering the territory within 500 miles of

HE fame of New England has penetrated to even the remotest wilds of the Province of Quebec. Tradition and fiction have contributed their resources to surround it with unfailing

interest. Every French Canadian hears from childhood glowing accounts of La Nouvelle Angleterre; and many an hour is enlivened by fascinating tales of life amid its busy bustling scenes. Excited by the pictures of New England stir, enterprise, and greatness, drawn by multitudes of compatriots and relatives settled in the farm districts or busy towns of the northeastern states, the youths resolve to leave the parental roof at the earliest opportunity and seek their fortune in this Republic. The great numbers coming yearly to this country, despite the difference of race, creed, and speech, and the difficulties of distance, show the vast change in popular feeling that a score or two of years have brought about, and prove the gradual disappearance of enmities and popular prejudices too long a discredit and a danger to people engaged in the worthy and beneficent work of founding homes, for the deserving and the needy, and building up in a new world empires based on justice to all men.

No invasion of Canada from New England is feared by even the chronic alarmist; not even the most warlike or ambitious of our military youths dreams of forcible annexation. Nor are aggressive colonization projects entertained with a view to its absorption. The tide of national feeling on each side of the boundary is turned into different, more honorable, and fruitful channels; each side striving after nobler objects than to vex or destroy the other. The French Canadians pour into the traditional enemy's country, not for war or spoil, but to fin homes in thriving cities and to aid

in the cultivation of fertile fields. The descendants of the old combatants now mingle in peace, to work amicably together for the promotion of American civilization.

A quieter immigration movement, on a scale so extensive as that of the French Canadians to the United States, has never been witnessed. The majority of our citizens have as yet no idea of its extent and results. It is chiefly within. the last generation that this "new nation," as it may be styled, has noiselessly overspread these overspread these northeastern states. Although French Canadians could be found in the lumbering districts of the West and the more important manufacturing centres of New England prior to the Civil War, no decided inflow has been noticed, and certainly none of a kind to deserve the name of a wholesome systematic immigration. The late Civil War was the first great inviting agency to this race, some of whose representatives assert that 35,000 of their fellow-countrymen fought for the North. To-day, this new population throughout the United States numbers considerably over 800,In New England and New York, there are more than 500,000; in Massachusetts alone the figures reach 120,000. This is an astounding aggregate for the brief period of their immigration and the extent of the sources of supply. This result far exceeds, proportionately, that to the credit of either Ireland or Germany. According to Le guide Francais des Etats Unis (1891), they own real estate to the amount of $105,328,500; and 10,696 of the race are doing business for themselves. As we have already seen, this people, chiefly agricultural, backward in education and primitive in habit, numbered but 65,000 at the time of the Cession of Canada to England — 1759-60; while at the present time there are 1,700,000 of them, not including the outflow to adjoining provinces and the United States.

000.