i do not believe that it has anything to do with this country.
they told me to go to the palmer house,which is overmuch gilded and mirrored,and there i found a huge hall of tessellated marble crammed with people talking about money,and spitting about everywhere.other barbarians charged in and out of this inferno with letters and telegrams in their hands,and yet others shouted at each other.a man who had drunk quite as much as was good for him told me that this was "the finest hotel in the finest city on god almighty's earth."by the way,when an american wishes to indicate the next country or state,he says,"god a'mighty's earth."this prevents discussion and flatters his vanity.
then i went out into the streets,which are long and flat and without end.and verily it is not a good thing to live in the east for any length of time.your ideas grow to clash with those held by every right-thinking man.i looked down interminable vistas flanked with nine,ten,and fifteen-storied houses,and crowded with men and women,and the impressed me with a great horror.
except in london--and i have forgotten what london was like--ihad never seen so many white people together,and never such a collection of miserables.there was no color in the street and no beauty--only a maze of wire ropes overhead and dirty stone flagging under foot.
a cab-driver volunteered to me the glory of the town for so much an hour,and with him i wandered far.he conceived that all this turmoil and squash was a thing to be reverently admired,that it was good to huddle men together in fifteen layers,one atop of the other,and to dig holes in the ground for offices.
he said that chicago was a live town,and that all the creatures hurrying by me were engaged in business.that is to say they were trying to make some money that they might not die through lack of food to put into their bellies.he took me to canals as black as ink,and filled with un-told abominations,and bid me watch the stream of traffic across the bridges.