| Show r BILL HAS LA GRIPPE The Humorists Experience with the Fashionable Disease CHICAGO AND HER CHANGES How Looloo the Daughter of the Great Chief Has Given Place to the Pale Faced Beauty fFor THE SUNDAY HERALD By special arrangement ar-rangement with the author J The city of Chicago has undoubtedly suffered a good deal by reason of the unintentionally un-intentionally light and flippant manner in which her society and literature have been treated by Eugene Field during the paste past-e years Mr Field has not done this maliciously but thoughtlessly for he has I A warm heart though rather cold feet it is said He has at various times touched upon the foibles of a few of the Parvenu people of Chicago and conveyed the idea that there were more of them than there really are perhaps All of this has been done however in a pleasant spirit of banter well calculated to awaken mirth and L harmless laughter among those who were Dot referred to and a hollow ghostly smile on the faces of those who were ° WHAT A HAW CENTURY HAS WKOCGIIT Chicao is in latitude 41 deg 52 min 20 sec longitude 87 deg 35 min w with a lake exposure which is especially noticeable notice-able at that season of the year when the small boys do most go in bathing The site t + f Chicago was determined by the Chicago river up the south branch of which the historian says the Indian paddled canoe ages before Sir George Pullman invented his justly celebrated hingeless sleeping car blankets or Philip Amour introduced his juicy side meats and succulent leaf lard into the great seething marts of trade Here where once the rank thistle nodded in the < ynd and the dusky warrior innocent eyether of the knowledge of gunpowder or or Persian powder warred with the tur bulent Sioux or the more peaceful Chip peway now a mighty metropolis lying i hold upon the entire national system of railway traffic sits calmly at the foot of a great chain of lakes and cabs attention to herself by means of good reading notices in the press prepared by the skillful hand of such men as Charles W Warner of i Hartford Conn and published by our esteemed contemporary Mr Harper vhose neat little journal of civilization is printed at the west end of the bridge Although the location of Chicago is to all appearance on a low flat piece of land it i is as a matter of fact a sort of watershed none the less and the dividing line between the great valley of the St Lawrence and the Mississippi This makes it healthful and fills the air with vigor for the city is fully eighteen feet above the level of the lake Climbing this height by easy stages one is enabled to look down upon the lake which lies at his feet and a sunrise viewed from the crest of Michigan avenue is well wflrth getting up to witness even though one has been up until quite late the evening even-ing before Marquette the Jesuit missionary in 1073 was the first white man to set foot on the site where since so many eminent and extensive feet have been set He was on his way to catch a Milwaukee train and got bridged there Subsequently he La Salle Jbliet and Hennepin passed down from the lake via the south branch of the Chicago river to the Mississippi In 1S04 the government built Fort Dearborn Dear-born at the mouth of the river and later on some Indians whose stock of Caucasian Pelts was running quite low killed the gar risen and sent in their report August 101S33 Chicago decided to become be-come incorporated as twentyeight people toad arrived there since the massacre oat 1812 and after incorporating the entire population decided to hold the worlds fair at that point in 1392 Chicago was then getting one mail p2r week via Niles Mich Now Niles is glad to get the most of her mail from Chicago The first newspaper was issued by John Calhoun November 26 1S33 This was rapidly followed by another copy of the same which appeared December 3 Some of the old subcribers and advertisers are still alive and point to themselves with pride It was at about this time that o was paid or were paid rather ferhaps as a lawyers bill by the new city Since that prices have advanced however and now Chicago pays more than that to lawyers every week Hon J D Caton was paid for legal services for 1S334575 This sum together with what he got for his muskrat skins kept him in good style It was about the time that a large black bear was tilled in front of the board of trade build ing and William Bross saw a large gray wolf run by his house on Michigan avenue Within half a century how all this has changed The little paper which then briefly announced the death by massacre of its choicest subscribers or joyfully re ferred to the arrival of the mail from Niles for the current week has given place to mammoth and handsome journals representing repre-senting every party and every industry Where old Chief Polkadott dressed like a dish of salad viz with oil addressed the multitude now such men as James Russell Lowell speak briefly on some occult subject like Shakespeare then regret afterward that they did not speak on the subject they agreed to speak on Where one Looloo daughter of the chintzbug that cleans out the cornfield was wont to deck herself out in the coonskin coon-skin shoulder cape and burlap leggins of a crude civilization now beauty in Parisian towns and the righ gear of Mr Worth dazzles the eye of the savant and proves that half a century in the history of a typical typi-cal American city means a good deal Chicago does not pity herself She does not feel sorry for herself She accepts her humble lot pays the park tax on it and goes on about her business She has been burned out once and like Boston made a tbig hit by it So the kerosene lamp of 1116 i 1cGintv or whntmrt hnr + ml > mn T v J have been was the beacon light to show the city in which direction beauty and t prosperity lay i Sbe has tried various kinds of pavement with sorrow and loss and discouragement but now she is on the right track You can ride about Chicago now for a day at a time without jolting your soul in the soles of your boots and you will see some handsome hand-some houses and some magnificent public and commercial buildings too I would like to see one American city however start off with the idea that a handsome building private or public needs lots of ground to give it a proper setting Ground j ets so valuable however that a beautiful building nearly always in our country where land is plenty on the start finds itself surrounded by bakeries turn holes and livery stables I am only surprised that the capitol at Washington isnt engulfed in candy confectionery undertaking embalming em-balming and ice cream instead of facing a thousand cheap boarding houses with the c tv and the treasury at its back the grippe is getting to be an old theme rY rfi and so I will touch lightly on it here Im r just convalescing and if it will let me alone I will let it alone Avoid it gentle reader if you can Do not laugh at it or treat it lightly Fight sby of it pass by it and light out I was the picture of health when it came along and touched me gently on the larynx Now I am pale and sad The doctors did not exactly know how to deal with it at first They had to look about a little and see for themselves I could not eat anything for several weeks It was not for the same reason that I did not eat when I was publishing a paper inV in-V oming however This time I had the opportunity without the desire Then 1 had the desire without the opportunity SHOT THE LJOORJ 4 4 A PEi f oF t a i 1 CONVALESENCE This symptom was followed by fever hay fever cough heaves dimness of sight loss of sleep and hair pains in the joints back and chest Everything that was discouraging Then I began to hear about people who committed suicide because be-cause they bad the rip Friends came in and said looked kind of flighty and desperate des-perate My wife hid my revolver and cave the Tough on Rats to the delighted and overjoyed rats I imagined that I was going to die of heart failure or softening soften-Ing of the brain I thought I could hear my brain softening When I turned over I thought I could hear it slosh up against the rafters of my liead All ray life came back to me in a moment mo-ment I remembered a good deal that I would have paid something to forget I saw the statement of my account and noticed that large discounts had been made on the credit side charged to collections collec-tions Several hundred new entries had also been made on the debit side Finally I lost consciousness and expected ex-pected to awake in some new and undiscovered undis-covered country When I did awake it was 1890 The boy who brings my telegrams tele-grams wished me a happy New Year the district messenger boy nine of him did the same It cost me fifty cents apiece The expressmen who had worked nights to bring gifts to tho house went away 2 ahead The boy who said ho delievered the World to me every morning wanted to wish me a happy New Year also the Sun boy and the Herald boy and the Tribune and Times boy also several other boys who liedThen Then a boy who said he held my horse last year while I went into the postoffice wished me a happy New Year I bought him off A poor woman who said she had a lame boy who mowed my lawa two years ago wished me a happy New Year and got a pair of checkered trousers almost as good as new An old miner whom I grub staked ion i-on Douglas creek six years ago steadied himself by the door and wished me a happy New Year said he had seen by the papers that my income was so much greater than Vanderbilts that Van had gone away ashamed of himself I broke into one of the childrens banks and gave him the money they had saved to buy a donkey Then I went back to bed again Every body wishes me a happy New Yearat so much per wish But I do not murmur or repine The year 1SS9 has been good to me and cheerfully cheer-fully I pay my assessment only glad that with its other victims the grip did not as it wanted to gather mein I hope however how-ever that as America grows older she will not build up as other old countries have an army of whining holiday beggars so ethat intead of days of rejoicing the holidays holi-days will take away our appetites and bring out the accumulated cripples of five bundled years The holidays in Paris are the most sad and sickening of the year for then all the sad and soreeyed multitude are turned loose on the streets and the man who nworks and perspires and bathes is the only one who doesnt make any thing out of it or feel like eating when dinner comes I hope that cheap rates across the Atlantic At-lantic and ill advised generosity on this side will not build up this Coyote industry in the land of freedom |
