A Little Girl in Old Chicago

by Amanda M. Douglas

Certainly there was not a happier man in Chicago than John Gaynor, unless it was myself. He trotted about inspecting the new elevators, the new vessels, gathering statistics, as if he were a newspaper reporter. He had not given up what he called his scribbling habit, and his delight was to draw comparisons with the peasantry of the Old World and the New World that had no peasantry.

That Christmas morning a new little girl came to Chicago. The other little girl was only a memory now, just as Old Chicago was fast becoming a memory. But you often heard a group of men exchanging old reminiscences of the time they first came in the early thirties, with a small amount of money on hand, some none at all, going to work with hearty good will.

John Gaynor had thought nothing could make him happier than the return to his native land, but I think his cup ran over that Christmas morning.

There came now and then an unfortunate year, perhaps that is not the term, a less fortunate year, but Chicago travelled on at her steady pace. West of us were growing up other great States, other cities, crowds of people coming to be fed and housed and finding room to grow broad not only in physique, but in mind and endeavor. So we travelled over in the sixties, when there were ominous clouds gathering and there was a larger question to struggle for than bread and shelter.

John Gaynor went on adding field to field. I laughed at him for a mania. "Ground is a good enough investment for me," he would say. "Thieves can't steal it and fire can't burn it up." But Homer and I were joining forces in building stores and warehouses. For now we were connected with most of the country with railroads. How could we have brought in the grain in ox-carts?

Then followed the four years of the terrible Civil War. Ben, just getting nicely established, threw up his business and went in the army with hundreds of promising young men. The city did its share nobly. Some came back and took their olden places, some were invalided, and many a home was left vacant.

John Gaynor returned and made another stalwart plunge in newspaper life. Ben opened a new office and went on to realize his dreams. For now Chicago again swept on with giant strides. Did any one raise pigs and chickens in the space about the house, or even garden truck? We raised our town step by step. There were miles of paved streets, and all the modern improvements. The log houses vanished. Stone and marble came in and great buildings were reared.

We were swept onward too, business overtook the old home like a great wave, and we went further up the lake front and modernized ourselves. Since our Paris sojourn mother had taken kindly to improvements. Homer's sons and daughters were growing up. Ruth was married, John Gaynor and his sweetheart had a family clustering about them. Ben was thriving, had captured one or two excellent positions. Chris had gone westward, a very earnest pioneer worker, and we looked sometime to see him made a bishop.

Those were happy years. We had a little flock of four, and though grandfather was proud of the sturdy boys, baby Ruth, the first born, was, I think, the dearest of all to him. The last darling was Bess. They would always be family names.

We had had one other tremendous flood to submerge a part of the city. Then great pains had been taken to protect us from the overflow of the lake. We studied security more than money. When we looked at the splendid buildings did we ever say to ourselves: "This is the great Babylon we have builded!"