A Little Girl in Old Chicago

by Amanda M. Douglas

"And now we are poor enough," and she sighed. "I don't know whether Nanette and I could have any dot. Then you generally go in a convent and become a sister, but I shouldn't like to be shut up and only visit poor people and those in trouble. There is a convent in New Orleans and in Canada."

I did not think I should like convent life either. The Piaget girls went to the Catholic Church in state, and the priest was Father Shoffer. It was moved to the rear of St. Mary's Cathedral afterward and used as a school-room, but children of all denominations went to school together. The Methodist Church had been moved across the river two years before on scows, the first building of any account to be moved intact. Everybody had thronged to see the wonderful achievement.

We used to wander by the edge of the great lake, often picking up shells in the sand. I had quite a collection, some beautiful ones Norman had given me. Homer had made me a box that I covered with them, arranging the choicest ones on the top in a figure as near to a rose as I could get it.

Ben used to walk with us sometimes. The magnificence of the lake down here, where there was no business and nothing but the swelling waves to ruffle its bosom, always filled me with a kind of reverent awe. The great space ending—where? To my childish mind it was like the ocean that I had never seen. I could not truly believe there were villages and wide stretches of ground on the other side. I liked its immensity. Several times we had been here on a moonlight evening, when it was silvered over and set with tiny gems. All at the west and south stretched the dusky, blurring expanse, but to the eastward one could imagine that one could sail into the heaven that touched the farther boundary of the great inland sea. That wonderful angelic blue with its myriad stars! Were they worlds in which the souls of the redeemed lived again? I wanted to talk all my new thoughts over with Norman. I seemed to have acquired so many in this brief while.

There was another great excitement about this time. Was it really four years since the last Presidential election? The town was all astir again. The same candidates were put up. Dan Hayne did a good deal of electioneering, though it was not in such a very eager manner. I believe most of the people felt very sore about the canal that was to open the Mississippi to us, which dragged along to little purpose. Then the postal regulations were so inefficient, and there was a complaint about many things, confusing State and general government. The Kentucky people were all for General Jackson, and some of the old men declared they'd vote for him as long as they lived whether he was alive or not. The two papers indulged in sharp rejoinders, and occasionally stretched the point of truth, at least each accused the other of doing it. Father pinned his faith upon the American.

People were very busy, too, with the abundant harvests. Such splendid yield of wheat as there had been! And to think of all this labor done by hand! One would have been smartly ridiculed if he had predicted the day of mowers and reapers and great grain elevators run by steam. Many a moonlight night men turned out and worked until they almost dropped, some did stop in their tracks and take a brief nap on a fragrant bed, with the stars for watchers. For the winter was coming, when Nature took her rest and locked our little world with her icy chains.

There was beef and pork packed to send away, piles of hides, bushels of grain, and the prominent business men left politics to care for itself awhile. The river and the docks were thronged and piled high, we thought then. Ben was much interested in this, and now had gone in Norman's place, though Mr. Hubbard's business was growing larger every year, and new warehouses were pushing in.

But we children went to school, and at home followed the useful arts—spinning, sewing, knitting and cooking. We had little time for the fripperies of life. They were to come later.

I did not forget my reading with Mrs. Chadwick, though I was growing very fond of the girls and girls' play. Jed Hatch had not come back, so M'liss remained with us. There was a great stir about the copper mines in northern Michigan, and the lead at Galena. Then coal was being discovered here and there, and men's wits were put to work in inventing labor-saving and money-saving machines.

We did not care much about these, though the neighbors who stopped at the garden gate or sat awhile on the stoop talking to father wondered a little if this or that could not be done, and sometimes laughed at father when he predicted great things for the future of Chicago. We did not look much like it in those days, though people were beginning to build brick houses and replace their old log structures with frame. Many of the streets were simply staked out. And when the Wrights built their really pretty mansion down near what was the end of Madison Street, they were laughed at as going out on the prairie.