Page smiled slightly. "Perhaps that is just what she considered," he returned, and Jack thought that Gorham was a provoking, dry sort of fellow.
"I'll tell you what I'm going to do," he said, rising. "I'm going to Chicago."
"Are you? Well, you are that favored species of individual who can control his own movements."
"Yes. They've ceased pulling hair out there, and have decided to locate the Fair in Jackson Park, quite near our house, you remember."
"So I observed. They have lost a good deal of time in controversy, it strikes me. They will have to scratch gravel now."
And this, if Mr. Page had only known it, was literally what had begun to be done out there in Chicago, in the unreclaimed district which bordered Jackson Park on the south.
Sand-dunes, and marshes, woodland and slough, had all to be effaced, for a new earth must be offered in time to be the foundation for those castles in the air, which were already creating in men's brains.
As the scope of the proposed work unfolded and became clear, the time began to seem nigh to hopelessly short for its accomplishment. Of public opinion in the East, the kindest expression continued patronizing, amused, and skeptical; the average, contemptuous and hostile.
But Chicago, which had formed a habit of making stepping-stones of obstacles, now said "I will" with greater doggedness of purpose than ever before, and sending steam dredges to invade the wilderness, began the patient, laborious grubbing, which was necessary to excavate in one place, and fill in in another. Meanwhile the oldest inhabitant wandered about, looking on, wondering and fascinated. The maiden, going in advance of the feller of trees, caught with her kodak a farewell glimpse of the wood-road, that had furnished a foothold amid the sand for the spring violets of her childhood. The small boy looked longingly at the sloughs, which had been first to freeze in autumn, and thought it a thousand pities that Chicago had been so brave as to deserve the Fair. The Eastern papers thought so too, and still exercised the virtue of frankness to the fullest extent; but Chicago, with all her reputation for talking, now had no time for such indulgence; but emulated Uncle Remus's famous tar-baby, who, it will be remembered, when Brer Rabbit jeered at her once and again, still "ain't sayin' nothin'." She only grubbed away, and her citizens prepared themselves for the long pull, the strong pull, and the pull all together, which should win ultimate triumph.
When Jack arrived there, he found his city in all the excitement of work and plans and anticipation. His father's Scotch housekeeper, Jeanie, was in possession as of old when he reached home, and gave him a reception in which tears mingled with cordiality. "It's all different without your father, Mr. Jack," she mourned, "but we must bear it,—we must bear it."