"Yes," said Winthrop, in satirical assent; "the 'Windy City.'"
"Don't abuse our wind," cried Mrs. Floyd; "we should all die like flies without it."
"That's so," assented her husband. "The wind is our only scavenger."
"I see," said Winthrop. "If you can only be big you don't mind being dirty."
Then, half in amusement, half in amaze, he concentrated his attention on the banker. "Can it be that there are really any such expectations here as these?" He addressed Fairchild exclusively—the oldest and most sedate of the circle.
"Why not?" returned Fairchild. "Does it seem unreasonable that the State which produced the two greatest figures of the greatest epoch in our history, and which has done most within the last ten years to check alien excesses and un-American ideas, should also be the State to give the country the final blend of the American character and its ultimate metropolis?"
"And you personally—is this your own belief?"
Fairchild leaned back his fine old head on the padded top of his chair and looked at his questioner with the kind of pity that has a faint tinge of weariness. His wife sat beside him silent, but with her hand on his, and when he answered she pressed it meaningly; for to the Chicagoan—even the middle-aged female Chicagoan—the name of the town, in its formal, ceremonial use, has a power that no other word in the language quite possesses. It is a shibboleth, as regards its pronunciation; it is a trumpet-call, as regards its effect. It has all the electrifying and unifying power of a college yell.
"Chicago is Chicago," he said. "It is the belief of all of us. It is inevitable; nothing can stop us now."
But Winthrop Floyd was glad to withdraw himself on the morrow from his temporary enlistment—or drafting—under the vociferous banner of the Western capital. He did all in his power, as well, to oppose its manifest destiny by transmitting to Walworth, immediately after his return to Boston, a full corporate confirmation of his own anathema against Walworth's office and house. The Chicago representative of the Massachusetts Brass Company was recommended to secure less expensive quarters at the earliest opportunity, and was directed to drop his architectural scheme forthwith.