The husband hesitated. "Well, I've done a great deal better here than I ever did in Chicago," he said.
"How do you like it?" I asked the wife.
"New York gives us more advantages," she said, "but I prefer Chicago people."
"Would you like to go back?"
The wife hesitated, but the husband shook his head.
"No," he replied, "there's something about New York that gets into your blood. To go back to Chicago would seem like retrograding."
Among my notes I find the record of a conversation with a New York girl who married a Chicago man and went out there to live.
"I was very lonely at first," she said. "One day a man came around selling pencils. I happened to see him at the door. He said: 'I'm an actor, and I'm trying to raise money to get back to New York.' As I was feeling then I'd have given him anything in the house just because that was where he wanted to go. I gave him some money. 'Here,' I said, 'you take this and go on back to New York.' 'Why,' he inquired, 'are you from New York, too?' I said I was. Then he asked me: 'What are you doing away out here?' 'Oh,' I told him, 'this is my home now. I live here.' He thanked me, and as he put the money in his pocket he shook his head and said: 'Too bad! Too bad!'
"That will show you how I felt at first. But when I came to know Chicago people I liked them. And now I wouldn't go back for anything."