It did not take long. He walked rapidly through the room, followed by the salesmen, glancing round with an eagle eye and pointing with his cane to what he wanted. Sometimes he asked Mary's opinion, but she was shy about giving it, and provided a thing was bright enough and costly enough, the Judge was sure she must like it. He discovered that he himself had more taste than he had suspected; he knew a good article from an inferior one in a minute, and he didn't buy any cheap stuff. Everything was handsome.
When they thought he was all through, he beckoned them and announced that now things must be bought for their part of the house, the big rooms upstairs, and these Mary positively must select. But first they would have lunch and take a drive.
The Judge took his party to the best hotel, engaged rooms and ordered an elaborate luncheon, over which he was gay as a boy on a holiday. Then, in an open carriage, they started out to see the city.
They drove through miles of badly paved dusty streets, faced with wooden buildings. The Judge admitted that it was not a beautiful city—business couldn't be beautiful, except to the mind—but it appealed to his imagination.
Its history was romantic, going back into the dim past. Before the whites came, this had been a meeting-place for the Indian tribes; and later for voyageurs and traders. It had been French territory, then English to the end of the Revolutionary War. Its Indian name meant "wild onion"—a racy and flavoursome name, suggesting strength!
"Think of it—twenty-five years ago this city had less than five thousand inhabitants—now it has a quarter of a million! It's growing like a weed!"
They crossed the river which ran through the middle of the city, and the Judge pointed to the thronged wharves where ten thousand vessels arrived in a year and nearly as many cleared, bringing lumber, carrying the yield of the prairie, wheat, corn, and oats. "Chicago might yet have a direct European trade—a ship had sailed from there to Liverpool, with wheat, and three European vessels had sailed to Chicago...."
Built on the flat prairie, on sand and swamp, almost on the level of the lake, nearly the whole city had now been raised a grade of ten feet; an entire business block being raised at one time! With such an energetic and growing population, with its marvellous situation, commanding the lake trade and with all the western territory to draw from, the city had a great future. "Half the country will be tributary to it," said the Judge with glowing eyes....