Not turned down.
ABOUT CHICAGO.
BY THE PANSIES.
I THINK it is great fun to go to Chicago on a visit, and then come back and hear about it as it used to be. My grandfather went there in 1833. He was just a boy, but he remembers lots of queer things. He went to church in a kind of a barn; the front part was the church, and there was a curtain in the middle, and behind it the minister lived—slept, you know, and ate, and everything. Think of that for Chicago! There was a school kept in a little room on Water Street; the woman who taught it had twenty scholars. The mail was brought once a week by a man on horseback, and the postmaster had a row of old boots nailed up on the wall for mail boxes. Grandfather says the place had begun to grow real fast when he went there, and as many as two hundred frame houses were built within a short time. He was there when they voted to make it a regular town, with officers and laws. One law was that pigs must not run in the streets, and that people must not cut holes in their outside walls and poke stove-pipe through them.
Robert Chappell.
CHICAGO IN 1820.
The word “Chicago” used to be spelled “Chicagoux.” Some people think it was named for the “Cheagomeinan River,” which is the Indian name for the Chicago River. The Indians called the Mississippi River “Chacaqua,” which means “divine river,” and I think they worked the name Chicago out of all these notions. My uncle says the name of the French fort in 1688 was Fort Checagou. I like to study about names, and find what they mean, and how many changes they have had before we got hold of them. I have never been to Chicago, but I expect to attend the Columbian Exposition. If you will wait until after that I will tell you something about the city. It is larger than it used to be.