Chicago a phoenix city risen from the ashes of its great fire; downtown business buildings two, three and four stories high, more of former than latter, few a little higher, elevators a rare luxury; across the river many one-story stores and shops with signs in large lettering, pioneer style, on their false fronts; streets paved with granite blocks echo to the rumble of iron-tired wheels and the clank of iron-shod hoofs; a continuous singing of steel car-cables on State Street and Wabash Avenue; horse-drawn cross-town cars thickly carpeted with straw in winter; outlying residential streets paved with cedar blocks; avenues boasting asphalt. Bonneted women with wasp waists, leg o’ mutton sleeves, bustles, their lifted, otherwise dust-collecting, skirts revealing high-buttoned shoes and gaily-striped stockings; men in brown derbies, short jackets, high-buttoned waist-coats, tight trousers without cuffs and, when pressed, without pleats; shirts with Piccadilly collars and double-ended cuffs of detachable variety (story told of how a famous author’s hero, scion of an old house, when traveling by train, saw a beautiful young lady, undoubtedly of aristocratic birth, possibly royal, and wanting to meet her, love at first sight, object matrimony, first retires, with true blue-blood gentility, to wash-room and reverses cuffs. Romance, incident ruthlessly deleted by publisher, proves a best seller). Black walnut furniture upholstered in hair-cloth, pride of many a Victorian parlor, is gradually being replaced by golden oak and ash; painters’ studios, especially portrait variety, are hung with oriental rugs and littered with oriental screens and pottery. High bicycles, the Columbia with its little wheel behind and the Star with the little wheel in front, soon to disappear, are still popular. Low wheels, called “safeties,” are beginning to appear, occasionally ridden by women wearing bloomers. Pneumatic tires unknown.

Recognized now as a period of over-ornamentation and bad taste, the Nineties were nevertheless years of leisurely contacts, kindly advice and an appreciative pat on the back by an employer, and certainly a friendly bohemianism seldom known in the rush and drive of today.

Eugene Field has just returned from a vacation in Europe and in his column, Sharps and Flats, Chicago is reading the first printing of Wynken, Blynken and Nod. Way & Williams, publishers, have an office on the floor below my studio. Irving Way, who would barter his last shirt for a first edition, his last pair of shoes for a volume from the Kelmscott Press of William Morris, is a frequent and always stimulating visitor.

“Will,” says Irving, “be over at McClurg’s some noon soon, in Millard’s rare book department, the ‘Amen Corner.’ Field will be there, and Francis Wilson, who is appearing at McVickar’s in The Merry Monarch, and other collectors. Maybe there’ll be an opportunity for me to introduce you—and Francis Wilson might ask you to do a poster.”

I go to the Press Club occasionally with Nixon Waterman, the columnist who was later to write his oft-quoted, “A rose to the living is more, If graciously given before The slumbering spirit has fled, A rose to the living is more Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead.” We sit at table with Opie Read, the well-loved humorist; Ben King, who wrote the delightful lament, “Nothing to eat but food, nowhere to go but out”; Stanley Waterloo, who wrote The Story of Ab and, with Luders, the musical comedy, Prince of Pilsen, and other newspaper notables whose names I have forgotten.

Two panoramas, Gettysburg and Shiloh, are bringing welcome wages to landscape and figure painters who will soon migrate to St. Joe across the lake and return in the fall with canvases to be hung at the Art Institute’s annual show.

Only one topic on every tongue—the coming World’s Fair.

Herbert Stone is at Harvard. He and his classmate, Ingalls Kimball, quickened with enthusiasm and unable to await their graduation, have formed the publishing company of Stone & Kimball. On paper bearing two addresses, Harvard Square, Cambridge, and Caxton Building, Chicago, Herbert commissions a cover, title-page, page decorations and a poster for When Hearts Are Trumps, a book of verse by Tom Hall—my first book assignment. This pleasing recognition from a publishing house is followed by a meeting with Harriet Monroe and a Way & Williams commission for a cover and decorations for the Columbian Ode.

Your studio is now in the Monadnock building. It is the year of the World’s Fair. You have an exhibit that has entitled you to a pass. Jim Corbett is in a show on the Midway. When he is not on the stage you can see him parading on the sidewalks. Buffalo Bill is appearing in a Wild West show. An edition of Puck is being printed in one of the exhibition buildings.

You design a cover for a Chicago and Alton Railroad folder. The drawing goes to Rand McNally for engraving and printing. Mr. Martin asks you to come and see him. His salary offer is flattering. But, aside from Bridwell’s designs at Mathews Northrup’s in Buffalo, railroad printing is in a long-established rut, void of imagination. You prefer free-lancing. Later Mr. Martin buys the K & L plant. Herbert Rogers, the former bookkeeper, establishes his own plant and you hope he will continue the K & L tradition.

Mr. McQuilkin, editor of The Inland Printer, commissions a permanent cover. When the design is finished I ask:

“Why not do a series of covers—a change of design with each issue?”

“Can’t afford them.”

“How about my making an inducement in the way of a tempting price?”

“I’ll take the suggestion to Shephard.”

Suggestion approved by Henry O. Shephard, printer and publisher, and the series is started—an innovation, the first occasion when a monthly magazine changes its cover design with each issue. One cover, nymph in pool, is later reproduced in London Studio. Another, a Christmas cover, has panel of lettering that four American and one German foundry immediately begin to cut as a type. Later the American Type Founders Company, paying for permission, names the face “Bradley.”

A poster craze is sweeping the country. Only signed copies are desired by collectors and to be shown in exhibitions. Designs by French artists: Toulouse-Lautrec, ChÉret, Grasset, etc., some German and a few English, dominate displays. Edward Penfield’s Harper’s Monthly and my Chap-Book designs are only American examples at first available.

Will Davis, manager of the Columbia Theater, has just completed the Haymarket, out on West Madison at Halstead. You design and illustrate the opening-night souvenir booklet. This you do for Mr. Kasten, of McClure’s. Thus you meet Mr. Davis. He introduces you to Dan Frohman who commissions you to design a twenty-eight sheet stand for his brother, Charles, who is about to open the new Empire Theater in New York. So you design a poster for The Masqueraders, by Henry Arthur Jones. This is probably the first signed theatrical poster produced by any American lithographer. Then Dan suggests that you visit New York. You do, and meet Charles. Dan takes you to the Players for lunch. There you see show-bills set in Caslon. They influence all of your future work in the field of typography.

We now move to Geneva, Illinois, and I have my studio in a cottage overlooking the beautiful Fox River.

Holiday covers for Harper’s Weekly, Harper’s Bazaar, Harper’s Young People, later named Harper’s Roundtable, page decorations for Vogue, a series of full-page designs for Sunday editions of Chicago Tribune, Herbert Stone’s Chap-Book article and other favorable publicity—plucking me long before I am ripe, cultivate a lively pair of gypsy heels; and believing myself, perhaps excusably, equal to managing a printing business, editing and publishing an art magazine, designing covers and posters, I return to Boston, then settle in Springfield, start the Wayside Press, and publish Bradley: His Book.