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.

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.

Thomas L. Wood, Jr.

My father knows about a man who bought a lot in Chicago in the year 1832 for one hundred dollars, and sold it again about three years afterwards for fifteen thousand dollars! I think that tells a boy better than anything else could, how fast the town grew for a while. Of course it was a nice choice lot, in what suddenly became the business part of the town. I know I should like to have been its first owner.

Robert Townsend.

I read about how Chicago came to be called the “Garden City.” It grew out of hard times. They had what is called a business panic, when everybody owed everybody else, and could not pay them, and business was awfully dull, and people thought the town was going to ruin. The most people had to do was to take care of their grounds. They whitewashed the fences, cleaned up the yards, planted fruits and vines, and did everything they could think of to make their places look pretty. I suppose they hoped somebody would come along and buy them. And that is the way they got the name of “Garden City.”

Alice Peterson.

The people who lived in Chicago about the year 1843 certainly could not have had so high an opinion of the city as people do who live there now. A Mr. Miltimore built a schoolhouse on Madison Street which was called “Miltimore’s Folly,” because people did not believe that there would ever be children enough in the town to fill so large a building. The mayor of the city urged the Council to have it turned into an insane asylum, or sold, and the money from it used to build and care for a smaller building, suited to the present and future needs of the city! I don’t think he could have been a very bright man, because in less than four years from that time the building was not only crowded with scholars, but three others had to be opened in different parts of the city.

Roger Shermann.

Chicago is a great place for manufactories. It seems to me as though almost everything was made there. I know they make brooms, and bricks, and boilers, and hats and caps, and saws, and scales, and nails, and paint, and gloves, and carpets, and I am sure I don’t know what else; I guess they make everything. Once I went to the car-wheel factory where they make three hundred wheels every day. It was great fun to see the men work. I like to see things made, and that is what I am going to do when I am a man.

Robbie Wilson.

We are reading in school about the Chicago fire, which was in 1871. I think it is perfectly dreadful to read about it. Just think! it all came from a woman milking after dark, when she ought to have done it before, I suppose; or maybe her little boy ought to have done it for her, and did not come home in time—well, the cow kicked her lamp over and set the hay in the barn on fire, and all that awful ruin came!

I think that woman must have felt dreadfully. As for the cow, I don’t suppose she cared a bit.

Laura Jones.

I know a man who was in Chicago at the time of the fire, and he paid fifteen dollars for a hack to drive him half a mile! He says a hundred thousand people were made homeless that night. Folks ran through the streets as if they were crazy. Everybody was trying to carry something of theirs to a safe place. One woman tried to save her sewing-machine; she dragged it through the streets a long distance. One man walked along quietly, carrying an ice-pitcher. He said it was all he had left in the world.

The poor man had been made crazy by his losses, and did not know what he was about.

Thomas Jones.

We lived in Terre Haute, Ind., at the time of the great Chicago fire—at least my folks did—and my father says that on Monday, the ninth, while the fire was still burning, a train loaded full of provisions went out of Terre Haute for them. I think that was nice. There is a boy in school who says that his folks, who lived in Pittsburg, raised a hundred thousand dollars before Wednesday night, and sent it to the Chicago sufferers, and another fellow said that was nothing; that his uncle in Louisville raised most a hundred thousand within ten hours after the fire began! He talked as though his uncle did it all, but I suppose some others helped.

Willard J. Mooney.

I think the great big splendid temperance temple is the grandest building in Chicago, and I helped build it. I gave two dollars and seventeen cents that I earned myself, for it. In 1893 I am going to see it, and some other things. I think you ought to have waited until after the Columbian Exposition for letters about Chicago. Then we could have told lots of things.

Mary Clarkson.

I went to Chicago with my grown-up sisters when the Y. P. S. C. E. had its big meeting there. We stopped at the Sherman House. That is one of the nicest hotels in the city. At seven o’clock Sunday morning we had a prayer meeting in the billiard-room; more than a hundred young ladies and gentlemen spoke at that meeting in less than a half-hour, and the singing was lovely. The big meetings were held in Battery D. Ever so many thousand people were there all the time. Some of the speeches were splendid. Chicago is very large. My cousin and I took a ride on a street car as far as it went, then got out and took another line and went as far as its route, just to see the city. They have very tall buildings. I went to the Herald office; that is the handsomest newspaper building in the world, I guess.

Lucy J. Hartmann.

Once I went to the church where Mr. Moody used to preach. I heard the Rev. Charles Goss; he is young. I liked him. I went to a splendid store, but I don’t remember where it was. There was a newsboys’ dinner given while we were there, and I went to look at the boys eating their cake and cream. There were hundreds of them, and they ate fast and seemed to like it.

A great many benevolent things like that are done in Chicago, but I think they need a temperance temple; I saw lots of drunken men, and one drunken woman.

Alice Peters.