The Book of Chicago

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1920. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXV A CHILD AND ITS A-B-C HAT the best of all the monuments to Lincoln should be in Chicago, and that the finest lines descriptive of the monument were written by a Chicago poet, --but that the lines were not written about the Lincoln monument at all--are among -the Chicago anomalies. William Vaughn Moody wrote of the Colonel Shaw monument in Boston, instead of the monument in Chicago, to Lincoln, who inspired Shaw; Saint Gaudens made both monuments; and the noble opening lines remain ineffaceably in the memory: "Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe." Those are probably the only two rememberable lines that Moody wrote; but it is an achievement, in this world of forgetfulness, to build two lines that may last. And the achievement of Saint Gaudens will certainly last. Chicago loves to tell of the visit to the city of Arnold Bennett of the Five Towns. He was taken, so you are told, on a motor trip over the miles and miles of the splendid boulevard system. He was told one fact and another fact, facts were piled upon facts, but he maintained an uninterested mouthbreathing silence. From the Five Towns author came naught of responsiveness. Cost, so many millions, height, so many feet, annual business totals so many billions, figures of wealth, education, parks, business--nothing mattered to Bennett. It is typical of the city that this is deemed a joke on the novelist and not on the city. If Bennett could be shown and told so much and feel no interest in it, so much the worse for Bennett! But even that English novelist was for a moment stirred. The motor-car swung curvingly in front of the Saint Gaudens Lincoln, and Bennett both literally and figuratively sat up. "Now, there is expression!" he said. Chicago ...