They had oysters (a New Yorker would have sniffed at them),
and chicken potpie, and asparagus, and ice cream. If that
doesn't prove Mrs. Brandeis was game, I should like to know
what could! They stopped at the Windsor-Clifton, because it
was quieter and less expensive than the Palmer House, though
quite as full of red plush and walnut. Besides, she had
stopped at the Palmer House with her husband, and she knew
how buyers were likely to be besieged by eager salesmen with
cards, and with tempting lines of goods spread knowingly in
the various sample-rooms.

Fanny Brandeis was thirteen, and emotional, and incredibly
receptive and alive. It is impossible to tell what she
learned during that Chicago trip, it was so crowded, so
wonderful. She went with her mother to the wholesale houses
and heard and saw and, unconsciously, remembered. When she
became fatigued with the close air of the dim showrooms,
with their endless aisles piled with every sort of ware, she
would sit on a chair in some obscure corner, watching those
sleek, over-lunched, genial-looking salesmen who were
chewing their cigars somewhat wildly when Mrs. Brandeis
finished with them. Sometimes she did not accompany her
mother, but lay in bed, deliciously, until the middle of the
morning, then dressed, and chatted with the obliging Irish
chamber maid, and read until her mother came for her at
noon.

Everything she did was a delightful adventure; everything
she saw had the tang of novelty. Fanny Brandeis was to see
much that was beautiful and rare in her full lifetime, but