type indigenous to State Street, Chicago. Each is known by its
feathers. The barnyard variety may puzzle the amateur fancier, but
there is no mistaking the State Street chicken. It is known by its
soiled, high, white canvas boots; by its tight, short black skirt; by
its slug pearl earrings; by its bewildering coiffure. By every line of
its slim young body, by every curve of its cheek and throat you know
it is adorably, pitifully young. By its carmined lip, its near-smart
hat, its babbling of "him," and by the knowledge which looks boldly
out of its eyes you know it is tragically old.

Seated in the Pullman car, with a friendly newspaper protecting her
bright hair from the doubtful gray-white of the chair cover, Emma
McChesney, traveling saleswoman for T. A. Buck's Featherloom
Petticoats, was watching the telegraph poles chase each other back to
Duluth, Minnesota, and thinking fondly of Mary Cutting, who is the
mother-confessor and comforter of the State Street chicken.

Now, Duluth, Minnesota, is trying to be a city. In watching its
struggles a hunger for a taste of the real city had come upon Emma
McChesney. She had been out with her late Fall line from May until
September. Every Middle-Western town of five thousand inhabitants or
over had received its share of Emma McChesney's attention and
petticoats. It had been a mystifyingly good season in a bad business
year. Even old T. A. himself was almost satisfied. Commissions piled
up with gratifying regularity for Emma McChesney. Then, quite
suddenly, the lonely evenings, the lack of woman companionship, and
the longing for a sight of her seventeen-year-old son had got on Emma
McChesney's nerves.

She was two days ahead of her schedule, whereupon she wired her son,