whiskey of the Commercial Club, and to the desk in the inner office behind
the glass partitions. And I like to think that I satisfied my father those
two years in the mills. After a time I achieved a lazy content. At first I
tried to deceive myself; to think that the newsy column of Wabash was as
significant as the grand page of London or Paris. That simple yarn didn't
satisfy me many months.

Then my father died. I hung on at the mills for a time, until the strikes
and the general depression gave me valid reasons for withdrawing. To skip
details, I sold out my interests, and with my little capital came to
Chicago. My income, still dependent in some part upon those Wabash mills,
trembles back and forth in unstable equilibrium.

Chicago was too much like Wabash just then. I went to Florence to join a
man, half German Jew, half American, wholly cosmopolite, whom I had known
in Paris. His life was very thin: it consisted wholly of interests--a
tenuous sort of existence. I can thank him for two things: that I did not
remain forever in Italy, trying to say something new, and that I began a
definite task. I should send you my book (now that it is out and people
are talking about it), but it would bore you, and you would feel that you
must chatter about it. It is a good piece of journeyman work. I gathered
enough notes for another volume, and then I grew restless. Business called
me home for a few months, so I came back to Chicago. Of all places! you
say. Yes, to Chicago, to see this brutal whirlpool as it spins and spins.
It has fascinated me, I admit, and I stay on--to live up among the
chimneys, hanging out over the cornice of a twelve-story building; to soak
myself in the steam and smoke of the prairie and in the noises of a city's
commerce.

Am I content? Yes, when I am writing to you; or when the pile of