"Don't be an ass, Roland," Duncan replied. "It is about time you knew that the chief industry of 'the city of the future', as some fool journalist calls Chicago,--pork of course excepted,--is grain, and elevators are the warehouses where it is stored. I am going out to work a scheme to buy them all up, make a trust, and sell the stock in London. Our house are the middlemen between Chicago and the Britons. Now do you see?"
"Well, I'm deuced glad I didn't go into Wall Street," Roland replied. "I shouldn't care to be shut up in that beastly hole, Chicago. I don't believe there is a sportsman in the place. I stopped there a day once on my way to Minnesota, grouse shooting, and I never saw such a rum place. I put up at the biggest hotel in the town, and there wasn't much to complain of in the size of it; but the dirt and the niggers were too much for me. I had to eat dinner at two o'clock and I wish you could have seen how they managed it. I was met at the door by a six-foot black man in a waistcoat that was perhaps white in the year one, and a coat made in the days of Henry Clay. He waltzed us down the room with the airs of a drum major and put us at a table with a drummer and a cow-boy. There we were given in charge of another colored gentleman who polished off the plates with a greasy towel, and placed big tumblers of iced water at each place. He took our orders and brought us the soup in fairly good shape, except that his black fingers got into all the plates; but you ought to have seen the rest of the dinner. He started from the kitchen at a record-breaking pace, spinning a tray on the forefinger of his right hand. He galloped past us and deposited his implements on a side table, then he commenced to sling canary birds' bath tubs, filled with heaven knows what, across the table like poker chips, until we had a perfect collection of samples of the most villainously cooked truck I ever tasted. I tried to make out a 'feed', but I gave it up when the black gentleman appeared with all sorts of pie, floating island, ice cream and jelly. I then fled in despair and went out for a walk, but I didn't find anything but mud, smoke, and cable cars. I tell you, Duncan, old man, you don't know what Chicago is, or you wouldn't look so beautifully unconcerned."