The Senator always sees straight.  He said also:  “He rough-hews everything he handles, including his neighbours’ nerves; he has no mercy or pity or consideration for anyone serving him, and yet he’s the kindest heart towards children and animals, and the good he does to them is about the only thing he don’t brag about.”

It interested me immensely, but Tom had got so ruffled that I am sure even his sense of humour could not have kept him from contradicting Craik Purdy, his name is—­Craik V. Purdy, I mean!

The Senator told us lots more about him and his methods, succeeding by sheer brute force and shouting all opposition down.  Don’t you wish, Mamma, we had some like him at home to deal with the socialists?  These men are the real autocrats of the world, even though America is a republic.  But wouldn’t it be frightful to be married to a person like that!  Octavia, who even in the noise of the train had heard some of it, asked the Senator what the wife was like, and he told us she had been a girl of his own class who had never risen with him, and was a rare exception in American women, who rise quicker than the men as a rule.

“She’s been every sort of drawback to him,” he said, “and yet he is almighty kind to her and covers her with diamonds; and she is a dullish sort of woman with a cold in her head.”

Octavia said at once that was the kind she wanted to see in Chicago.  Of what use to meet more charming and refined people like in New York or Philadelphia.  She wanted to sample the “rough-hewn.”  And we both felt, Mamma, one must have a nice streak in one to go on being kind to a person who has a continual cold in her head.

The Senator said he would arrange a luncheon party for us in Chicago unlike anything we had had in any place yet, and it is coming off to-morrow.  But first I must tell you of Detroit, where we stopped the night before last, and of our arrival here.  The whole train goes over in a ferry boat from the Canadian to the American side and dinner and screaming tram cars under the window are the only distinct memories I have after our arrival, until next day, when we took a motor and went for a drive.

Detroit is really the most perfectly laid out city one could imagine, and such an enchanting park and lake,—­infinitely better than any town I know in Europe.  It ought to be a paradise in about fifty years when it has all matured.  That is where the Americans are clever, in the beautiful laying-out of their towns; but then, as I said, they have not old debris to contend with, though I shall always think it looks queer and unfinished to see houses standing just in a mown patch unseparated from the road by any fence.  I should hate the idea of strangers being able to peep into my windows.