We left about twelve, after being interviewed by several reporters in the hall of the hotel.  These halls are apparently meeting places for countless men, simply crammed like one could have imagined a portico in the Roman days,—­not people necessarily staying there, but herds of others from outside.  The type gets thicker as one leaves New York.  It reminds one of a funny man I once saw in the pantomime who put on about six suits, one after another, growing gradually larger, though no taller or fatter—­just thick.  All these in the hall were meaty, not one with that lean look of the pictures of “Uncle Sam,” but more like our “John Bull,” only not portly and complacent as he is, but just thick all over, at about the three coat stage; thick noses, thick hair, thick arms, thick legs, and nearly invariably clean-shaven and keen looking.  The Senator said they were the ordinary business people and might any of them rise to be President of the Republic.  We are perfectly overcome with admiration and respect for their enormous advancing and adaptive power, because just to look at we should not call these of the Senator’s class.  But think what brains they must have, and what vitality; and those things matter a great deal more than looks to a country.

The Senator said the type would culminate in Chicago, and gradually get finer again out in the far West.  And he seemed right, from the impression we got of the crowd in this hotel.  It was rather like a Christmas nightmare, when everyone had turned into a plum pudding, or those gingerbread men the old woman by the Wavebeach pier used to sell.  Do you remember, Mamma?  Perfectly square and solid.  They are ahead of Detroit, and at the six coat stage here.  Probably all as good as gold, and kind and nice and full of virtues; but for strangers who don’t know all these things, just to look at, they make one think one is dreaming.

Do you suppose it is, if they have to be so much among pork and meat generally, perhaps that makes them solid?  We did not know a soul to speak to, nor did the Senator either, though he said he was acquainted with many nice people in Chicago; so perhaps they were just travellers like us after all, and we have no right to judge of a place by them.

We supped—­we had arrived very late—­and watched the world in from the theatres.  We don’t know of what class they were, or of what society, only they were not the least like New York.  The women were, some of them, very wonderfully dressed, though not that exquisite Paris look of the New Yorkers, and they had larger hats and brighter colours; and numbers of them were what the Senator calls “homely.”  We were very silent,—­naturally, we did not like to say our thoughts aloud to the Senator, an American; but he spoke of it to us himself.

He said his eye, accustomed to the slender lean cowboys and miners, found them just as displeasing as he was sure we must.  “Lordy,” he said, “they look a set of qualifying prize-fighters gorged with sausage-meat, and then soaked in cocktails.”  And though that sounds frightfully coarse to write, Mamma, it is rather true.  Then he added, “And yet some of the brightest brains of our country have come from Chicago.  I guess they kept pretty clear of this crowd.”