Children of the Market Place

It is war! Mars has descended. The irrepressible conflict has taken the sword. The house divided against itself is in the last contest to see whether there shall be two houses o...

There was the law against Zoe taking this step, and against any one having any part in it. Still would it be known? I was content to wait for developments and meanwhile to put t...

But I did not retire. I stood for a few moments looking through the window into the darkness. Then I placed my belongings in my satchel, stole softly out of the room, down the g...

The next morning while I was sitting near the door, cleaning my rifle, I heard the soft pounding of a horse's hoofs on the heavy sod, and looking up saw Reverdy and Sarah. He wa...

Barnum had been taken by De Quincey as an epitome of America: "A great hulk of a continent, that the very moon finds fatiguing to cross, produces a race of Barnums on a pre-Adam...

I began to see myself as boring through opposition with lowered head and indomitable will. I was strengthened by the fact that I had never swerved from my duty to Zoe. And now t...

"My dear friend: It hurts me to think that you stole off in the darkness. I can see you in imagination walking the lonely way, carrying your satchel. Perhaps it made no differen...

We returned from Washington to New York, for much was going on in the metropolis. The newspapers day by day were full of Douglas and his difficulties in Chicago. The common coun...

Our pension was all that could be desired. Mr. and Mrs. Winchell were here from America, from Connecticut. She was about twenty-seven; he was nearly sixty. They were on their wa...

Who should call upon me the next morning after my arrival in Chicago but Yarnell? I had not seen him now for several years. And he was a delegate to the Republican convention.

Because of the gossip concerning Zoe, and the fact that I had killed Lamborn, opposition was made to me as a delegate to the Congressional convention. I was an alien too; but th...

Isabel now took Reverdy into her heart with an ardor that could not be mistaken. She often went to bring him from school to the pension. She took him in walks about the broken c...

The truth was that the loneliness in my life was depressing me; it was in a sense work without hope--only the hope of being rich. While I could not doubt Abigail's fitness as a...

In passing to the boat landing I stumbled and fell, bruising myself painfully. I was hurrying to get away and in my haste and sorrow I was oblivious of my surroundings. As I lim...

What were my thoughts after all? Was I ashamed of my kinship with Zoe? With this human being who had nursed me so tenderly through my illness? Did I begrudge her the interest wh...

"Dear Grandmama: I cannot describe to you the conditions that surround me. The boundless extent of the country, the wildness and beauty of the prairies, the roughness of this fr...

The press comments of the country on Lincoln's nomination were exceedingly conflicting. He was written of as the man whom Douglas had beaten two years before, and without other...

I wanted to stop on the way to see Reverdy and Sarah. I had a call to the renewal of the old days, to an overlooking of the farm, the places I had first known in Illinois. But a...

I begin to wonder about my Reverdy. At the school I see him in association with English boys. He is not so strong as they, not so handsome, not so alert and apt. Isabel has neve...

I had had a delirium in the serious illness through which Zoe had nursed me, in which a blue fly crawling up the windowpane, sliding down the windowpane, buzzing in the corner o...

Buffalo, they told me, had about 15,000 people. I wished to see something of it before departing for the farther west. For should I ever come this way again? I started from the...

I had many business vexations on returning to Chicago. But also the campaign of 1848 was on, and I was deeply interested in it. I had passed through the panic of 1837, but I was...

Fortunately for my peace of mind I had much to do and much to interest me. The country was developing rapidly under my eyes. Thousands of farms were coming into cultivation. The...

Day by day I stood on the wharves, watching the steamers unload and load, gazing over the busy mass of humanity back of which was labor, black and white, slave and free! The gre...

Alton, this old town that I had visited so many times before, was crowded with people drawn from the surrounding country, from across the river in Missouri. As to the temper of...

Douglas' hard campaign was ended when we arrived in Springfield. His humorous remark was that he had the constitution of the United States. He was never so wholly fatigued that...

What was the result? General Taylor had 1,360,099 votes and 163 electoral votes; Cass had 1,220,544 votes and 127 electoral votes. The Abolitionists polled 300,000 votes in the...

This June weather in Illinois! Such glorious white clouds floating in the boundless hemisphere of fresh blue! The warmth and the vitality of the air! The glistening leaves of th...

The next morning the alarm over the cholera is more intense. All kinds of horrifying stories go the rounds. News has been brought by passengers on the stage that a man and his w...

I felt now the truth of Webster's picturesque words that "the imprisoned winds were let loose." We might have a transcontinental railroad, and Douglas' Illinois Central might co...

Standing beside the dead body of this man a future with Isabel took form in my heart. Love is a great solemnity itself. And in this moment I felt that Isabel shared my vision.

I took a house in Madison Street, some two blocks from the lake. There was first the business of having Mammy and Jenny registered, something similar to a dog license. But Mr. W...

We were some hours getting through the sand. Then we came to hilly country overgrown with oaks and some pines. Later the soil was rocky. We skirted along a little river; and her...

Dorothy was in terror. We had been married so short a time. Our happiness had been undisturbed. We had found such perfect enjoyment in our home. We had taken such delight in the...

We found Washington much as Dickens had described it seven years before. The avenues were broad. They began in great open spaces and faded into commons equally unbounded. They s...

The next morning I awoke with such a feeling of repose, of being at home at last. I was lying in a poster bed, which Mrs. Clayton had told me was an heirloom from North Carolina...

The next day I went out to look at the ten acres which Douglas had given for the founding of the University of Chicago. I walked over the ground, came to the lake. I was thinkin...

Russell Lamborn left the courthouse with Reverdy and me. He lingered at the gate as if he wished an invitation to go into Reverdy's house; but Reverdy did not invite him. He wou...

If I were recording the life of an artist I should be dealing with different causes acting upon his development, or with different effects produced by the same times in which Do...

I had heard much of Jackson and all his works of wonder: as the victor at New Orleans, the greatest hater of England, as the firm friend of the Union against the rebellion of So...

The autumn was coming on. The cholera had abated. The air was cool and fresh. The country was taking fire from the colors of the changing year. And I was feeling more rugged tha...

I was building a business block in Chicago, which had come to a tangle owing to labor conditions. Throughout the country there was a movement for the ten-hour day, and there wer...

Dorothy and I lingered in Havana until we were sure that spring had come to Chicago. Then we took a boat to New Orleans; and once again I ascended the Mississippi to St. Louis,...

We sailed on the _Persia_, 376 feet long, 45 feet of beam, gross tonnage 3300, horsepower 4000, speed 14 knots an hour. As Dorothy knew nothing of ocean sailing craft she was un...

I was now more lonely than I had ever been in my life, more lonely than I was on the farm. Then I had youth and expectation of wonderful things. I had ebullient spirits which we...

Yarnell was a man of about thirty. He seemed very mature to me. In fact he was quite a man of the world. I had told him my destination, and asked him how best to reach it. He ha...

No way to mark time quicker than by Presidentials. Four years pass in the space of two or less; for no sooner is a President installed than committees meet for reformations and...

I was listless all the way home. Passing through Jacksonville I seemed to sense a coldness in the manner of some of the people. Even where there was a smile and a bow, to which...

Large mercantile establishments were building in Chicago. Elevators and pork-packing plants fronted the Chicago River. The harbor was being improved by the Federal government. T...

At times afterward I reproached myself for not doing more to fix the guilt of Zoe's death upon Fortescue. Particularly as it became clear to me that his freedom from that respon...

Sarah and Zoe followed me to the door the morning I went to see Mr. Brooks. Cholera had descended upon the community and they begged me to go to Mr. Brooks' office and return at...

I had much to do, and work kept me from brooding. It was three days after I had gone to find Reverdy that he came to see me, bringing Douglas. My first words to Reverdy were con...

Scarcely had Douglas settled as Secretary of State, when he resigned the office to become Justice of the Supreme Court of Illinois. Abigail wrote me a most amusing and ironical...

The house was done. My furnishings were delivered. There were curtains to make, many feminine touches were needed to settle the rooms. Sarah did all that she could, but Dorothy...

A few days before Dorothy returned to Nashville we spent an evening together, first at Reverdy's home, later in a walk through the country. It was moonlight of middle November,...

The clerk of the hotel told me that the best route was by way of Albany, the canal, the Great Lakes to Chicago; that when I got there I would likely find a boat or stage service...

I am eighteen and the year is 1833. All of Europe is in a ferment, is bubbling over in places. Napoleon has been hearsed for twelve years in St. Helena. But the principles of th...

This dinner was the most delightful of occasions. Dorothy was in brilliant spirits. And Mrs. Clayton shared in her daughter's happiness. The colored servants, all slaves, affect...

I had no opportunity now to tell Douglas that I had found Zoe. Her own injunctions to keep her whereabouts a secret appealed to me. Perhaps her going away, the changing of her n...

But what of Douglas? During the war I had been entirely out of touch with him. What was he doing? What had he accomplished? What was now stirring in his restless imagination? Th...

I sold the farm at last and moved to Chicago. It was with sorrow that I broke up my association with Reverdy and Sarah, and their little family. But I was much relieved to be ou...

I was born in London on the eighteenth of June, 1815. The battle of Waterloo was being fought as I entered this world. Thousands were giving up their lives at the moment that li...