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lights," much of the real community or suburban life which was there before. Commercial associations grow up, but so do church organizations, literary societies, lecture groups. The men who flock aboard train or street-car of a morning fling Christian names at each other quite generally. In many of these communities-not in all, by any meansthe aloofness, the stiffness, the grimness, of city life have mercifully been prevented from spreading. In scores of regions, neighbors compare notes across back fences on their early planting; groups of wives forgather over their sewing, their gossip, or their bridge-tables; the local ministers may hold their jobs for years.

It is to the "little Chicagos" that I invite the attention of any Eastern muck-raker or foreign journalist who may be planning to visit us. He will surely discover in most of them that the traditions of building honestly, living plainly, and rearing healthy children are being maintained. He will find them ambitious to be the best little communities they know how; each with a passionate local civic pride which is good for them, but perhaps not so good for the reformation of the city as a whole. For it is a theory that seems not without basis that the fostering of all this local, rather than metropolitan, patriotism, may be one thing which delays the general house-cleaning in politics which, when it comes, will dispose of certain vicious alliances and presumably solve our crime problem at the same time.

23

Ah, that crime problem! What concern there is about it, in New

York, in London, even in Paris! From our machine-guns are fired shots heard round the world. Many a picturesque writer one thousand, two thousand, four thousand miles. away, has had his shot at "criminal Chicago." Many a serious investigator has come here to find out what is the matter and has gone away deeply puzzled-unless he chose to build upon the facile hypothesis that prohibition is to blame.

I make no effort here to state what is to blame, and none to minimize the bloody incidents of the last few years. They are a disgrace indeed. So are the paltry, if not purposely abortive, gestures made about them by officialdom. Who can explain what strange inertia or preoccupation prevents the great sane majority of Chicagoans from dealing with the situation (and with the officials) as they deserve?

The present effort is merely to offer a few well known facts which will modify, or at least broaden, the conception of Chicago held by many people who do not live there. It has been pointed out that a great deal of the city's energy is just now being expended upon building. A great deal more is going into the process of "just living. Another part is being devoted to culture and to study. Here are some paragraphs which may be enlightening:

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In Chicago, the wicked, it is estimated that there are over 600,000 families. It is known that more than 165,000 of them own their homes. In 1926 they had a total of $672,726,ooo in the savings-banks, an increase of more than $380,000,000 since 1919. Workers, especially in factories, earn more than ever before. Strikes are

much less frequent, and seldom prove violent.

In Chicago, the "cradle of crime," 500,000 children attend public schools and 120,000 the parochial schools.

In Chicago, infamous, cruel, degraded place that it is, 11,000,000 books are taken out of the public library in a year; about a million people visit the Art Institute, and another million the Field Museum; and nearly 150,000 attend the concerts of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

In Chicago, where Youth is supposed to be going to its doom, you will find music schools and art schools in such numbers that no one has recently counted them; while for Youth there has been provided, as well, organized recreation which occupies millions of boys and girls each

year.

In Chicago, the ignorant and barbarian, two great non-sectarian universities attract 20,000 students a year, and are centers of research and instruction better known in Europe than at home; two others, Roman Catholic, add about 10,000 to the

roster.

One more paragraph about the universities. They are by no means of the old-fashioned cloistral order, but are actively diffusing knowledge instead of hoarding it. They have won the confidence of the larger public, and have been fully adopted as practical concerns of that public. The ordinary man knows a good deal about what they are doing; he even knows the names of some of their scientists as well as he knows the names of some of our most celebrated assassins. And he is aware that, along with

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Chicago brag? Be it so.

A city like this cannot be expected to go on forever, smiling foolishly while a distorted portrait of it is being exhibited from San Francisco to Moscow. One could wish for an organized effort to "brag," not in terms of products and profits, but in terms of social progress and the pursuit of happiness. One can perceive here, on every hand, material for a "publicity campaign," consisting of facts and not phrases, which would soon discourage one's chance companions in a smoking-compartment from asking, "Well, can a man go to Chicago now without getting killed?"

This article, which has nothing to do with such a campaign, started with the question: where is Chicago going? In several directions; that is the answer. Nearly 60,000 persons are added to its population each year. A great many of them, no doubt, become recruits to that body of people, stupid, criminal, or merely indifferent, who delay progress of any kind; but many others choose to join the ever-widening groups of sane, constructive, and even cultured folk who are building a metropolis despite all obstacles. The fact that Chicago has never ceased to grow, and to improve, through all its phases of calamity, folly, and political peril; the fact that even now, in a truly somber period, it is supporting so many good enterprises and eager for morethese things, to any one but a professional pessimist, would suggest that the city's course is not toward perdition.

T

THOSE QUARRELSOME BONAPARTES

IV-The Little Meddler of Toulon

ROBERT GORDON ANDERSON

HE BLOW Letizia long expected had fallen at last. She must leave her home, the house on the via Malerbe.

In the heart of winter the king had been killed, dying rather bravely for a good-natured incompetent fellow; and spring had come again—in spite of massacres and Reigns of Terror.

Wistfully, through these weeks, Letizia had watched peach and almond, lemon and cherry, break into pink and white, the mimosa into gold. With a fierce thirst she had drunk in their fragrance, mingled with the scent of juniper and rosemary, arbutus and myrtle, coming down from the hills-for the last time, she felt.

She had not been altogether happy in this house, for the handsome Carlo had had his troubling instabilities and, too, his downright infidelities. That he had other children besides the thirteen she herself had borne, there was good reason to believe. From here she had gone forth to war with him, in the saddle over the hills; and, since his death, had known the bitterness of poverty. But it had been her home for many years. And it was hallowed by a thousand associations, of the children, the old archdeacon, of birth and death and toil, vital experiences

which strike roots deeper than any existence of mere luxury, comfort, or freedom from care.

And now they were coming to drive her out, with her sons away, Joseph south, Napoleon on an expedition against Sardinia, and Lucien at Toulon. They never should have let him go. For Lucien had let his tongue wag again, this time with disastrous results. In his fieriest harangues yet, at Toulon and Marseilles, he had denounced the beloved leader Paoli. This was the last straw. Since the Bonapartes were so enamoured of France, said the Ajaccians, there let them go!

Resistance, Letizia knew, was hopeless. Nevertheless she had outlined a plan of defense worthy even of her second son, and, to carry it out, summoned every hand she could from the farms at Bocognano and Melleli. But Fesch and Cousin Ramolini had tried to dissuade her. And there were the children. So, resolute yet wavering because of them, she drew bolts and bars, this May night, saw that the men were sentineling terrace and doorways; then for a moment stood watching the stars above the belfries of San Giovanni Battista, the last petals falling in the gardens, and listened for footsteps, hoping her sons would come.

Later, she undressed and fell asleep, to be awakened, about ten o'clock, by a light violently flaming over her pillow. It was a torch of fir held by a bronzed arm; and in the orange and soot-black fumes she saw that the room was filled with armed men. But their faces, though fierce, were very friendly.

"Signora Letizia," said the holder of the torch, "rise quickly! In the woods are armed bands coming for you. You have in us a faithful escort. We will take you safely over the hills."

"Would you have me run away, Cousin Costa?" asked the widow intrepidly. "The Ramolinis, men and women, defend their homes to the last!"

"But the little ones, signora! Think of them."

It was of them that she had been thinking all the past week as she waited; and now she bowed her head resignedly.

"You are right, Cousin Costa; and if you will withdraw, I will make ready."

The dark faces and torches filed out; and quickly she dressed herself and, with Saveria's aid, the younger children, Caroline and Jerome. These she despatched with two of the men to the house of Fesch; then, taking a few handkerchiefs and stockings and changes of linen for herself, Marianne, Louis, and Pauline, with the three she stole out of the door and past the cathedral to the gates. Awed by the fierce demeanor of her escort, the warders let them through, and they made for the hills back of the town. Now, for fear of pursuit, the torches had to be put out; and they stumbled upward,

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over rocks and gullies. Their long dresses were torn by thorns and cactus, and they blundered against treetrunks, smiting their foreheads in the dark.

All night they wandered over the hills, descending, just before dawn, to the shore of the gulf opposite Ajaccio, where they saw a cluster of hovels and towers cutting dark segments out of the purple of the sky. It was Capitello; for the time at least, they were safe.

An hour passed without a sound, save for the lapping of the waves, the cry of night-birds wheeling around the towers, and an occasional shot from the far-off city, where the candles of early risers began to twinkle.

At last oar-locks creaked over the water; a boat grated on the shingle; and a short figure muffled in a greatcoat jumped on the shore. It was Napoleon, who had escaped from the bands sent out by Paoli to arrest him, by disguising himself as a shepherd. He was once more in uniform, having changed at Bastia, which he had reached safely, he told them; and then, on hearing of his family's peril, had secured boats.

"At once," he said, "I made for the quai of Ajaccio and sent a messenger to Cousin Ramolini's house. He said that you were heading for Capitello, and thither I sailed. And now let us embark. We go to better things! This way, Signora Mother."

They rowed to the lugger and boarded it, and as they rounded the point and, turning northward, skirted the coast, Letizia stood, an indomitable figure, on the starboard side. A little way inland, two pillars of smoke columned to the sky, and,

below these, flames rose and fell like variable fiery fountains. It was their farm-buildings at Melleli; and an unheeding bystander remarked: "Your home on the via Malerbe, too, is doomed, captain. I saw it being sacked. They had broken in the doors and were carrying out furniture and bedding into the street."

"Quiet, rascal!" said Napoleon sternly. "Do not distress her further." Then aloud, waving his hand at the shore: "That is the past. There"-he pointed to the north"lies our future. Let us be cheerful. Come, signora, up with it: a Vive la France!"

And "Vive la France!" cried Letizia bravely, though she had never cared much for that country. In the darkness none saw her lips tremble.

So she exchanged her home for a heaving deck and a country equally unstable. There was a stop of a few days at Calvi with some relatives, another at Bastia, where Fesch and the youngest children and, later, Joseph joined them; then with her brood Letizia covered the hundred miles of open water that lay between the island and Provence, to arrive at Toulon on June 12, 1793, weary, destitute, and hungry.

Here they were met by Lucien, who had come down to the wharf to meet the arriving packet; but though he had been for some time in the town, he did not help them much. He could shiver an oratorical lance most gallantly, but it was beyond him to nose out the best lodgings that could be had in the town for a few sous a day. Besides, he was rather miffed that his brothers did not ap

preciate that speech that had dispossessed them. What was a roof, anyway, when there was the free air of liberty all around them?

"Can you not get some sense in your head?" said Napoleon, there on the quai. "There is a time for everything; and it was no time at all to let loose that bombast. Hereafter you await word from me!"

Joseph too, though more mildly, upbraided him for his lack of caution; and that speech had been the chef d'œuvre of his young life-his nineteen years. He fancied himself now a noble Roman of the Cause. And when his mother pressed her inquiries about lodgings, addressing him as Lucien, which was not unnatural seeing that she had so had him christened, he bewildered her by requesting her to call him "Brutus" in the future. At this Paulette giggled and Napoleon swore; while Marianne, a self-possessed girl, at times almost as imperturbable as her second brother, retorted:

"We'll call you anything you want, if you'll only get us a place to sleep and something to eat."

Letizia, however, looked at him wonderingly, but tenderly none the less. What had got into the boy's head? Had he suffered a sunstroke or had the revolutionary horrors of this miserable France driven him mad? But Lucien had stamped off, enraged at the snickers. For a week he was in the sulks and vouchsafed them few glimpses of his handsome Greek-coin profile.

Meantime he had left them on the quai-eight-year-old Jerome in his little bobtailed coat; Louis, almost fifteen now, the bass beginning to render husky his boyish treble;

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