But I sez to Miss Plank, "There is other folks I like jest as well as I
do my relations, and if they had thought so much on 'em, why didn't they
stay with 'em in the first place?"

And Miss Plank kinder looked knowin' and nodded her head; she couldn't
swing right out free, as I could, bein' hampered by not wantin' to
offend any of her boarders.

Sez Mr. Bolster, "Chicago has the most energetic and progressive people
in the world. It hain't made up, like a Eastern village, of folks that
stay to home and set round on butter-tubs in grocery stores, talkin'
about hens. No, it is made up of people who dared--who wuz too
energetic, progressive, and ambitious, to settle down and be content
with what their fathers had. And they struck out new paths for
themselves, as the Pilgrim Fathers did.

"And it is of these people, who represent the advancin' and progressive
thought of the day, that Chicago is made up. It embodies the best energy
and ambition of the Eastern States and of Europe."

"Yes," sez Josiah, "that is jest so."

And then, sez Mr. Bolster, "Chicago is, as is well known, in the very
centre of the earth."

[Illustration: "Chicago is the very centre of the earth."]

"Yes," sez Josiah.