The following day I flew to Chicago, though after slogging through the interminable corridors of O'Hare Airport, my impression was that I had walked the distance. Chicago, of course, was different from my preconceived ideas; not that I was expecting gangsters, but I anticipated a noisy, ultramodern city situated, as a boy at my school once wrote, "at the bottom of Lake Michigan."
The noise and bustle are there, but so too are pleasant suburbs, attractive lakeside drives, and ornately old-style bars reminiscent of the Chicago of Dreiser's novels. Even the hotel I stayed at, the Pick Congress, was sedate, luxurious and traditional in style.
The fault lies mainly with our school-books which since 1492 or thereabout, have continued to speak of the "New World", ignoring the fact that the centuries have been rolling by. Buildings, during a period of two or three hundred years are pulled down, or burn down, or fall down and there is nothing old under the sun. I always feel cheated when visiting an old edifice, allegedly built in the 12th Century and find instead that: "This historic building was constructed in 1740 on what was presumed to be the site of the original foundation of 1190 A.D. It was extended in 1780 and 1790, restored in 1860 and completely gutted by fire in 1910. The present structure (housing a Division of the N.C.B.) was completed in 1935, about two miles from the former site and is a reproduction, based on an artist's impression made on Armistice Night, 1918, of what the original may have looked like, prior to, or possibly just after the fire."