With few exceptions, the incidents recorded in these pages take place in one of the largest cities of the United States of America, and of that portion called Middle West, a city once conservative and provincial, and rather proud of these qualities; but now outgrown them, and linked by lightning limited trains to other teeming centers of the modern world: a city overtaken, in recent years, by the plague which has swept our country from the Atlantic to the Pacific - prosperity. Illustrated.