The University of Chicago Magazine, Vol. 1: Published by the University of Chicago Alumni Association; April, 1909 (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

Excerpt from The University of Chicago Magazine, Vol. 1: Published by the University of Chicago Alumni Association; April, 1909

It is proverbially easy to praise Athenians at Athens, or Parisians in Paris - and would be to praise Chicagoans in Chicago if it were not for something which sophisticated Chicagoans have more to fear than Chicago brag-namely Chicago blague. Herbert Spencer would have called it the anti-patriotic bias. Mr. George Ade's name for it is knocking. You still cherish a traitorous doubt whether the Mississippi Valley can grow any other flower of civilization than Pillsbury's best, or the metropolis of pork produce any other by products than the bristle of self-assertion or the squeal of self consciousness. You still wonder if we are not, as a visiting British brother innocently told the American Philological Association, too far away. You have learned to respond when Emerson says: Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay you think paltry places and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are and, if we will tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. But you would merely smile if one who is not an Emerson should attempt to enforce a like moral here and today. N ow it may be a defect of the historic sense, or some bluntness of aesthetic perceptions, but I am shamelessly and impenitently incapa ble of recognizing that Ryerson, Hutchinson, Haskell, Hull, Man del, Snell, Cobb, Walker, Kent, Beecher, Foster, Green, Reynolds, Blaine, Mitchell, and Hitchcock are less potent and pleasing names to conjure with than - Wigglesworth.

I cannot even concur in the familiar commonplaces about our ugliness. All anglo-american cities are hideous in their congested and utilitarian districts - and if we never go in quest of beauty we Shall not find it. It would be easy to cite Wordsworth, Ruskin, and Thoreau to the effect that the true lovers of natural beauty are not those who demand the Alps or nothing. Not to speak of poten tialities visible as yet only to a few creative dreamers, Chicago has miles of residence streets more attractive to the eye than many that we cross the ocean to admire. Her parks are not only beautiful but accessible. If they have nothing Of Switzerland they contain exquisite bits of Holland. And for six months of our maligned Chicago year one may take station between the blue of the lake deepening to purple and the crimsoned lagoon fading to gray to observe the changes of sunsets that, reflected on Mediterranean waters, would wake the tourist's ecstacy. We may leave those to descant on the ugliness of Chicago who will not walk ten minutes from our campus to' see how the northeaster hurls his foam on the barrier of the Jackson Park esplanade, or watch day by day how spring comes back to the Wooded Island.

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