Christmas In Chicago

Excerpt: A flare of lights. A giant tree tapering up and up until it seems to melt into the sky, except that the glittering star which crowns it puts to shame the gentle glimmerings in the background of the blue-black heavens. Spangles, like a circus-rider?s dress, flutter in the swish of air, blaze out in the footlight glare of the barrage of lights which are turned on the tree. The family Christmas tree giganticized to a tree for the family of the great city. And underneath, thousands upon thousands of human beings tramping about in the snow, listening to a band, watching the fluttering bangles of the spectacular tree. A river of motors slowly flowing past the picture?slowly, whether they will or no, for there is no hurrying in the mass that drives down to see the tree. In the mêlée that worms about beneath the tree there are men and women from the four corners of the earth. There are faces moulded in such fantastically different casts that you cannot but wonder how mankind can be all one mankind. There are voices thick with the gutturals of Middle Europe, soft with the sunshine of the South, and heavy with the interminable consonants of the North.