Youth, like softened wax, with ease will take Those images that first impressions make. The evolution of Chicago from an insignificant trading post to what it is to-day, occurring, as it has, during the continuous residence within its borders of a person who, as Holmes would say, is but 68 years young, seems more like a fairy story than an historical reality. I shall not endeavor to make an exact chronological statement of the incidents of our remarkable develop ment, but rather to view the ground in its primal state and speak of the early toilers who planted the seeds which have produced the results so marvelous in themselves and of such interest to us and posterity. My purpose is to draw the curtain (every day be coming more difficult to do), which conceals the slowly fading past from the rapidly changing present, that the reader may acquire, as I did, some knowledge of the characteristics of the men who planted the orchard whose fruit is now the wonder and admiration of every land.