Pg.84

winter a reporter took me to visit a so-called anarchist Sunday school,

several of which were to be found on the Northwest Side of the city.

The young man in charge was of the German student type, and his

face flushed with enthusiasm as he led the children singing one of

Koerner's poems. The newspaper man, who did not understand German, asked me what abominable stuff they were singing, but he

seemed dissatisfied with my translation of the simple words and darkly

intimated that they were "deep ones," and had probably "fooled" me.

When I replied that Koerner was an ardent German poet whose songs

inspired his countrymen to resist the aggressions of Napoleon, and that

his bound poems were found in the most respectable libraries, he

looked at me rather askance and I then and there had my first intimation that to treat a Chicago man who is called an anarchist as you

would treat any other citizen, is to lay yourself open to deep suspicion.

Another Sunday afternoon in the early spring, on the way to a Bohemian mission in the carriage of one of its founders, we passed a fine

old house standing well back from the street, surrounded on three sides

by a broad piazza which was supported by wooden pillars of exceptionally pure Corinthian design and proportion. I was so attracted hy the

house that I set forth to visit it the very next day, hut though I searched for it then and for several days after, I could not find it, and at

length I most reluctantly gave up the search.

Three weeks later, with the advice of several of the oldest residents

of Chicago, including the ex-mayor of the city, Colonel Mason, who

had from the first been a warm friend to our plans, we decided upon a

location somewhere near the junction of Blue Island Avenue, Halsted

Street, and Harrison Street. I was surprised and overjoyed on the very

first day of our search for quarters to come upon the hospitable old

house, the quest for which I had so recently abandoned. The house

was of course rented, the lower part of it used for offices and storerooms

in connection with a factory that stood back of it. However, after some

difficulties were overcome, it proved to be possible to sublet the second

floor and what had been the large drawing-room on the first floor.

The house had passed through many changes since it had been built

in 1856 for the homestead of one of Chicago's pioneer citizens, Mr.

Charles J. Hull, and although battered by its vicissitudes, was essentially sound. Before it had been occupied by the factory, it had shel