Famous Living Americans With Portraits

in such horrid little houses so close together!" Her father explained as best he could to his daughter why such a condition existed. But the explanation did not satisfy her. "When I get big," she replied, "I am going to live in a great big house right among horrid little houses like these." This youthful promise Miss Addams has literally fulfilled; and Hull House, perhaps the best expression of the spirit of "Chicago's foremost citizen," has since 1889 been ministering to needs which even childhood's eyes can see. To understand Miss Addams's life one must know her childhood and no record of her childhood is clear without an insight into the relation of the motherless child to her father. Mr. Addams had early begun life as a miller's apprentice. Rising at three in the morning to begin work, he had taken advantage of the dull morning hours to read through the entire village library. With the same intense earnestness he had worked his way through life. During the sixteen years following 1854 he was a member of the Illinois State Senate. In those uneasy times there were few men whose position could absolutely be relied upon. But Lincoln, still an obscure member of the legislature, writing concerning his stand on a measure then before the Senate, expressed his assurance that Mr. Addams "would vote according to his conscience." Upon the death of Mr. Addams in 1881 the editor of a Chicago daily wrote that he knew of but one man in the Illinois legislature to...