A day in Chicago

Chicago is mostly linked with the Little Theatre company, and its director Maurice Browne. It was, according to John Cowper, the only time when he really lived a Bohemian life, 'a very happy and very exciting epoch in my life.'

An ordinary day at Chicago is as follows: - Oatmeal alone for breakfast, because that alone costs 50 cents with the tip at that hotel -... then to the Art Institute to prepare a lecture on Spanish Art by looking at an El Greco; then to the Lake - hurriedly - and in fear that everyone is a 'plug-ugly' or a 'hold-up'; then to the Little Theatre for a rehearsal of a Religious Mystery Play in Dumb Show. Then to the Tip-Top Café, where the black waiters love me - and one of them said, 'You are a gentleman; let me be your valet!'
    Then to the Canal to see the Bridge go up and down while bargers and steamers go under it, and to watch fishermen clean fresh-water fish, and the warehouses reflect themselves in the mud, and wharf débris be débris, and beautifully dead. Then to the little Foreign Book Shop in Wabash Avenue. Then to the Theatre to meet the Reverend Rush or the Baroness Zlintesky or Llewelyn Jones, and see half of a Matinée with Maurice as Pierrot. Then to the hotel to dress. Then to the Cafeteria, where peradventure a sort of Adult School, meeting for a cheap Love-Feast, are singing the Gloria in Excelsior (sic) and praying, over their individual trays. And then to the Studio of Raymond the Futurist and then to Lincoln Centre for the Lecture. (Early December 1913, Letters to His Brother Llewelyn)