"What a jumble of bigness all this is!" Aunt exclaimed, "them people look just like flies on the ceiling or swallows on the peak of our new barn."

The chair pushers took them slowly through Wooded Island.

"What was that, Fanny, that you used to tell me about Alladin and his wonderful lamp?" said Uncle. "I keep a thinking' of that story every time I try to picture all these things at once. Here is fifteen acres of fairy land just like in the fairy books I used to buy for Mary."

They then went on with the crowd past the Government building and the Liberal Arts hall to the basin. On the viaduct, over behind the Statue of the Republic, they stopped to look over that never-fading picture there presented to view. Over the peristyle were written some of the sayings of great men. Fanny read one that heightened the scene into a thrill of thankfulness and patriotism: "We here highly resolve that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

"Now," said Aunt. "I believe I know the meaning of this vast expenditure of money and energy. It is not only to show us and others that we have not all the brains; that we are not doing all that is done, but to teach us mutual gratitude for the great privileges of our republic, and fix firm the resolve in the breast of every man that our government of freedom and conscience shall live forever."

They went on out to the pier and dismissed their chairs for seats in the cool lake breeze, where they could see the people coming off of the steamers and approaching them down the long pier on the moving sidewalk.

Wearied with the constant commotion in which they had never been before, it was decided to return home and to spend the remainder of the week in rest and recuperation for another struggle with the world of culture in Jackson Park.

When Sunday came. Uncle was told that the Fair would be opened for visitors. He had been so busy sight-seeing that he had not read the papers or he would have known better. He did not know just what to do on that day, whether to go to church, or the parks, or the Fair, but he was anxious to see what the Fair looked like with most of the people promenading the streets all in their Sunday best. He came to Chicago to see the sights and seeing sights never appeared to him to be wrong. Every Sunday it was his custom to go out into the pasture and look at his jerseys, congratulate himself on how fast his herd was increasing, and contemplate the prospects for the future. Grass grew, the birds sang, the cattle bellowed, and nature was as bright on Sunday as any other day. Besides he had some neighbors who believed that Saturday was the holy Sabbath and he had never been able to disprove their arguments. He believed on general principles that the Fair should be closed on Sundays and that the grass ought not to grow, but since the grass did grow, he would profit by the increase and if the Fair was opened on Sundays, he would not miss its magnificent object lessons.

"Ah, Jeremiah," said Aunt, "every one of them big buildings comes over my spirit like a prayer and when I go inside I see the answer and the benevolence of God. To shut people out is like padlocking the orchards on Sunday, and stopping the machinery that makes the apples grow. Six days are the rich men's days and God made the Sabbath for the poor. Because our neighbor raises hogs and eats pork it is none of our business because we raise Jerseys and drink milk. The Good Book says: "Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of any holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days.""

They concluded to go back home and then stroll out, and in their walk to go into the first church they found.

They did so, and came into a great church just in time to hear the minister read the text: "And God said unto Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death. Then said the Lord, thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night; and should I not spare Nineveh?"

Uncle Jeremiah listened for the story of Jonah and the gourd to be applied in some way for a lesson to the hearers, but only once, when the minister told what he had seen in Palestine, did he become intelligible to Uncle. It was all so transcendently ethical. Uncle got a remote idea that Chicago was to be likened to Nineveh, and the gourd to the World's Fair, but when the sermon was done, and all said, he felt that he would have enjoyed the hour so much better in some of the quiet shades of one of the parks, where he would have heard so reverently the still small voice of nature's teachings.

After noon they went to Lincoln Park, and as they stood before Lincoln's statue, Aunt said: "This is greater than any sermon I ever heard." They read the words and sat on the bench encircling the statue, while Fanny read the sayings of Lincoln chiseled on the stone. Then they visited Grant's monument. They sat down on the stone steps and looked at the noble figure. Uncle was carried away with a religious patriotism that held all the emotions of divine presence.



"There," said Aunt, "we are listening to another sermon that can not be surpassed by the tongues of men. A whole life of great deeds for our country is here speaking to us. No man can be a bad man if he were to come every Sunday and give his emotions up to the lessons of the lives of Grant and Lincoln. Divine emotion is not aroused alone by words from the pulpit or the silent walls of a house. Seeing is as great a means of God as hearing, but seeing receives its sermons from the infallible; hearing listens to that which may come only from the brain."



It was late in the afternoon when the four of them got off the cable car at Monroe and Dearborn streets and walked leisurely toward their hotel. At one of the street corners they saw a policeman come out of the patrol box and walk rapidly down thestreet. In a moment more he was joined by three other policemen from another street. Uncle turned to watch them, when suddenly they began to run, then faster, almost as in a race.

"Sure they're going to arrest somebody," said John, and he started after them at break-neck speed with visions of a murder probably being done just around the corner. Uncle became excited also and started after them followed by Aunt and Fanny, not knowing what else to do. Uncle and John reached the corner breathless and looked each way to see where the robbery or murder was being done, but what was their disgust to see the three policemen climbing into a cable car and calmly taking a seat. It was an outrageous sell on all of them, but it could not be helped, and there was no law by which they could sue the policemen for a false alarm. They had the right to run to catch a car if they wanted to. The family went on more deliberately now for they had no breath to spare and there was but little to be said. Uncle felt that Chicago was very much of a mockery anyhow. But he had seen enough to make him desire to see more.

The tremendous puffing and blowing of a tug was heard somewhere in the river and they concluded to go over to the bridge and see what it was. There was a mystery anyway about how those big boats got past the bridges.

Uncle and Aunt walked on over the bridge but John and Fanny stopped to hear the music made by a cornet band of girls on one of the excursion steamers. The tall masts of a lumber boat could be seen coming rapidly toward them in tow with an insignificant little steamer. There was a jing-aling two or three times of a bell hid somewhere in the framework of the bridge, teamsters and people were hurrying across, and all at once the bridge began to move. Johnny saw some people remaining on the bridge and catching Fanny by the hand he cried, "Here let's take a ride" and in a moment they were swayed past the street and out over the stream. Over at the other end they saw Uncle and Aunt holding desperately on to the railing. They had not been able to get over when the bridge moved away. Presently the boats were past and the bridge rapidly swung into place. Down the street half a block Johnny saw some steam issuing from the middle of the street. Instantly the idea of a volcanic eruption in the middle of Chicago possessed his mind. He called Fanny's attention to it and their curiosity was greatly excited. They had heard that Chicago was a very wicked place and their preacher had once remarked that he would not be surprised at any time to hear of an upheaval by the Lord sending the city over into the lake. In considerable dread lest the overthrow was about to take place, they walked towards the place along the sidewalk, as the famous Harry walked up to the guidepost at the country crossroads on that cloudy night so long ago. But they were greatly reassured when they found the people about them were so indifferent and they were chagrined to learn that they were again deceived. It was no volcano, there would be no terrible cataclysm, it was only an inoffensive man-hole to the sewers, into which the waste steam of one of the factories near by was escaping.

Meanwhile, Uncle and Aunt had stepped off of the bridge and were intensely bewildered all at once to find that the excursion steamer and the houses next to it had all apparently jumped across the river to their side.

"Did we come acrost that bridge?" Uncle asked.

"I know we never."

"How did we git acrost without coming acrost?"

"I can't see how anybody could come across without comin' across, and I know we never," said Aunt.

"Well, ef we hain't acrost, then the houses are acrost, and it is more natural fer us ter be crazy than for the houses to get acrost."

"Ask the policeman."

Uncle went up to the policeman and said: "Say, Mister, we want to know if you will be so kind as to tell us ef we are acrost or not acrost."

"Do you mean on the north side or the south side?"

"No; I mean on this side or the other side."

"Well, which side did you come from?"

"I thought I came from the other side," said Uncle, "but it seems now as if I came from this side and didn't go over to the other side at all."

"Where have you been?" asked the policeman, making a mighty effort to untangle himself.

Uncle was becoming impatient.

"I tell you I've been acrost that river 'cause I walked acrost, and then I never walked acrost again, and here I am not acrost, and I want to know how I got back acrost again."

"Say, old lady!" said the policeman, "ain't he crazy?"

"This is the first time I really ever thought so. We've been seeing too much, and I guess we're both crazy."

"In that case," replied the officer, "I am compelled to take charge of you."

"O Grandma!" cried Fanny, just then running up, "ain't this great. Johnny and I have been nearly half an hour trying to figure out how we got across the river, and I found out first. You see the bridge just went straight half around, and so when we got on this end here it carried us around to the other side and carried you back around to this side."

"Bless the Lord!" said Uncle, fervently; "Sarah and me ain't crazy yet, and the policeman needn't worry himself." But the policeman was gone.

"You see, Fanny, we couldn't make it out, and Sarah and me and the policeman all agreed that we was stark gone daft."

Uncle and Aunt now had enough for one day, and they heartily wished they were back on the farm. But they swallowed their discomfiture: and, after a good night's test at home, determined to visit the Board of Trade, where Bob Simmons had lost the fortune his father left him.



Uncle and family did not get around to the Board of Trade till nearly eleven o'clock the next morning. There was a wide entrance with a stairway on either side. Uncle saw the people in front of him, and he was accustomed to pass right in among the congregation and take his seat in the amen corner. He did not notice that the others had stopped at the door, but he plunged right ahead. The door-keeper evidently had his attention engaged at something else, for he let Uncle walk on in. Some one at the door spoke to the ladies and told them to take the left stairway to the gallery. They reached there just in time to see Uncle in a difficulty below. A young man had him by the arm and was pointing very vigorously toward the door.

"Who do you want to see, sir?"

"I want to see the Board of Trade. Where is it?"

"Go outside and up the stairs into the galleries and you can see it all you want to, but not here."

Uncle did as he was bid, but found that he was quite widely separated from his family, because he had been sent up the opposite stairway from them.

"I came up to see the Board of Trade," he said, confidently, to a well-dressed stranger next to him.

"Well, there it is in all its glory," said the stranger.

"Oh, I see! The board is that table where them fellers is a tickin' them machines. You see I thought they would be a setting and a trading across a long, wide board like they used to do at the country stores for counters. But them fellers down there acts like a lot of lunatics. I don't see how they can ever come to a bargain, yelling and spewing around that way. And then I don't see the bulls and bears that change the market."

The stranger thought it a useless job to try to enlighten him.

When Uncle and his family came down, he went up to the doorkeeper and asked, "Say, do you belong here?" The keeper nodded. "Did you know Bill Simmons what lost five thousand dollars here last year?" The door keeper shook his head. "Well, say, I just want to ask one more question. Are them people down there the bulls and bears themselves, and are they the Board of Trade and are they the people that the farmers are so afraid of?" The keeper nodded.

"Well," continued Uncle, "I've got this to say; any set of farmers as is fools enough to be afraid of them yelling idiots, aint got no backbone at all."

Chicago was unsettling many of Uncle's ideas, and he began to decide that the only real, bonafide thing he could swear by was his own farm, and that the great outside world was only a great circus of art and extravagant genius.



CHAPTER XIV

SIGHT-SEEING GALORE

Under promises of gorgeous sights and full protection, Fanny had concluded to visit the chief Midway Plaisance theaters with Johnny and Louis as escorts. The "Midway," as it is familiarly called, is undoubtedly the most unique and interesting pleasure-walk in the world. It is a thoroughfare of ever-shifting scenes and ever-recurring incidents. Fanny was not sure she ought to go, and Johnny could not comprehend why she did not go with him as readily wherever he proposed as she did on the wild free life of the big Jersey farm. But this was to her a supremely different existence, and she tried hard to recall all she had seen and heard and read of etiquette and the proprieties. Uncle and Aunt were not the only ones who were bewildered at every step by the amazing mixture of reality and art, of fact and fancy, of nature and imitation. They felt as if their souls were living apart, and that they were mere automatons in a panoramic world.

Johnny had seen the Soudanese and Nubian play actors just before his disastrous attempt to be informed concerning the Dahomey village. But some scoffers from the South had spoiled part of the novelty of it by alleging that the men of northern Africa were really natives of Mississippi or Louisiana, and were dancing only plantation hoe-downs in slow time and increased perpendicular action.

But without question the high histrionic art of the Chinese, Javanese, Turkish and Algerian actors ought to be seen. Maybe it was strangeness rather than excellence and novelty rather than entertainment that drew the people but strangeness and novelty are the greater excellence when people come to see wonders.

The Chinese theater is by far the most pretentious. It was pretty well advertised to the world at the advent of the actors in Vancouver and their encounter with the custom officers. They came to Chicago several hundred strong and are housed in the big blue-and-gilt structure with trim pagodas near the Cottage Grove end of the Midway. Entrance to the theater is through a big tea house, where decent-looking Chinamen who do not look like rats and whose fluent English proclaims their long sojourn in "Flisco," serve the cheering cup at from 10 to 60 cents, according to the pliability of the victim. They are doing a business worthy of a better cause. The tea house is but the ante-chamber to a joss house overhead, mendaciously advertised to be "the biggest outside of China," and to the theater proper. The latter is not so big as the Chinese theaters in San Francisco, but it smells sweeter, being over ground and not surrounded with the cooking-rooms and opium bunks of the actors. This is a concession to occidental taste which all but oriental enthusiasts will appreciate. Nor are visitors allowed, as in San Francisco, to inspect the green-room or sit on the stage.



In other respects the theater is pure San Francisco Chinese. There is the orchestra, led by the man with the yard-wide cymbals, playing the leading part. There is the property man, always in evidence, who places a chair and says "This is a horse," or turns the chair around and calls it a mountain. And there is the female impersonator with deeply roughed cheeks, who is the pride and flower of histrionic art. Women are not allowed to walk the boards of the Chinese theater, but the male actor who best can mimic woman's tones and mincing airs is the Henry Irving. There is a whole chorus of these men-women in the Jackson Park theater—an all-star combination. As for the piece itself, they first play a little curtain-raiser of about two-months' duration and then the real play occupies the rest of the year. It will be all one to the American visitors, however, who enjoy the novelty, so that they are allowed to quit when they like. And there is no objection to that from the polite Chinamen in charge of the Jackson Park theater.

The Turkish theater is across the way and farther east than the Chinese. It is back from the beaten path and you might miss it—if you were deaf. Having ears to hear you will be apprised of its whereabouts at forty rods distance by the orchestra, which sits on the front steps and discourses horrors on a sort of flageolet and a bass drum. The orchestra plays only one tune and it plays that hard. When a respectable house has been gathered by these out-of-door allurements the curtain rises on a Turkish play. It is a sweet pastoral of a youth who is lovesick and cannot be cured by the doctor, by the soothsayer—by any one except his love, who comes in time, and there is a wedding.

When this play was ended, Fanny decided that she had seen enough of foreign theaters and declined to go further.

A Boston girl in spectacles sat near her through the Turkish play. She told Fanny that she and her mother had been venturesome enough to visit the other plays, and they sincerely regretted it. She found a mongrel horde of Turks, Arabs, Europeans, blacks, Greeks—everything applauding an interminable song, whose filthy motif it needs no knowledge of Arabic to discover. The singer was an Algerian woman, good enough looking, after the pasty style of oriental beauties, young, agile and mistress of the curious, droning guttural melody which constitutes oriental music. She plays her part with complete abandon, probably because she knows no better, and her audience applauds her wildly for the same reasons. The Boston girl said she had seen these same girls, or their professional sisters, in the Algerian theater. But their performance had been modified to suit the western taste. They sing and dance, but their songs and dances are nothing more dangerous than a languorous drone. But there are also some funny parts, according to the Algerian idea. They are played by a jet black Somauli woman who joins in the dance and a jet black Somauli boy in the orchestra who has a face of India rubber and a gift for "facial contortion" that would make the fortune of an American minstrel.



A look at the outside of the Soudanese theater is enough for the ordinary curiosity-seeker. It is a little round hut of bark in a dark corner of the Egyptian enclosure. Mahomet Ali sits at the receipt of custom exchanging pleasantries with dusky flower girls whose home is by the orange market beyond the Kase el Nil, who know more French than English, and more deviltry than either; who sing "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay," and know how to solicit backsheesh to perfection. The theatricals here are simplicity brought to perfection. It is said their language consists of only a hundred words. If you were to paint your face black, look wild-eyed, stiffen your hair in many strands, array yourself in a cotton garment that revealed more than it concealed, and then were to jump straight up and down to the music of a dolorous chant you would not be far astray. Add to this a whining and interminable appeal for backsheesh and you might be very near the mark indeed. But there is one Soudanese performance you could scarcely hope to equal, unless you were to learn some sort of devil's chant, gird your loins with a loose belt of shells and by rapid contortions of your body make these primitive cymbals accompany your chant. This is the star of the troupe.

Romantic people, who like to think of dancing as the poetry of motion, can get a liberal education in muscular poesy by making the rounds of the Midway Plaisance. They may see sonnets in double-shuffle metre, doggerels in hop-skip iambics, and ordinary newspaper "ponies" with the rhythm of the St. Vitus dance. Slices of pandemonium will be thrown in by the orchestras for the one price of admission, and if the visitor objects to taking his pandemonium on the installment plan, he may get it in job lots down at the Dahomeyan village.

In their "dance," as it is termed, they take a step forward with the right foot, and drag the left after it. This is repeated until they stub their toes on the orchestra, when they swarm back and go through the difficult feat of advancing by a series of hops on one foot. All of this is to the discordant pounding of drums and scrap-iron, where tune could not be discovered with a search warrant.

That evening Fanny visited the C. C. of C. C. and arranged for a family picnic at Washington Park the next day. She was to be hostess, and they were to have an outing with her in the city's artificial fields and forests that would recall the merry life of the country, and yet they would be surrounded by all the artistic embellishments that money and genius could secure.

Johnny went post haste for Louis, and the two boys were made bearers of the lunches, guides of the expedition, the vanguard of the march and the responsible protection of the company. They were eight merry young folks who took possession of the grip-car on the Cottage Grove Avenue cable line that morning. They stopped at the park hot-house and spent two delightful hours in the wilderness of flowers and of palm forests. On the outside were rustic seats about a pond where, in waters made tepid by steam heat through iron pipes, all kinds of tropical plants flourished in a profusion perhaps not excelled anywhere on the equator or along the banks of the Amazon. The great flower clock and the immense flower globe showing the geography of the earth, the old English castle gate and the carpeted lawns showed them the skill of the gardener's art. A quiet nook was found near the water's edge of one of the ponds. With a newspaper for a table-spread they enjoyed a lunch where hunger was a sauce better than Worcestershire, and the sod a better resting place than a throne.

After their lunch and a good rest they returned to the business part of the city and spent the remainder of the day in the Mystic Maze, the Labyrinth and the Panoptican. These were places where electricity and mirrors were arranged with the object of reversing every conception the eye had ever given to the mind. In one place the visitors entered a triangular room in one corner of which there was a large vase of flowers. The walls were solid mirrors and the six girls found themselves as if in a host of people and a wilderness of flowers. From this they passed on into a room which the attendant said was forty feet square and contained thirty-eight mirrors six feet by eight set at different angles between posts evenly distributed about the room. As they stepped forward they found themselves among countless hordes of people, again they were alone, all at once they found themselves in a line of girls that stretched on either side apparently for miles. One time they would be brushing around among people about two feet high and two feet thick; again they would be surrounded by thousands of girls eight or ten feet high and correspondingly thin. It was exasperating to say the least. When they became weary of this novelty they looked about them for the attendant but he had mysteriously disappeared. Leila said she knew the way out and she started with all the confidence that a usually level headed girl can have, but alas! she nearly broke her head by running into one of the big mirrors. Nannie happened to look in a certain direction when she saw the door and the curtains about it as plainly as she ever saw anything in her life.

"There I see the door," she cried, "come this way," and she started with her hands out before her like some one feeling his way in the dark, though it was as bright about them as the electric lights could make it. All at once the door she had in view disappeared like magic and she stood before herself in a mirror ducking her head backwards and forwards like two young chickens with their beaks just touching in the preliminaries of a fight. The situation was becoming too serious to be amusing any longer.

"What shall we do?" said Fanny, who had read of death in the mysterious labyrinths in ancient times. The roof was low, and even if the sky had been their roof they had no wings, like Daedalus, whereby they might escape.

The girls began to get nervous, and several million of them seemed to huddle together as they discussed the situation.

"I say, let's yell!" said Mary.

"But what is the use to yell," one said, "if they have determined that we are to die here?"



Now they were becoming really frightened. The picture of their lingering death in that frightful crowd of specters was most horrifying. Their voices were becoming tremulous and hollow, and the terra-cotta figures of wild Bedouins that sat in a niche of the far wall and was multiplied a thousand times, seemed to grin at them maliciously, as if in anticipation of seeing their agonizing struggles against death by hunger. The suspense was becoming something terrible.

"I say somebody must yell."

"Let Kate yell, she's got a strong voice that might reach the street."

Kate tried to do her duty, and she said, "Oh, Say!" in a voice that would not have wakened a rabbit from its slumber.

She tried again, "Oh, say, we want to get out!" in a voice so hollow that none of the girls recognized it as hers.

"Is ze ladies seen eet all they want?" said the polite attendant, as he seemed to come before them at one step.

"Where were you?" they all cried.

"Why, I vas by ze glass about tree feet away."

"And you were listening to all we said?"

"Oh, I do not leesen. Eet ese my beesness to go out weeth you ven you ask eet."

And then they followed him out.

"What a horrid place that was and we thought at first it was so nice," said one.

"In all our lives we can never have a dream half so frightful as that was," said a third.

"One thing sure," said Mary, "this terrible experience has bound us forever and forever together; and because of our common experience in this awful adventure we must initiate Fanny into the mysteries of the noble order of progressive girls, C. C. of C. C."



CHAPTER XV

A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE

Foreign theaters, mazes, labyrinths, panopticons, spectatoriums and their ilk had no more charms for the girls, but with Uncle and Aunt they spent the next day in the museums, casinos and panoramas of the city. But wax figures and brain-muddling deceptions were still the value they received for their money.

"I will be contented," said Aunt, "never to leave the farm again. I can be happy there the rest of my born days in knowing that when I look at a cow it is not a stuffed cow, that the calf by her side can move; that the man on the barn floor with his pitchfork in the hay can really lift it over into the manger for the cattle. This mornin' I see a lady standin' on one of the stairs tryin' to tie her shoes. She was having a time of it, I knew, so I says, says I, 'leddy, let me help you.' She didn't say nothing, so I jest stooped down to help her. I pulled the tongue of the shoe up and tapped the sides together over it, when a perfect chill came over me, for I pressed the lady's ankle, and it felt just like sawdust. Poor woman! I thought some terrible accident had cut off her leg and she had a false one. I looked up into her face, and she looked so pale like and deathly that I was awful scared, then I looked more and more and I see she was dead, died maybe of heart disease while she was a stooping over. O what a shock! I can not get over it to my dying day. I nearly screamed but I knew I must not, so I just called to the feller sitting at the table writing visiting cards to come there quick; but he just set there stock still and never moved. I didn't want to attract attention from the folks around so I just picked up a nail a lying there and hit him square on the cheek but he never flinched. I spoke then to the woman leaning over the railing laughing at the little girl down below but she never changed her smile at all. I couldn't tell what to make of it when a feller came up to me an' says, 'Do you want anything, old lady?' I stared at him and says 'Hist, sir, don't you see this poor woman is dead. Died a stooping over too sudden.'"



"Then he just laughed at me a little, and pulled her dress to one side and showed me that she was only a wax head and a stuffed body. That made me mad, for it is a sin and a shame for to deceive people that way, and defraud 'em of their hard earned money. I told him to show me the way out, and I would report how he was defrauding the public to the humane society or somebody. He just laughed at me again and invited me to take a chair in the office if I wanted to wait for my folks. I went in there and an awful nice woman talked to me and explained things till I wasn't so mad as I was; but I still think it is a shame that a Christian city should allow such awful frauds on peoples' eyes and nerves. Anyhow, when I get home I want to go around and touch everything and make sure that there is no more foolin', so I can live in peace and facts."

Aunt was very indignant. She could stand the deceptions that Uncle had been so opposed to at the Fair, but when she was deceived in her acts of kindness, it was carrying things entirely too far.

The places of interest, as the guide books said, had now all been visited, and they were walking down the street fully satisfied that they had seen all the sights of the city from the skyscrapers to the organ grinders. The police courts and the stock yards were not considered as places of interest by them.

John and Fanny were in the lead, with the five girls just behind them, and Uncle and Aunt bringing up the rear. As they reached the corner there was a clamor and a scattering of people crossing the street, and a rumbling that jarred the earth as two great fire engines dashed by rolling smoke upward and clanging a bell in a way that was frightful.

"Fire, fire!" shouted Johnny.

"Oh that's what we want to see, a fire, a big fire," echoed the girls.

In a moment they were all running pell mell after the engines, jostling against the people and exciting the merriment and wonder of every body. The engines were running in the direction of their hotel and very likely it was on fire and they would lose all their clothing.

"Come on girls," shouted John as he led the way like a foxhound. "Come on, I know it's only just around the corner. I see the smoke rolling up from the house."

The engines had turned another corner and Johnny felt a great pride in being the guide and encyclopedia of ready information for six girls. Out of breath they reached the corner where they supposed they would see a terrible fire with people jumping out of the windows twelve or fourteen stories high, perhaps safely into blankets, possibly to their death. Or, brave firemen scaling ladders and bearing lovely girls out of the horrible flames. But they discovered that the smoke they had seen was coming out of a tall chimney, and that far down the street almost a mile away they could get glimpses of the fire engines still forging straight ahead. But they were not to be daunted thus. There must be a great fire somewhere down there that it would take many hours for the engines to get under control. On and on they ran, out of breath, to be sure, but determined to see the great Chicago fire that required two such great engines to bring under control. They had run several blocks, when they became so tired they could only walk. Another block or two was traversed, when they met the engines coming leisurely back. It was a bitter deception, there was no fire. They turned back; and, when they met Uncle and Aunt, also entirely out of breath with the chase, Aunt declared that this was only another case of Chicago's base deceptions. It could joke with dead people and jest with fires and make a playhouse exhibition costing many millions of dollars, and fool old people and the young alike and with equal conscience.

Uncle observed that it proved to him that Barnum was right when he said that a fool was born every minute, and that the Americans were a people who delighted in being deceived.

The girls decided to remain that night with Fanny, and to visit the Fair together the next day. A pleasant evening was spent, but the subject of fire and fire escapes were the chief topic of conversation. Each of the windows of their room had a fire-escape fastened to the facing, and the instructions printed underneath were carefully studied and mastered by all before retiring.

The next morning they were gathered in the main room awaiting the time for breakfast. Johnny raised a window to get a look outside, when the well known clang! clang! clang! of the Chicago fire engine was heard. Instantly all was excitement. Clang! clang! clang! and another came by. Then there were two or three more, and they seemed to stop right under the window. People across the street, even up to the top stories, were complacently sitting in the windows and looking into the street as if such a thing as great flames lapping upward and smothering them to death, were unknown. Johnny, who was looking out of the window, yelled: "O Lord! it's our house on fire, and we are five stories high!"

The streets began to fill with people. Uncle, panic-stricken, looked out and saw the engines puffing below. The cool audacity of the people at the windows across the street was appalling. They did not care for death. All at once Uncle recovered himself and yelled: "Everybody to the life preservers! Git into the fire escapes and save yourselves!"

But the room was empty. "Oh Lord," Uncle groaned, "they have gone insane and run down into the flames below."

Wringing his hands he ran to the door and cried, "Oh Sarah, Sarah, come back and let us die together." But neither Sarah nor the rest were anywhere to be seen. He was alone.

Remembering the instructions regarding the fire escape, he ran to the window, fastened the straps about his waist and climbed out of the window. He pulled the string that was to unreel the rope and let him down. Down, down, he went expecting every moment to feel the fierce heat about him. He seemed to be half way down when the reel ceased to work and he hung there suspended in mid air awaiting an awful death. He gave a despairing jerk when down he went within three feet of the pavement with a sudden stop that took his breath away. A crowd of people began to gather about him.



"What's the matter old man," said a man who had seen all the performance.

"Where's the fire," said Uncle wildly.

"It is two blocks further up," he answered.

"And ain't my folks all burnt up?" he said pathetically.

The answer was at once before him for he had let himself down directly over the entrance of the hotel and his family just then arriving at the bottom of the stairway came out to him. There never was a more happy meeting for Uncle than that one. His ridiculous adventure was not clear to him till he had time to study it over. But there really was a fire further on and they were not to lose such a sight.



A large dry goods house was on fire, and eighteen or twenty monster engines were puffing and roaring, each one like a threshing machine on Uncle's wheat field. They pressed themselves forward to the very front of the spectators, and so close that the heat of the flames could be distinctly felt. A heavy wind was blowing, and all the force of the fire department was out to stop the flames. It was truly the grandest and most fearful spectacle the family had ever seen. There came a puff of wind toward them and the flames came down, almost scorching their clothing. Then the policemen commenced to drive the crowd back.



There was almost a panic, and the girls nearly had their lives crushed out of them. It was an adventure they cared never to repeat. Johnny did not fare so badly, for he was more intent on the workings of the engines. He was free from mishaps till he chanced to take a position over the great hose-pipe through which the water was sent with such tremendous force on its mission. Something happened. He is not able to relate just how it was. But the hose burst directly under him, and he was tossed over into the streaming gutter with a precision he can forgive but never forget. After this happened it was time to go home to be more agreeably clothed. Johnny was a sadder though a wiser boy.



CHAPTER XVI

TO BUY A DOG

Jackson Park was a paradise of peace and rest compared with the nerve destroying difficulties of sight-seeing in the city. Uncle had experienced all the adventures he wanted, and his great desire now was to escape all further mishaps until he could get back safe among his Jerseys on the farm.

Tired from much walking among the scenes of the Exhibition, the family sat down upon one of the rustic seats in Wooded Island. It was a most picturesque place, a most inspiring spot from which to contemplate the great sweep of history that had culminated on those grounds.

"The longer I stay about this Fair," said Uncle, "and the more I see, the more I wish I knew. I can see folks discussing things with such great delight when I can't understand anything but the ifs and ands and buts. I heard a man say to-day that Columbus never discovered America, that he was a pirate. He said that all these doings should have been for a Viking or some such name. I knew it wasn't so, for so many people couldn't be fooled. How may that all be, Fanny?"

"There are a great many theories and stories set afloat about the discovery of America by people who desire more to show off their ability to construct plausible heresies against accepted things than to give real historic truth. But there is much that at least seems to be evidence of the Norsemen having been in America 500 years before Columbus touched the outlying islands of the West Indies. The Sagas of Leif the Lucky and Eric the Red told some marvelous stories of discoveries to the southwest of Iceland. Some of these stories seem to be verified in many ways, by digging up the logs of the Norse huts, by the written characters on Dighton rock, by the old tower at Newport, by the Benheim map of 1492, and a number of other important things.

"Then there has been found what seems to be beyond doubt a figure of Buddha in Yucatan, and also a Buddhist monument in Central America. Therefore a number of people have been trying to prove that Hwul Shan of China, discovered America ages ago. There are likewise well established the claims of the Phenicians and Greeks and even the Welsh and the Irish. But all of these were fruitless till Columbus in his high aspirations to become a great prince over unknown countries and to spread the Christian religion of his day, opened the way for the course of Western empire."

"But Fanny," said Uncle. "I heard the man say that Columbus didn't know anything and had no chance to learn."

"Yes, Father, this glorious year has taught to the students all over this country the beginning history of our great republic even as this Fair is teaching the progress of the world. Though Columbus was the greatest man of his age, yet we know only that he was the son of a wool comber and that he attended the school at Pavia, where he showed a marvellous aptitude for astronomy and cosmography. He became a sailor on the Mediterranean, some say a pirate, but the ships of one nation then preyed on the ships of another and considered it legitimate because there was then no International law. He married the daughter of an Italian named Palestrello, who had been a celebrated Portuguese sailor. With her he received many valuable charts, journals and memoranda. He soon moved to Lisbon, which was then the center of everything speculative and adventurous in geographical discovery. Columbus made a living here by making maps. Here he studied out his theory that he could reach Asia by going west, and he made several voyages to the Azores and Canary islands, which were then the limit of sea navigation. Then began his travels for help to carry out his wonderful plans. He took with him his motherless boy, Diego. From place to place he went with a heroism of patience never surpassed. The story of the rebuffs and privations through which he passed will be the wonder and praise of men forever. Weary and footsore and hungry, he stopped one day before the Franciscan Convent La Rabida, in Andalusia, to beg some bread and water for his child. Then came the mysterious turning of the scales in the forces of human greatness. The Superior of the convent happened to pass by, and, struck by the appearance of the poor traveler, began to talk to him. The Superior at once saw that no ordinary man was before him. Grander views were never presented and greater plans of conquest were never known. Christianity was to invade Asia on its eastern shores and meet the irresistible forces from the West. Columbus believed himself divinely inspired for this and therefore demanded that he be made high-admiral, governor-general and viceroy over all the land he reached and that for his revenue there should be given one-tenth of the entire produce of the countries. Such a far reaching demand as this could not have been acceded to only by a doubting sovereign, and he would probably have been beheaded with his puny crew of one hundred and twenty men if he had reached Asia and attempted to carry out such a wholesale scheme of subjugation.

"The months of this voyage were scarcely less full of treason, burdens, and peril than the years that had been given to make the voyage possible. A pension was promised to the man who first sighted land but Columbus saw a light rising and falling on the evening of Oct. 11, and on that account claimed and received the pension. It is said that the sailor who really saw land first foreswore his country and fled to Africa because of having lost the pension and the honor of being the first to see land. This is told by the enemies of Columbus to prove a sordid and avaricious nature. It is also told that he took such exasperating and outrageous measures to uphold his visionary schemes of conquest and government as high-admiral, governor-general and viceroy, that it became more than his home government could endure.

"His last voyage was disastrous, but whether from his own desire for gold hunting, or because from the demands of his crew, it can not be told. A man was sent to supersede him and chains were placed upon the man who had worn the robe of royalty. His last years before the public were even more bitter than his first. Until his death he seemed to spend all his time in trying to recover from the king his lost prestige, titles and possessions, but they never came. He besought Ferdinand pitifully to bestow them as a perpetual heritage upon his son, even if not to him. In a letter to his sovereigns, he said: 'Such is my fate that twenty years of service, through which I passed with so much toil and danger, have profited me nothing; and at this day I do not possess a roof in Spain that I can call my own. If I wish to eat or sleep, I have no where to go but to the inn or the tavern, and I seldom have wherewith to pay the bill. I have not a hair upon my head that is not grey; my body is infirm, and all that was left me, as well as to my brothers, has been taken away and sold, even to the frock that I wore, to my great dishonor. I implore your highness to forgive my complaints. I am indeed in as ruined a condition as I have related. Hitherto I have wept for others: may Heaven now have mercy upon me, and may the earth weep for me!'

"He died in bitterest poverty at Valladolid at about the age of seventy years. He was buried at Valladolid for a short while to satisfy the Franciscans, and then removed to Seville by request of his relatives. It was said that Columbus wished to be buried in San Domingo, and Charles V. gave authority for this to be done to the grandson of Columbus, and the family of Colon was to occupy the chapel of the cathedral. But there is no record whatever of the events of his burial at San Domingo. This is accounted for only on the theory that Drake, the English pirate, destroyed them when he sacked San Domingo.

"In 1795 Spain ceded San Domingo to France and it seemed to the Spanish people to be a national disgrace for the bones of Columbus to remain on foreign soil. There were no explicit directions as to the exact spot where his bones were and it was not known then that five of the family were buried together there. What was supposed to be his ashes were taken to Havana but in 1877 while making some repairs in the vaults another tomb was discovered in which was a strip of lead from a box which proved that the place contained the ashes of the grandson of Columbus. Then a further search was made; only a few inches from the vault first opened another vault was found and in it a lead box containing pieces of bone and human dust and on the lid was written

"D. de la A. per Ate"

which is supposed to mean "Discoverer of America, First Admiral." A silver plate inside had inscribed on it the names and titles of Columbus. This much decomposed leaden case was placed, with its contents, in another case of satin wood and glass, and all deposited in a vault so that the contents could be seen through the glass. Spain could not think of giving up the honor of having the bones of Columbus on her own soil, and the Royal Academy of Madrid made an exhaustive study of the subject and at last published a book in which they closed the argument with the following words: "The remains of Christoval Colon are in the cathedral of Habana, in the shadow of the glorious banner of Castile. It is most fit that over his sepulchre waves the same flag that sailed with him from Palos in the Santa Maria.""

After reviewing this history, which her interest in the great Fair, and the great events it commemorated, had caused her to learn, and after consulting her note book to be sure of her correctness, there was a general discussion among them, which showed that sight-seeing was not all they were doing at the Fair.



It was now past noon. Aunt decided to go home; Fanny would walk up and down the "Plaisance," and with her sketch book see what she could do toward putting bodies between some of those heads and feet she had drawn. Uncle and Johnny decided to go up to the business portion of the city to spend the rest of the day. It was a pleasant afternoon, and when they reached the viaduct from the train a great mass of people were passing and repassing. The great Auditorium building loomed up before them, with the Art Gallery on their right and the Columbus statue on their left. Under them trains were gliding by like long serpents, and out in the lake fleet steamers and sail-boats loaded with people were moving about like white spots on the blue waters. Uncle and Johnny passed along the sidewalk in front of the hotel when something at the corner caught their attention, and they came up for a moment to look at it. Two or three men also turned, stopping by him when he stopped. Then a few more came up, and a ring of men began to form. Uncle and Johnny now noticed that they were surrounded by people, and they attempted to move out, but in vain. In a short time the crowd had become so large that the sidewalk was blocked, and none except those who were close to the center knew what the original attraction was. The people coming over the viaduct and from far down the street noticed the crowd too, and bent their steps also in its direction. Some, fearful that they would miss something, began to run. The contagion for speed spread, and soon the whole mass were speeding up the boulevard with open mouths and wide-staring eyes. Each was asking the other as he ran, "What is it?"

As they came in contact with the central surging crowd where each man and woman was trying to see over the heads of those in front, despite the fact that the object, whatever it was, was on the ground, the question was repeated. But no one seemed to know what had happened. People in the center of the crush began to demand room and air. In vain they struggled to get out. The people still coming over the viaduct would start into a run as soon as they were on the street, and thus continually adding pressure on the outside made the positions of those inside almost unbearable. The crowd was now a pushing, clamoring one, extending some distance up and down the sidewalk and out into the street. The apparently insolvable mystery as to the nature of the accident or cause of the excitement only made the crowd more persistent and harder to manage. There were some who shouted, "give the poor fellow more air." "It's a shame to crowd around him like that." Then they would push harder than ever to see what it was.

Two men pushing each other got into an altercation. One struck the other, almost knocking him down. The crowd quickly took hold of the injured man and shoved him out into the "outer darkness," as if he had been a criminal, while the other was let alone. Some shouted for a doctor, others for the patrol and ambulance and the police. At last two officers came. After ringing up the patrol they forced their way through the crowd, which quickly fell in behind them and pressed on again with the renewed hope of seeing something. The presence of the officers only added to the general excitement, and people who had been laggards or had left in disgust came back at a double quick.

When the police got to the wall of the building they found a man who had two Newfoundland pups tied to a string. The patrol wagon was sent back empty, and the crowd, which had been sold instead of the pups, dispersed.

When Uncle got out he took his bandana out of his hat and mopped his forehead, as if he had just finished tossing up a load of hay to Johnny on a hot day in the hayfield.



"Consarn them critters!" he said, "I was thinkin' of buyin' one of them Newfoundland purps for Fanny, but the crowd was so anxious to see the trade that I've got entirely out o' the notion. I never see such curiosity people in all my life. The other day I stopped at a winder, and before I got half through seeing there were about fifteen people standin' around and lookin' over my shoulder. I guess I can't see anything any more without tollin' so many folks on that I'm liable to get crushed. If country folks was half as curious 'bout things as these city folks, they might be laffed at with some sense."



CHAPTER XVII

CAIRO STREET

"And so you call this the Anthropological building?" said Uncle. "What kind of things has it got inside to have such a name?"

"Well, Grandpa, if you desire to be enlightened scientifically, I may say that it is a subject beginning with Adam and including the whole human race. It is divided into five parts: zoological anthropology, showing the differences and similarities between men and brutes; descriptive anthropology, showing the differences and similarities between the races; general anthropology, which is the descriptive biology of the human race; theological anthropology, which concerns the divine origin and the destiny of man; and ethical anthropology, which discusses the duties of man to the world and his creator."

"Do tell! it's a pretty big subject, and no wonder it has a house to itself."

Inside they found skulls, skeletons, bones, savage relics consisting of dress, utensils, ornaments and weapons with amulets, charms, idols and everything pertaining to early religions the world over.

On the eastern border of south pond was to be found the outdoor ethnographical exhibit. Indian groups, Indian schools and everything illustrating their primitive life and material progress.

There were objects, shell heaps, village sites, burial places, mounds, cliff houses and the ruins of Mexico, Central and South America. To see the same thing, and to only very little better advantage, would require thousands of dollars and years of perilous travel.

"The more I go through these places," said Uncle "the more I feel ashamed that I did not do my share in bringing of relics. Now I could have brought the old nightcap that sister Susan's dead husband's grandfather brought over from England; and I have a gridiron that my great aunt gave me to remember her by. And there's the snuffers and the old wood-yard rake that my grandfather made himself way back in New England, and the dress in which my aunt Harriet was married, and the horseshoe from the foot of the horse that killed cousin John's boy Tom, and sister Hanner's gold fillin' of her tooth, which was the first gold fillin' in our parts, and it came out just afore she died, and I don't know how much more. Ain't they anthropological, ethnographic biology or something like that?"

"I think, Grandpa, they would have been more useful in some kind of a cabinet in the old settler's cabin, but we needn't to fret about it any."

From here they went over to the Midway Plaisance. The "Street in Cairo" was to be opened with a great parade of some kind and they wanted to see it. The natives call it Mars-al-Kabia. In fact the Street in Cairo was all the curiosities of Egyptian Cairo's streets crowded into one Chicago Cairo Street. It was a splendid sight with its gardens and squares, its temples, its towers and minaret made in the most Arabesque architecture and ornamented with the most fantastic draperies. The inhabitants had been directly transported from old Cairo across the sea to Midway Plaisance. There were the importunate street venders, the donkey boys begging and pulling at the clothing of the visitors, the pompous drivers of camels beseeching the visitors to try their "ship of the desert;" tom-tom pounders, reed blowers, fakirs, child acrobat beggars, Mohammedans, Copts, Jews, Franks, Greeks, Armenians, Nubians, Soudanese, Arabs, Turks, and men and women from all over the Levant, all in the gorgeous apparel of the East, filling the booths or strolling about the street. They were the happiest lot of Orientals that ever got so far away from home. Drums were beating, camel drivers singing merry songs, and a curious medley of voices which the earth beneath them never heard before. At eleven o'clock somebody blew a strange kind of horn, which made the small boy almost kill himself in his frenzy to get near to see what it meant.

Musicians mounted the camels and began grinding out music that was enough to frighten even a North American Indian to death. At the first glimpse of the camels a team of steady old horses, that probably were never frightened before, ran away with the gravel wagon which they had been patiently dragging along. Little Arabs and Soudanese ran ahead of the procession turning somersets and clapping their hands in hilarious glee. There were warriors hopping about and clashing shields and swords together in mimic battle. In front of Hagenbeck's show the lions were aroused from their slumber in the den above the entrance, and they stood before the bars and roared at the procession. Then the dancing girls came skipping along, followed by a bride and her maids, for at last it was seen to be a bridal procession that was celebrating the opening of "Cairo street" in Chicago.

Here is the circus of the "Plaisance," where the visitors are the actors and the clowns. Every hour can be seen a bevy of pretty girls escorted by a brother or some dapper young man. The camel drivers hail them. What a chance for a lark! "Let's have a ride on the back of the queer creature," says one maiden. "Oh! you wouldn't dare," replies brother. "Wouldn't I, though? Just watch me," is the modern maiden's response. She approaches the dromedary, which opens one eye by way of recognition.



She passes silver to the hand of the dark-skinned menial. The other girls giggle. A great crowd gathers round to see the fun which experience has taught is coming. Now the bold young woman is in the saddle, and holding tightly, as advised, to the strap which hangs near by. The dromedary opens the other eye, shuffles his rear and longest legs in the dust with a sound that resembles the hum of an approaching cyclone, gathers himself for an effort, and suddenly presents to the gaze of all beholders a rear elevation notable for its suddeness and its altitude, if not for its architectural beauty. Though catapulted about ten feet higher than she had had any idea of going, the American young woman does not scream. That would be unbecoming woman in this woman's era. She merely presses her lips tighter together, lets her smile fade away at the corners of her pretty mouth and grasps the strap as if her life depended upon it. The crowd, of course, laughs.

By this time the dromedary has shuffled himself some more along the brick pavement and opened the ugliest mouth ever seen this side the Nile. Now he shows his front elevation, and the smile which had returned to the lips of his fair rider fades again as the other end of the animated catapult is put into operation. But only for a moment. The bystanders have only begun their second laugh when the American young woman is seen to be herself again. She is out for a good time, and she is having it. The dromedary winks three times and puts a sinuous, swaying sort of motion into his body. His fat feet and angular legs begin to describe semi-circles. The saddle and its rider twist and gyrate and revolve and stop short, only to start quickly off again in some other direction, and the triumphant journey through the "Street in Cairo" has begun.

It is a very narrow thoroughfare, this oriental street, and it has no sidewalks. The crowd falls to either side. As the courier of the desert humps through the lane made open for him, his rider is seen smiling and happy. She knows she has a pretty foot, and that it is neatly clad in red shoes with tapering points and the most becoming of hosiery. She knows her figure is trim, and that her cheeks are bright and her eyes flashing. Applause follows her from the mosque to the temple of Luxor, and rolls back again as her beast turns for the homeward march.

She has had a ride on a real dromedary, caused palpitations in a hundred masculine hearts, and made 500 of her sex envy her the possession of such feet, figure and nerve. But these are not her sweetest triumphs. The consciousness to her most grateful and satisfying is that the courage and the independence of the modern young woman of America have been exemplified and vindicated.

They must get their fortunes told. There were no gypsies in this Cairo such as camp along the country roads or in the edges of the villages and tell sighing swains about their loves. Here was a seer imported direct from the banks of the Nile.

His father studied the stars and read lives from the palms of men's hands. His grandfather did the same. He came from a race of wise men. The first seers of his family sat in the shade of the early sphinxes and told Egyptian maidens to beware of young men who came up from the Red sea with false promises.

But his fortune-telling was of the same kind as one finds everywhere. A young man paid the price and held out his hand. The wise man took hold of the fingers, bent them back from the hand and pushed the cuff half way back to the elbow. He traced the course of the veins, ran his coal-black finger along each wrinkle of the palm, and all the time muttered to himself. Sometimes he nodded his head and gurgled approvingly. Again he hesitated and groaned feebly, as if the signs were sad. The young man had a scared look in his eyes. Then the interpreter began to tell what the aged seer had to say:

"He says that you had sickness. It was not long ago. You were afraid. But it's all right. You won't be sick any more. Have health, good health. Feel good all time. Don't be afraid."

"I'm glad to hear it," said the young man.

"Before you worked where you do now you had another kind of work. You did something else. You will change. Not the same kind of work next time. No, no. You will have good time. A man will give you work. It is different from what you do now. He is short, fat, very rich man. Go with him. You will do well, make money—lots of money. Fat man will make you have better clothes."

"Well, what's the matter with these I've——," began the young man, but the interpreter hushed him.

"He says you must stay in Chicago, good place. If you travel you will not have as much money as you will have when you get with the fat man. You must stay here if you want to be rich and have good clothes. Aha! this is very good. Put your head near. He says you are very warm-hearted, like all of the women. Yes, yes, that's it, you love one in particular, your wife or some one. He wants to know who it is you love."

"I am not married," said the young man.

"He says," resumed the interpreter, "that it's all right."

"All right, eh?"

"Yes, you will marry her, but not this year."

"How long do you think you will live?"

"Give it up."

"You will live to be 87. He says so."

That was all, and the puzzled young man arose to go away.

"How was it? How was it?" asked all the women who had been looking on and marveling.

"I'll tell you," said the young man. "The past and present are both a little cloudy, but the future is all that any one could ask."

Then he started away, keeping a sharp lookout for a fat man who seemed to be rich.

At the end of the street is the Temple of Luxor, where the curious pass under the deity-covered portal, and gaze upon the reproduced wonders of ancient Egypt. They bend over withered mummies of kings dead 5,000 years ago, and listen to music that has not been played for ages.

Near here is the passage way outside, and, as Fanny came out with her ears ringing with the strange jargon that everywhere met her, she was at once relaxed from the tension of sights and sounds she had just been in by seeing two country people rush together just before her. One said:

"Well, what in the world are you doin' here?"

"I swan, is that you? What are you doin' here?"

"Oh-h-h, we had to see the Fair, couldn't miss it, you know, not if it took a leg."

"That's right, that's right. Bring your folks?"

"Oh, yes, they're around here somewhere. Mother's about fagged. Says she'd rather cook for harvest hands than walk all day. Going to stay long?"

"Calculate on being here all next week if body and soul stick together. 'Spose you'll be here sometime."

"Can't tell yet. Just about give up seeing it all. Half the time don't know whether I'm on my head or my heels. Blamedest place I ever struck."

"That's right, that's right."

It was enough to cause her to smile at their homely enthusiasm, and the striking contrast of language. It was a relief to hear intelligible language once more, and in the rural dialect so familiar to her ears.

The soft, balmy days of June were now in their glory, and Uncle and Aunt sometimes spent nearly the whole day sitting around on Wooded Island imagining they could hear their cattle lowing in the pasture across the creek, and dreaming their lives over again from their early happy days. It was so peaceful there. Then they loved to go over by the lake and look upon it as a painted ocean, as calm and quiet as a pond of Raphael. It was something to see the stretch of blue go on till it touched the low-hung clouds at the edge of the world. Beyond the mists and the smoke of the white steamers were dimly outlined streaks of yellow and light, which turned the whole heavens into a softened sky of good promise. In the foreground of the vista the giant figures of victory, with charging horses and chariot, and all the Apollos and Neptunes, stood out like silhouettes. There was no noise save the ripple of the water down the cascade at Columbia's feet. Gentle winds lapped the waves along the beach, the furious breakers of other days were toned into a delicate murmur, which sounded very like some sweet symphony or the hymn of a winged choir. Waves which had for weeks been tangled masses of white caps and had thrashed with frantic anger the bases of the towering pillars dropped to the dainty ripples of a summer breeze. There was no crash, no roar, no splashing spray, driven on by a gale that snorted and snapped. So delicately and silently did the waters kiss the shore that sparrows and wrens and a flock of wandering doves walked to the very edge and filled their crops with the pure white sand. Then this, the best great work of any race of any age, comes over the spirits of worshipful men like heavenly benedictions of good-will and peace.

Sometimes as they sat in some quiet place alone saying nothing but thinking joy, the music of holy melodies came floating across the waters of the basin and re-echoed from the heaving lake to the Administration dome. They were sitting at the feet of that human genius which God had hallowed for the sake of those who revere His holy name.

They were everywhere thrilled with the supremely gifted achievements of their fellow men, inspired by the living canvass from every clime, and amazed to know that the lumps of Parian stone could be made to speak the heroism of the world.



CHAPTER XVIII

UNCLE IN THE LOCK-UP

Our family felt that they could remain in the grounds forever and never be done seeing; but the time was drawing near when they must return home. Uncle decided that this Saturday must be their last day at the Fair. Surely they had seen enough, even if there was so much more not yet seen. They had seen notable people all the way from the Infanta of Spain to Faraway Moses, of Egypt. But they were all the same to Uncle. He had heard all kinds of music, from the Spanish band to the Samoan tom-tom. "Some of the music," he said, "was so peaceful like, but the rest was not half so nice as the growin' pigs rubbin' against splinters in the sty back of the barnyard." He had surely been all over, and there was nothing more of a startling nature to see. He had watched them check babies at the children's building as if they were poodles or handbags, and he had been over to the Irish village and seen the people kissing the "Blarney Stone." On a card tacked near by he read:

This is the stone that whoever kisses He never misses to Grow eloquent. A clever spouter He'll turn out an orator In Parliament.

Uncle had no ambition that way, and so he let the rest do all the kissing.

He had completed his sight-seeing in the city by taking a Turkish bath, and he considered himself now ready to "pull up stakes" and return to the farm.

"I've made hay in July, and punched it back into the loft," said Uncle; "I've harvested in August, and drunk out of the branch; I've cut hoop-poles in the swamp, and done lots of other hot things, but fer real sultuy weather nothing is ekal to the Turkey bath. Some feller told me it was the healthiest bath a feller could take when there was no creek around. You see, I looked at the Chicago river and decided it wasn't altogether a proper place fer a swim; then I went over to the lake whar they were a paddling around, but somehow the water didn't warm up even a little bit in the afternoons, and then I thought I might just as well pay a dollar and take a Turkey bath.

"Well, it do beat anything in the wash line I ever see. I went into the barber shop where the sign was and paid a woman a dollar, and she took my silver ticker and chain and all my spare change, and my pocket book, and put 'em all into a box and locked it and then fastened the key around my wrist. Well, I wondered if I was a going down there whar they had to protect me that way from getting robbed.

"I went down stairs where I stopped to see a feller a doing some thing to a feller's feet. I seed he was a cutting the nails, and then I thought how awful lazy these city people do get, that they can't even cut their own toe nails.

"A feller came up and put me in a little room and told me to strip off and foller him. Well, sir, that feller he just stuck me into a room that was hot enough to fry eggs and bake Johnny cakes. I dassent breathe hard for fear of burning my nose off. He set me into a lean back chair and decently covered me over with a sheet. I've biled sap, an' I've rolled logs; I've scraped hogs over the kettle and made soap, but this beat anything I ever see fer hot weather. If I hadn't seen other respectable folks goin' in there I'd a knowed I was a gittin' basted for my sins in the bad world. I couldn't set there, so I tried to walk around, but I seen my feet was liable to get roasted, and the air was hotter at the top, so I set down again.

"Well, sir, I sot there till I got hotter'n biled corn, and then I hollered worse nor the Johnnies at Kenesaw mountain.

"Then a feller stuck his head in at the door and told me to come out there, and when I did a colored feller shoved me on to a bench and began to slap the daylights out o' me with both hands, and then another feller he turned the hose on me, and then I cut loose.

"Well, sir, you ought to a seed me. I'm gittin' old, but 'nough is 'nough, and I kin be painters an' wild cats when I want to. I was in a pecooliar place without a stitch on me, but I jest run the slapper into the bake oven, and I made the buggy washer jump into the fish pond or swimmin' hole what they aimed to chuck me into next; and then a feller came out and took me into another room, where he rubbed me down kind a horse like, and I got my clothes on and went up to the woman and got my things give back; and I told her I was awful glad to see daylight again. She laffed, an' I didn't say no more, but I done lots of thinkin'."

They were sitting on a rustic bench, just across the southwest bridge on Wooded Island, when Uncle's talking was brought to a stop by a great noise in the direction of the "Plaisance." Just then two Turks came trotting by with a sedan chair in which was seated a nervous-looking woman who seemed anxious to reach the place from which the medley of noises seem to be issuing. She nervously grasped the sides of the chair and looked at the bent form of the toiling Ottoman in front. Over the bridge they went, the carriers executing a double shuffle diagonally down the steep descent. The passenger opened her mouth and gave a scream that made the Turk in front stumble as he bent his head to see what was wrong. Then she screamed harder, frightening a flock of sea-gulls off the island and bringing a Columbian guard on a run from the north entrance of the Horticultural building to see what was the matter. Then she insisted on getting out, and she was so glad, that she gave the Turk a dollar, and left before he could give her any change.



The noise over towards the "Plaisance" continued, and Johnny cried out, "The parade, the Midway Plaisance parade! Come on, the whole earth is parading!"

The front of the procession just then appeared in view, and the family went to the top of the bridge where they could review the strangest procession that ever walked on the western world. Processions may come, and processions may go, but there never was one like that which was then winding through the broad streets of Jackson Park.

The column was over a mile long, and made up of men and women afoot; camels, gaily decked horsemen, wild Bedouins from Arabia's desert's; carriages, rolling chairs, reindeer and dog sledges. From the fur garments of the Laplanders leading the column, to the sea-grass, thoroughly ventilated costumes of the Samoans, was presented a contrast that marked the display all along the line. It seemed as if there had been a revival of the Babel scene from the Pentateuch. It seemed that the confusion of tongues had just come to pass and people had not yet become accustomed to talk anything but Sanscrit or Chinese.

There was a gathering of assorted freaks not surpassed since Noah came out of the ark, and an assortment of people never seen before. When Mr. Moody preaches to the Midway Plaisance, surely the scripture will be fulfilled as to preaching the gospel to all the nations of the earth.

Then the bedlam of strange cries were heard again. These peculiar sounds came from the Dahomey warriors and amazons, black as night and stupid as pigs. In thin cloth and hair garments that concealed just a little of their bodies, the blacks romped as they sang and beat upon long cartridge shaped drums.

The noisiest part of the parade began with the Algerian village. Drums resounded, clarinets screeched, castanets clattered, and the shrill cries of the dancing girls rose above all the tumult. The girls rode in rolling chairs, and while they were not busy rivaling the banshee of Ireland, they laughed and flirted to their hearts' content.

The Chinese was the most gorgeous contingent in the column. Costumed in rare and brilliant silks, ablaze with gold and silver, the Chinese actors and actresses made a brilliant appearance. But it was the dragon that wriggled behind them that caught the crowd. It was 125 feet long, and its mouth was big enough to swallow a man without tearing his clothes on its fangs. When it passed the beer tunnel in the "Plaisance," its glaring eyes turned toward a man whose best friends have been to Dwight. The man shuddered and drew a long and nervous breath.

"Take me away from here, Bill," the man said to his companion. "I never thought I could get in this kind of a fix. I'm a quitter right now."

From a distance it looked like a monster sea serpent on a spree. It was really a dragon, at least that's what the Chinese call it; but it was in fact the finest exhibit ever beheld of what a diseased imagination can do for a victim of strong drink. It could easily claim the prize as being the most terrifying object on earth.

The people from the "Street of Cairo," afoot and mounted on camels and donkeys, headed their part of the procession with the Turkish flag, and swift-footed runners guarded the banner, while men in rusty, antique chain-armor were near to defend. A horde of fakirs and jugglers of all colors, from jet-black Soudanese to fair-faced Greeks, pressed close at their heels, stripped to the waists, with bare feet, and cutting up all sorts of tricks. Swordsmen, garbed in long robes, twirling naked blades and shields as they hopped about one another in imitation of combat; more donkey boys; Nubians bearing carved Egyptian images, one of which was of the sacred bull done in gold; bayaderes and nautch dancers, not very good looking, but with fine white arms and well-turned ankles and gorgeous in oriental robes and colors—all flocked after the fakirs.

Then came the Persians, the women playing upon hurdy-gurdies and singing a plaintive air more suggestive of melody than any other native music in the line. The lion banner of the Shah was carried proudly, and this detachment closed with a score of Persian gladiators, naked to the waist. They seemed to be superbly executed pieces of bronze set in motion.

The "Beauty Show" was in the parade. Blarney Castle had several lads and lasses present, led by the pipes and a jig-dancer as agile as an antelope and as tireless as an electric fan, for he jigged all the way the procession marched. Then the Samoans came along. Stalwart men are they, yellow-skinned and muscular, and in their airy sea-grass garments, knee short and chest high, they presented a splendid physical appearance, while the women were pleasant-faced and fairly pretty. The men danced a war dance while marching along, and their fierce wielding of their clubs had greater influence in putting back the fast encroaching crowds than did the oft repeated command of the Columbian guard to stand back.

The South Sea Islanders, with nothing much more than feathers and grasses about their bodies and on their heads, sang a wild but tuneful melody as they brandished war clubs and danced about, their well-greased bodies gleaming in the sun. Three pretty Hula-Hula girls in the party sang all the time. Their dress was very fantastic; short, full skirts of brilliant-colored grasses fell to their bare brown knees. Flowers and grasses were twined in their hair. A short, tight-fitting robe of grasses and feathers fell over their shoulders and ended at their waists.

The young women who illustrate all the various types of beauty to be seen anywhere on earth, from Hong Kong to State street, made up the line. They were in carriages, and attracted much attention.

The odd procession traversed the Fair grounds to the east end of the Electricity building, and then returned to their respective shows.

It was now getting late in the afternoon and Uncle said, "Now, let us be taking our last looks."

"Papers, Mister? All about the Sunday Fair."

Uncle bought a paper and read the headlines:

"GATES REMAIN OPEN"

"Courts' Final Decision in Favor of Sunday Fair Judges are Unanimous—Overrule Judgment of United States Circuit Court"

"Court Room and Halls Crowded with People Eager to Hear the Decision"

"The Chief Justice brushes away the Cobwebs of sophistry and religious paternalism by which the Sabbatarian sects sought to close the Gates against the Millions"

"I didn't see no millions when I was here Sunday, did you, Sarah? And the grounds looked lots like a big grave yard, with some people sad like, a wandering through."

The sweat began to come on Uncle's face. His big bandanna was brought into play. "So they've opened it. Well, I don't know, I don't know. It kind of worries me somehow, as if they oughtn't a done it. But I don't understand all the law and the gospel. I surely didn't do no wrong when I thought seeing the Fair on Sunday was right, if it do disturb me like, just now. I thought our Savior meant seeing the Fair on Sunday when he said 'It is lawful to do well on the Sabbath day.' But when I see the beer tunnel full of people, and the furrin theayters a runnin', it didn't look lawful, and I wisht I was back to our old church a sittin' in the corner. Anyhow, I hope I didn't do any of it."

Uncle walked on slowly in a very sad and meditative mood. Aunt looked as if there was something that had overthrown all her high sentiment on her first Sunday of seeing the entrancing visions of the great Exposition. There were religious realities touching her soul now, and she walked on rapidly with Fanny, leaving Uncle behind. Johnny was flipping pebbles at some ducks in the lagoon and Uncle had stopped to look in at one of the doors of Liberal Arts hall. While he was standing there two dapper young men came walking hastily by. One caught sight of Uncle and quickly uttered a low whistle. His companion stopped short as the first one said: "Der's de old duffer; let's work him."

"Naw, we can't do it. He'll remember me mistake in change an' de blasted trainboy biz."

"'I'll bet you a fiver he don't! You're trigged out altogether new, an' your gran'mother wouldn't know ye."

"Nothin' like tryin', so here goes," and the speaker walked on a few steps and half concealed himself behind a column, close enough to hear all that was said.

"Well, how do you do, Deacon Jones? I am awfully surprised. It's like two needles meeting in a haystack for us to meet here. Isn't it now! It's a long time since I saw you back in old Barnville, Sage county, Indiana; but I remembered you the minute I clapped my eyes on you. I suspect you'd like to hear from some of your old neighbors."

The speaker was still holding Uncle's hand, and Uncle was looking at him in a bewildered manner, as if searching intensely in the picture gallery of memory's old time faces.

"I see you can't place me, but I guess it's 'cause I was only a chunk of a lad, but I see you often in the 'amen corner' of the Barnville Baptist church. You see my father was killed in one of the battles before Atlanta, and mother and me, when I was a boy, didn't have much to live on, only our pension. So I had to work hard, and didn't git around much for to be seen by anybody. I was converted and joined the church just about the time you moved away. Then I went into Mr. Monroe's store and got to be chief clerk, and then when the bank was opened at Barnville I was made cashier, and in three or four years I was called to be cashier in the First National here, so you see I have been more successful than most of the poor boys about Barnville whose fathers never came back from defending their country."



"Ah, my boy," said Uncle, "my heart always warms up for my comrades' children. I believe I recollect you now. Wasn't you the boy what swum out into the crick at high water, when the bridge went down while preacher Barker's wife was crossing with her baby to bring him back from Bethel, and towed 'em safe to shore?"

"Yes, sir. I'm the lad."

"Widow Brown's son George?"

"Yes, sir, George Brown, from Barnville, is what I am."

"Well, well, my boy, I knowed I recollected you. My memory's bad enough, but I haint forgot ye and yer brave deed. Well, I'm glad your succeeding so well, and I hope you haint forgot your redemption before the Cross."

"No, Deacon, I haven't, and I trust I am doing the Lord's will, as I ought, though I know sometimes I fall short. I take part more than most of the young people in our church, but I trust I will still be moved to do more and more for our holy cause."

"There, there! It's proud I am to see in this great wicked city one of Barnville's boys so true to the teachings of our Lord and Master that he learnt in our old home church."

Here the young man coughed lightly, as if the emotion of religious memories was swelling up in his throat and almost choking his utterance.

"But I guess everybody has forgot me at Barnville. It's mor'n twelve years now."

"Not at all, Deacon. Every time I go back there to the old church I hear somebody speak of Deacon Jones."

"Do tell——!"

At this moment a young man came up hurriedly and tapped "George" on the shoulder. "George" turned at once, and said: "How do you do, Henry? Henry, this is my old friend, Deacon Jones, from the home of my boyhood. Mr. Jones, Mr. Wilson. I am proud, Deacon, to have you meet my friend here, who is one of the Exposition directors and manager of one of the most important departments on the grounds."

"I would be very glad to talk longer with you and your friend Mr. Brown, but I was just hunting for Johnson, the paymaster. Iv'e got to have two hundred dollars inside of ten minutes or there will be the biggest howl among employees you ever saw."

"Oh, you needn't hunt any longer for Johnson, Mr. Wilson, here's my check for the sum and you can cash it at once at the World's Fair bank," and Mr. Brown, who was none other than Arthur Blair, the confidence man and bogus detective, drew out a First National bank check book.

"But that's exactly the trouble. It is now past banking hours, and for some reason Johnson has not come around."

A troubled look came over Mr. Blair's face in his anxiety to help out his friend. Turning to Uncle he said: "Perhaps the Deacon can help my friend out and then cash my check here on the grounds in the morning."

Uncle looked uneasy for a moment, and then said: "Of course I can accommodate you," and he pulled out a roll of bills and laid aside $200, which left him with only thirty dollars.

Mr. Blair had the check made out and was just extending it to Uncle when Johnny came up, a curious spectator of the scene before him. A second glance at the gentleman talking to his grandfather and he began to jump up and down and whirl around yelling at the top of his voice: "Perlice! fire! murder! robbers! pickpockets! confidence men! thieves! thugs! highwaymen! bandits! outlaws! catch 'em! hang 'em! crucify 'em! here, here, everybody! surround 'em! close in on 'em! let no guilty man escape!"

The two confidence men were for once too astonished to act quickly, but one recovered himself soon enough to make a snatch for the roll of bills in Uncle's hand. Two or three corners of bills were torn away, but Uncle held the money. In an instant a dozen men were crowding around, and among them two or three officers.

"Catch that old thief!" yelled Blair, "he's got my money." "Catch him!" cried Wilson, appearing to try to get at him, "he's got our money."

Uncle was standing in blank stupefaction holding the bills in his hands and staring at the gathering crowd.

An officer caught him by the arm and said: "Old man, where did you get that money?"

Uncle found his tongue at last, and said: "Mister, I got that from Bill Shaw for some of the finest Jerseys you ever seed."

"Here, officer, are our cards and the charge. We'll appear in the morning at the station."

Johnny had been overwhelmed by the crowd, but by this time he had edged his way in, and when he saw his grandfather in the tolls of the law he yelled shrill enough to startle the whole crowd.

"Grandfather's done nothing, let him alone. Here's the thieving hypocrits." But the two young men had disappeared among the people, and Uncle was being taken away in such a crowd that John could get no view whatever of the situation, so he ran howling and sputtering round and round the fast increasing crowd like a child gone insane. Presently the uselessness of his action made him think of Mother and Fanny. At once he darted off to the spot where he had seen them last, and in his wildness to find them ran past them two or three times, till Fanny saw him and in amazement cried, "Johnny! John! What on earth is the matter with you, Johnny?"

Johnny darted over to them and yelled out: "He's tuk up! The cops has got him! grandfather's tuck up, and he's done nothing, and them bloody bandits got away again. Oh! Oh! Oh!" and Johnny danced around, incapable of telling Fanny or his grandma anything further.

But they learned enough to know that for some reason Uncle had been arrested and was no doubt now in the guard house. Aunt was overwhelmed with consternation, but Fanny ran over to a guard standing near by and inquired: "If anyone is arrested on the grounds where do they take them?"

"Over there to the guard house, Miss. There they go with some old chap now."



Fanny looked and could scarcely repress a scream as she saw Uncle seated in the patrol wagon between two policemen. She ran back to Aunt and Johnny and told him to run as fast as he could to see where the wagon went, and they would follow in the same direction. Johnny was off like a shot as he saw the wagon rapidly disappearing over the way.

Out of breath they were coming up to the station door when they met Johnny, hat off, and almost speechless with excitement.

"They've took Grandpa's money and everything, and locked him up. They asked him if he had any friends, and he said he had no friends here but us. Nobody listens to me, come quick," and he started them off on a run for the station. Arriving there, the officers in charge told them he could do nothing for them unless they could find some responsible persons to secure his appearance for the preliminary hearing of the next day. They were taken around where Uncle was, and a more woe-begone appearing farmer never was seen.

"Ah, children, this is Chicago!"

"Grandpa, I'm going to find Mr. Warner. I believe he is a good man, and will help us, as he told you he would. Johnny and I will start at once to find him. I don't know what else to do."

"But, child," said Aunt, "it's already five o'clock, and the people will all be gone home from the store."

"No difference, Grandma; you stay right here, for we're going."

She took the card from Uncle that Mr. Warner had given him and left the building with Johnny walking resolutely by her side.



CHAPTER XIX

THE LOST FOUND

They took a car, and in half an hour were at the doors of the Clarendon Company. It was past business hours and the doors were locked. Fanny was greatly distressed as to what she should do; but there was no time to lose. Some young men were standing near eyeing her with the usual sensual greediness of their kind. Her mission was too urgent for her to notice their insinuating remarks.

"Can any of you tell me where or how I may find the gentleman named on this card?"

Her demeanor, so unaffected and true, brought all their latent manhood out, and each one was anxious for the honor of helping her.

Some one standing in the rear made an unbecoming remark, and instantly the eyes of those about her turned on him so meaningly that he slunk away. One of them took her into a restaurant near by and made known to the proprietor what she wanted. He said Mr. Warner lived with the head of the firm, a Mr. Sterling. The street and number of the residence was given to a cabman, and soon they were driving rapidly away.

Mr. Sterling was sitting alone in his library reading the evening papers, when he heard a determined ring at the door. His door was open into the hall, and he went himself at once to answer the call.

It was growing quite dark, and he could distinguish only that there were two young people standing before him.

"Is this where Mr. Sterling lives?" said one, in a very pleasing tone of voice.

"It is."



"We are very sorry to disturb you, but we are in some trouble, and a gentleman by the name of Warner told us if, for any reason, we needed any assistance while in the city, to call on him. We went to the store, but it was closed, and then we were directed to come to you in the hope that through you we could find Mr. Warner."

John and Fanny saw a kindly appearing business man before them, and they spoke with the utmost confidence in his good-will.

"So, so! that is good. I have heard him speak several times recently of a young lady he met on the train, and somewhere else once or twice since. Are you the young lady I have been teasing him about? Now, that is good. Of course you can see him. He lives with me and is up-stairs now. May I ask what is the nature of your trouble?"

Johnny could hold his tongue no longer.

"Why, sir, they've tuck Grandpa up and got him in jail 'cause I stopped some crooks a gettin' his money."

"I don't see, my boy, just how that could be," and the gentleman seemed somewhat suspicious of their grandfather.

"I don't, nuther," blurted Johnny.

"Come in. I will send for Mr. Warner and see what he can do for you."

They followed him into the room, and he motioned them to take seats. Then he went out and sent some one up-stairs for Mr. Warner.



The room was richly furnished, but had an air of negligence about it that betokened the want of an interested woman's taste and care. They could hear voices now and then coming from some distant part of the house, but they sounded more like the hilarious gaiety of servants than of persons having such a cultured place for a home. From the tapestries on the walls to the piano and the great case full of books, everything was arranged for the convenience of the one rather than for the taste of the many. It was the most pleasing home, where money was lavishly spent, that she had ever been in, and perhaps she is not to be blamed that for a moment she was carried away by her surroundings, and the longing came over her to be so happily situated as this. Seeing a life-size painting of a woman placed on a high frame near a desk, she went over to look at it. There was something so lifelike and natural, and even familiar, about the picture that she still further forgot how she came to be there. She did not hear Mr. Sterling as he re-entered the room, but he came up to her, and as she stepped aside the light fell full upon her face almost on a level with the picture in the frame. A startled expression came over the face of Mr. Sterling, which deepened into an amazement. His face grew white, and he looked at her and then at the picture, and then from the picture to her.

The light of some quick intuition spread over her face, and she thrust her hand into her cape pocket and drew out a small gold locket, which she opened and looked at intently, and then from the face of the man to the face of the woman. Mr. Sterling saw the locket.

"What are you looking at, child?" he almost shrieked.

"My mother and father," she said.

He caught the locket out of her hand.

"There, there," he cried, pointing to the painting; "there is the same picture, it is the picture of the only one I ever loved, the one now in heaven, and you are her living image. In God's name, tell me, child, what is your name."

"My name is Fanny," she said, "Fanny Jones; sometimes they call me 'Fanny Sterling.' Mary Sterling was my——"

She never finished the sentence. With a cry of joy he caught her in his arms, sobbing and laughing; "My child, my child, my own little girl; found, found at last!"

Johnny at this amazing outburst had come up as if to protect his sister, and as Mr. Sterling saw him he cried, "And is this your brother, the baby I left never to see again till now?"

Mr. Sterling sat down and drew Johnny up to him. "A rough, hearty, honest farmer boy," he said; "I can not realize that after an endless search, you have been sent to me in such a strange manner."

Mr. Sterling overcome with his emotion, buried his face in his hands, and Fanny kneeling by his side, looked wistfully at him, not knowing what to think or do. Mr. Warner, in answer to the call, had come to the door and witnessed the whole scene. He could not understand it, and his astonishment rendered him speechless. At last without moving from his place at the door, he said: "What can this mean, may I ask? It is a mystery to me."