_What People Said_ — _The Children’s Building_ — _The Woman’s
Building_ — _The Poor Boys’ Expensive Lunch_ — _The Life-saving
Drill._
[Illustration: A CHAIRLOAD.]
“Do you think you are now capable of finding your way around without my
help?” Mr. Douglass asked, in planning out the next day’s program.
“Yes, sir,” Philip answered. “After all, the plan of the Fair is
simple enough. It is only after one gets into the buildings that it
becomes confusing. Several times I have intended to come out facing one
building only to arrive at another. But I can soon set myself right
again.”
“How about the Intramural?” asked Harry, with affected anxiety. “Have
you got that straight yet—or does it still run in a circle?”
“Come, Harry,” Mr. Douglass interposed; “Philip has learned better than
to go wrong again. What shall you boys do to-day?—I am going to see
the Government Building, unless you need me. I should like to see the
Patent Office Exhibit.”
“I don’t know that we shall keep together all day, but Philip and I
agreed to see the Children’s Building and the Woman’s Building, anyway.
Besides, there is a life-saving drill on the lake front at half-past
two, and perhaps we can get through in time to see that.”
Promising to meet again for dinner, the boys left Mr. Douglass to
finish breakfast leisurely, and set forth for the upper part of the
grounds—the north end.
As they went along, Philip drew out a little note-book and pencil,
intending to note down the bits of talk he should overhear from
passers-by. He seldom caught more than a scrap, but some of the
fragments were queer and suggestive. The first was the expression,
“Perfectly magnificent!” Then came a heavy Western man, in a broad felt
hat, eagerly telling two friends, “Why, if you was to spend only one
second in front of each exhibit—” but they passed on. Then followed
these:
[Illustration: THE CHILDREN’S BUILDING.]
“Think _I’ll_ wander around this way?”
“Ain’t that it, over there?”
“Get the Orficial Cat-a-logue here.”
Entering the Horticultural Building, intending only to walk through it,
they heard these:
“You been here, John?”
“Wal, I was just a-lookin’ to see.”
“Pennsylvania is along here, I guess.”
They heard one man assert, “I don’t think that it is any good at all!”
Whereupon his friend insisted, “Now, you just go along and see.”
At a stand where a sharp young woman was selling “ever-pointed”
pencils, a man inquired, “What’ll I do when the points are all gone?”
To which the saleswoman scornfully retorted, “Isn’t two years long
enough for only ten cents?—but even then you can get new ones at any
stationer’s.”
Coming out of the Horticultural, they caught the words, “The biggest
revolver in the world,” but never found out whether the speaker was
referring to the Ferris Wheel, or to the Equator, or what.
A woman passed by telling her husband about lunching.
“Why, it scares them to death! Twenty-five cents was the cheapest on
the bill of fare! But they took it, and they enjoyed it immensely!”
“What do you suppose it was, Harry?” asked Philip, who liked to know
all that went on.
“Can’t imagine: possibly a watermelon,” Harry answered. “It couldn’t
have been a turkey, judging by the prices we’ve seen.”
Two young girls passed talking about the exhibits. Said one, “I’m not
at all sensational over anything.” Whereupon the other told her, “Well,
I like to get enthused over a thing like this.”
[Illustration: THE GYMNASIUM: CHILDREN’S BUILDING.]
By the side of the road was a closely cropped and velvety lawn, and
over the lawn a patent sprinkler was propelling itself. The water in
passing through the pipes set in motion wheels that propelled the
little sprinkler slowly over the lawn so as to distribute the water
evenly. It was a clever invention, and its utility was evident. Philip
and Harry stopped to examine it, but Philip still kept his note-book in
hand, and soon had jotted down these entries—speeches made at sight of
the little motor:
“Greatest thing I ever saw!”
(“Evidently he did not come here by way of Niagara, as Phinney did,”
remarked Harry.)
“Runs itself—water does it! See?” said one.
“Pretty—good—scheme!” exclaimed another.
“Seen ’em before,” came from a third.
“_Ain’t_ that good?” observed a fourth.
And then Harry and Philip went on; but they talked it over, and
concluded that the little sprinkler was a rather independent machine to
have set loose on a lawn. Sleeping dogs, and people dozing in hammocks,
would have to take their chances.
By this time they had reached the Children’s Building, and after
admiring the frescoed medallions on the walls, showing children in
various foreign costumes, they entered by the main door. First they
went up-stairs to the second floor, as they had been invited by the
lady in charge to come there at once. Unfortunately, she was not in;
but there was plenty in the room to interest them. Upon the walls
were large and small drawings, engravings, and photographs of writers
known to children or especial favorites of young readers. They saw Miss
Louisa M. Alcott (“Jo,” of “Little Women”), Hawthorne, Longfellow,
Whittier, Mary Mapes Dodge, Thomas Bailey Aldrich (“Tom Bailey,” of
“The Story of a Bad Boy”), Frank R. Stockton (whose “Jolly Fellowship”
was a favorite book of Harry’s), Thomas Hughes (“Tom Brown at Oxford”
and “Tom Brown at Rugby”), Holmes, Lowell—and ever so many more; but
the author of “Billy Butts the Boy Detective” was left out without
being missed.
Along the middle of the library ran a glass case showing manuscripts,
proof-sheets, and pictures that went to the making of “The Youth’s
Companion” and “Harper’s Young People.” They had already seen a similar
display of material for “St. Nicholas” in the publishers’ rooms, where
they had been the day before. It was a keen pleasure thus to see “how
the wheels go round,” and to realize that the stories had an existence
in pen and ink fresh from the authors’ hands.
At one end of the room several bookcases contained books for or about
children, from the earliest to the most modern. One book of the
seventeenth century was bound in sheepskin and illustrated with odd
little woodcuts to show different trades and pursuits. Near these
older books were arranged autograph letters from Longfellow, Frank
R. Stockton, Palmer Cox, Mrs. Cleveland, Colonel Higginson, Edward
Eggleston, Bayard Taylor, George MacDonald, Christina G. Rossetti,
Edward Everett Hale, Miss Alcott, Dr. Holmes, Helen Hunt Jackson, D.
C. Gilman, and others, of whom Philip and Harry knew more or less. In
the library Philip also noticed a picture of Henry D. Thoreau, and
reminiscent views of Walden Pond.
[Illustration: THE LIBRARY: CHILDREN’S BUILDING.]
Up-stairs, too, was Miss Huntington’s “Kitchen-Garden,” a school meant
to teach the children of poor people in the city how to do well and
cheerfully their household work. The little folks sang songs while
making beds, setting tables, or sweeping rooms, and learned how to make
and how to enjoy a neat home. In another corner was a school where deaf
children were reciting as if they could hear, and were reading from the
motions of their teacher’s lips what she said.
When Philip and Harry went into this room, a big boy was writing upon
the blackboard. They heard the teacher tell him to put down five words.
He watched her lips while she spoke, and after some consideration wrote
slowly the word “Money.” The teacher told him to go on; but, after a
long pause, the boy said that he couldn’t think of any more. A little
girl named Grace put up her hand, showing that she had thought of some;
and the boy turned to her, very willing to be helped. So Grace took
up his task, and wrote, “Truth, Care, Happy, Mirth”—quite a different
kind of words from the sort the boy had chosen. To these short words
the pupils added endings, as “Truth-ful=truthful full of truth,”
“Care-less=careless=without care,” defining the words thus made.
[Illustration: TEACHING THE DEAF: CHILDREN’S BUILDING.]
Philip found it hard to remember that these scholars were deaf; but, as
the two cousins were leaving the room, they saw at the door a little
girl not nearly so far advanced. The teacher was showing her how to
pronounce words, touching the child’s nose when she did not properly
sound the letter “n,” and otherwise teaching her the very elements
of speech. This sight made it easier for them to understand the
difficulties the older pupils had overcome, and they went out with a
better idea of the value of sound hearing.
Around the top of one of the rooms was a strange checkered frieze,
which, when closely examined, proved to be thousands of card temperance
pledges signed by “children of all the world,” as the inscription told
them. Being red and yellow, the cards made a pretty bit of decoration.
Also on the second floor were a kindergarten class-room, with specimens
of the work upon the walls; and a class-room for “sloyd,” or simple
work in wood. But the latter was just then not in use, though there had
been classes there not long before.
As they were standing in a corner of the hall, looking at some
pictures from children’s magazines, drawn by Reginald Birch, Alfred
Brennan, and other favorite illustrators, they heard a little boy say:
“Mama, come this way. I want to see the playthings!”
“No; come on. I must see this room,” his mother answered; at which the
boy whined out:
“Oh-h! you won’t let me see a single thing!”
This, if not exaggerated, was certainly a strong statement to be made
by a small boy at a World’s Fair. To take a child into the Fair and not
to let him see a single thing was not only cruel, but even remarkable.
Probably the boy overstated it.
Harry and Philip went up on the roof, but found nothing there, and then
went down to the ground floor. Here, at one end, was the place where
children were deposited while their parents enjoyed the sights at the
Fair. One small boy was weeping bitterly, while his father and mother
tried to console him. Philip stopped, and the father of the child said,
“We were going to leave him here, but he does not seem to like it”; so
one boy was not checked.
The boys would have been glad to see these little ones, but the windows
and doors were crowded all the time they were in the building; so they
gave up the attempt, and only glancing at the Illinois room, spent
their last few minutes in watching the children who had come in to
exercise.
[Illustration: THE NURSERY: CHILDREN’S BUILDING.]
The whole central portion down-stairs was fitted up as a gymnasium, and
there was a director in attendance to show visiting children how to use
the apparatus. There were children jumping, climbing, and swinging, and
enjoying themselves keenly. It was open at certain hours every day, and
was always filled with young athletes.
[Illustration: THE TOP OF THE WOMAN’S BUILDING.]
Feeling that they had now been through the Children’s Building, they
stepped across to the adjoining exhibit, the Woman’s Building, but
walked around it half-way, so as to enter at the main entrance. They
found the building a larger one than they had expected, and spent
more time there than they had thought necessary. Of course there were
many things on which no self-respecting boys would waste time—things
their sisters might understand, but which they saw nothing in. The
embroideries, for instance, were to the boys only pictures; they
didn’t pretend to say which nation was entitled to the gold medal
for needlework. Neither did they pause long before the dressmakers’
exhibits. But, still, they found enough in every direction to delay
their departure, and it was time for lunch before they were ready to
leave. They liked the frescos, particularly that showing the “Lady with
the Lamp” among the sick soldiers.
[Illustration: THE WOMAN’S BUILDING.]
In the educational exhibit, they heard a little girl exclaim, “Those
are mine!” pointing to some drawings; but they did not see much to
interest them (in their fastidiousness) except a method of firing
colored signal-rockets from guns or pistols; and when they heard a
portly woman saying to her friend, “Now, as for me, I would line it
with—” they began to rush past everything in the nature of dry goods.
An embroidered curtain, showing a combat of dragons, detained Harry
long enough for him to declare it “the most mixed up thing he ever saw,
for he couldn’t untangle t’ other dragon from which dragon, and he
didn’t believe the whole Board of Lady Managers could, either.”
A case of dolls showing Dutch, Quaker, and other costumes, the boys
were sure girls would like; and while standing beside it, they heard a
woman say to her husband: “That doll is dressed the way women dressed
when you and I were young.” It was a dress such as the boys had seen
in pictures of war-times—about 1863.
In one case was some needlework by Queen Victoria, but the ardent
inhabitants of our great republic prevented the boys from seeing how
deft royalty was with the needle.
“Anyway,” said Harry, “she never sat in unwomanly rags plying her
needle and thread.”
In the art gallery of the Woman’s Building the boys noticed only a
few of the pictures; “Jean and Jacques,” by Marie Bashkirtseff, was
one they particularly liked. It showed two little French boys going
“unwillingly to school,” dressed in their black blouses. Another was a
little girl playing hide-and-go-seek behind a low bush. She had a sweet
little face and bewitching smile.
They also liked the “Ethnographical Department,” where they found
all sorts of weapons and utensils from Africa, collected by Mrs.
French-Sheldon, the explorer. Harry didn’t altogether like the idea of
a woman’s showing that she explored, just as if she was a Sir Samuel
Baker with a great beard, and he consoled himself with the reflection
that even Mrs. French-Sheldon probably couldn’t whittle a stick.
[Illustration]
In the gallery were drawings and paintings, among them some by Queen
Victoria and other noble amateurs. Harry, owing to the fact that the
crowd usually remains below stairs, was able to critically examine the
Queen’s sketches. The hind legs of one of her dog-drawings particularly
delighted him, since they proved beyond question that there is no royal
road to animal-drawing. Harry himself had often found the same trouble
in drawing the same points, and a warm artistic sympathy welled up in
his heart for the great Empress of India in her struggles to conquer
animal-drawing. When, in the same gallery, he saw some drawings by
Mary Hallock Foote, an artist whose works he admired, he believed that
he would rather be a plain American who could draw than a crowned queen
who did very well considering how busy she was with state matters.
They glanced into the stately California room, upon the floor of which
was a great grizzly-bear rug, and then made up their minds that it was
time to be lunching if they intended to see the life-saving crew at
work. But on their way out, they stopped long enough for Harry to have
his name written by a woman card-writer, who used a pen set “skew-shaw”
on its handle. She added his residence—the State only—and the date. It
cost him five cents, but he felt that Philip was no longer one ahead of
him.
[Illustration]
Philip saw a machine marked “Music, Fortune, Weight,” with the usual
request about dropping a nickel. He stood on the platform, and dropped
the nickel. The machine played “The Sweet By and By,” and shoved out a
ticket upon one side of which was stamped his weight, “95,” and upon
the other was, “You will soon receive a fortune from across the sea.”
They walked between the State buildings over toward the lake, intending
to take lunch somewhere nearer the shore. When in front of Ohio’s
Building, with its projecting portico, they stopped to look at the
great statue in front. A woman’s figure upon a lofty pedestal raises
her arms proudly as if to call the attention of all the world. Around
the pedestal, like a row of bad boys sent to stand against the wall for
whispering, are a ring of Ohio’s great men, including Grant, Garfield,
and Stanton. In prominent letters around the pedestal are the words,
“These are my jewels.” While the boys were looking at this little piece
of justifiable brag, two women came along, and paused beside them.
“‘These—are—my,’” then moving a little further,—“‘jewels.’ Hum! Yes;
of course. Those are the words that Queen Isabella said to Columbus,
you know, when she gave him her jewels to fit out his ships.” Both then
walked away, enriched with the spoils of history.
Philip and Harry looked at each other, but made no remarks. Their minds
were busy in replacing the State of Ohio, Queen Isabella, and the noble
Cornelia in the niches from which they had been so rudely torn. In some
ways, that was the most remarkable exhibit they met that day at the
Fair.
At the same table where they had lunch, a young fellow sat down with
two little boys. They looked poor.
“What will you have, Johnny?” the eldest asked one of the little
fellows.
“Bread ’n’ butter.”
“That’s cheap,” the eldest said; and, after a little more talk, they
ordered fried sweet-potatoes.
“Nothing else?” the waiter said.
“Nothing else.”
When they were through, the waiter was asked “How much?”
“Ninety cents.”
Then there was silence, while the big boy fumbled in his pockets. Four
tiny bits of sweet-potato, bread and butter—ninety cents. It was hard,
and Harry spoke to the waiter about it.
“I can’t help it,” said the waiter. “It’s the rule.” So the bill was
paid. It was another interesting exhibit.
They gladly left this restaurant, and made their way out into the
honest breeze from the lake, taking their places upon the shore so as
to see the life-saving drill. It proved well worth coming to see.
The first sign of life was two rows of white-jacketed men that filed
out through the dense crowd which lined the lake shore. The lake was
rough and spray shot high into the air as the waves rolled against the
breakwater. But the men rushed the boat down the beach, and steered
by one who stood in the sternsheets holding a long oar astern of the
boat they made their way out to a mast that rose from above the water’s
surface to represent the mast of a wrecked vessel. It was a struggle,
but they finally reached the mast, and one man and a boy got out of the
boat and stood upon a small platform not far above the waves.
With even more difficulty the boat returned to the shore; and, after
some delay, probably to arrange the life-line and mortar, “bang” went
the shot, and the line was carried by the missile fairly across a boom
projecting from the mast. Then the man at the mast hauled in this light
line until it brought him a heavier one; and again he hauled until he
had the end of a cable that came from the crew on shore. This he rove
through a block upon the mast, and made it fast. It was made taut by
the crew of life-savers, and out along this thread of salvation rolled
the “breeches buoy,” looking like a Quaker’s hat turned upside down.
[Illustration]
Into the breeches the boy put his legs, and was hauled ashore by a
light line.
Just as the boy came near shore, his legs came so near the water that
he drew them up, frog-like, and the great crowd of spectators laughed
and cheered. Again the little buoy and breeches traveled out to the
mast. But the man out there had noticed the boy’s gyrations, and seated
himself on top of the buoy.
“You bet your neck he ain’t goin’ to run any chances of getting _his_
legs wet!” cried a very appreciative young man; and the wisdom of the
remark far exceeded its elegance.
After the man was landed, the buoy traveled again to the mast and
struck against the block there. Automatically, the cable was released
and hauled ashore, and the same bolt released the rope, dropped a sign
that had been rolled up like a map, and every one could read in plain
black letters the words: “DRILL FINISHED.”
Before the boys started for the “exit,” it began to rain, and
immediately there was a fine exhibit of umbrellas from every State
in the Union. To keep dry the boys walked the whole length of the
Manufactures Building.
Harry timed their walk, and counted his steps. He was going slowly,
with no desire to break or make a record. It took about 720 steps to
go the full length of the largest building in the Fair, and the walk
lasted nine minutes.
Before they went to bed that night Harry was told of a remark overheard
by one of his friends. It was made by a tired old lady, who had come
out of a large building and arrived unexpectedly in a strange and
distant quarter of the grounds:
“Well!” she exclaimed, “when they planned this Fair, they put these
buildings so that, wherever you come out, you ain’t anywhere nearer any
thing in particular!”
[Illustration: THE LIFE-SAVING BOAT.]
[Illustration: JUST FROM THE RANCH.]