The Zigzag Series.
BY
HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH.

• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN EUROPE.
• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN CLASSIC LANDS.
• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN THE ORIENT.
• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN THE OCCIDENT.
• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN NORTHERN LANDS.
• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN ACADIA.
• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN THE LEVANT.
• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN THE SUNNY SOUTH.
• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN INDIA.
• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN THE ANTIPODES.
• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN THE BRITISH ISLES.
• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN THE GREAT NORTHWEST.
• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN AUSTRALIA.
• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS ON THE MEDITERRANEAN.
• ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN THE WHITE CITY.

ESTES AND LAURIAT, Publishers,
BOSTON, MASS.

WEST LAGOON, WOODED ISLAND, AND MANUFACTURES BUILDING.

Zigzag Journeys
IN THE WHITE CITY.

WITH

Visits to the Neighboring Metropolis.

BY

HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH.

FULLY ILLUSTRATED.

BOSTON:
ESTES AND LAURIAT,
PUBLISHERS.

Copyright, 1894,
By Estes and Lauriat.

All Rights Reserved.

University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

PREFACE.

HE last Zigzag volume sought to explain the American consular service, and to relate wonder-tales told in consular offices. This volume seeks to illustrate the White City, and to show what might have been seen at the Fair that would be of service to patriotic American holidays, the Village Improvement Societies, and social life, and especially to commend the work of the Folk-Lore Societies, and to give the history of the White Bordered Flag.

I have made the Folk-Lore Congress a leading feature of the book for story-telling purposes, but give to the White Bordered Flag the place of the crowning glory of the Fair, as the new education of Peace now demands the attention of the people, and especially of societies and schools. The recent resolution of the British Parliament calling for a Peace Commission between America and England to settle international disputes, and the worthy response of the President in his last Message, would seem to be a promising and perhaps decisive advance towards the union of the Anglo-Saxon race in the cause of Peace. The history of the Peace movement in England and in America has now a new interest, and this, amid the usual mélange of stories which I have used in this series of books, I have sought to illustrate and explain.

“What does the memory of the White City yield to our new patriotic national life?”

This question, so far as it concerns young peoples’ societies, we have sought to answer. The White City was the prophetic vision of the ages, and was itself prophetic of the new eras of fraternity and peace. Its memory is a delight, and to write of it is a pleasure. To the American people it will ever be revelation: “See that thou makest all things after the pattern that was showed to thee on the Mount.”

This is the sixteenth volume of this series of books. In other volumes we have travelled in fancy over the world of stories; in this we go to the White City by the Lake, and meet the story-telling world as it came to us.

I am indebted to Messrs. Harper and Bros. for permission to republish “The Last Song of the Robin,” which I wrote for the Thanksgiving number of the “Weekly,” 1893; and “The Old Smoke Chamber,” which appeared in the Christmas number, 1888; and to the “Youth’s Companion” for like courtesy. Several popular authors have given me helps, and they are duly acknowledged in their places. As in the former volume, Miss Florence Blanchard has afforded me assistance, and in this volume has rendered me much service in preparing the parts on the History of Peace.

The “Chink, Chink” story was first published in “St. Nicholas,” and the poem entitled “The White Bordered Flag” was read at the Fair Auxiliary by the author at the opening of the Congress of Representative Youth.

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Zigzag Journeys in the White City.

CHAPTER I.
THE MARLOWES AT HOME.

ANTON MARLOWE was the Superintendent of the Public Schools, and the President of the Folk-Lore Society in his native town, which consisted of a New England village surrounded by a wide extent of country. He was usually the chairman of the Committee on Patriotic Celebrations; and he took an active interest in the Society for Schoolhouse Decorations, and in the Society for the Improvement of the Country Roads. He was a Sam Adams-like man, always busy in some plan for the public good. His father was Ephraim Marlowe, the Quaker, and he had a son named Ephraim, a lad some fifteen years old,—“old Ephraim and young Ephraim,” the townspeople called them.

The Village Improvement and Folk-Lore Society, as an active organization in the old town had come at last to be called, passed some singular resolutions in the spring of 1893. This society had begun as a village improvement effort; but it had found so many old traditions and legends in its historic work that it had added to it the Historic Society, under the name of the Folk-Lore Society. The workers in this organization had given a number of entertainments on the evenings of patriotic holidays, and had saved several hundred dollars for public use. Manton Marlowe had been the leading mind in these societies. He had arranged the entertainments for the holiday evenings, had conducted excursions into historic fields, had been a leader in the repair of old roads and the marking of historic places. He was a good story-teller, and he had collected the old traditions of the place, and related them in story-telling lectures to the last society.

FINE ARTS BUILDING.

When the Village Improvement and Folk-Lore Society met in May, it greatly surprised good Mr. Marlowe. It resolved:—

• (1) “That the efforts of our worthy President merit practical appreciation;
• (2) “That the Society appropriate one hundred and fifty dollars from its treasury to give him an excursion to the World’s Columbian Exhibition;

“That he be asked to accept this as an expression of esteem, and that he be respectfully requested to answer, on his return, the following questions:

• (1) “What was the most amusing thing that you saw at the Fair?
• (2) “What was the most useful exhibit that you saw at the Fair?
• (3) “What was the grandest sight that you saw at the Fair?
• (4) “And what was the most useful lesson of the Fair?”

• (1) “That the efforts of our worthy President merit practical appreciation;
• (2) “That the Society appropriate one hundred and fifty dollars from its treasury to give him an excursion to the World’s Columbian Exhibition;

• (1) “What was the most amusing thing that you saw at the Fair?
• (2) “What was the most useful exhibit that you saw at the Fair?
• (3) “What was the grandest sight that you saw at the Fair?
• (4) “And what was the most useful lesson of the Fair?”

Mr. Marlowe listened to these resolutions with amazement. As President of the Society, he left the chair, and the Vice President put the resolutions to vote.

“As many as are in favor of these Resolutions, whose purpose is to send our President to the World’s Columbian Exhibition, that he may see the Fair for us, and return to us with new plans for the improvement of our town and its social life, please say ‘Ay.’”

Every voice in the Society shouted “Ay.”

“It is a unanimous vote,” said the Vice President. “Mr. Marlowe, we cannot go to the Fair, so we have selected you to see the Fair for us, and to report what you may find there that may be of use to a country town. Will you serve the Society?”

Mr. Marlowe stood silent for a time, and then said with a choking voice:—

“Yes, yes, my friends, if you put it in that way! My heart is full, but I promise you all that I will put my conscience into my eyes. I will use my eyes for the town and not for myself. I would do anything to advance the interests of this grand old town. Let me see, what is it I am to do? Report to you what, is the funniest, most useful, and the grandest thing that I see at the Fair, and all that I find that can be of benefit to us here. Yes, my friends, I will go. I thank you for your good will and confidence with all my heart!”

One of the Directors of the principal railroad to California via Chicago, was present. He arose and said:—

“Mr. Marlowe, your interest in the Village Improvement Society was the influence that led our company to extend a branch line here. I will give you two passes to Chicago and return. You may like to take one of your family with you.”

When Manton Marlowe returned home that night, he was a happy man. His public spirit had returned to bless him. His wife was an invalid, and she could not go to the Fair. His son Ephraim wished to go. He had heard what the Society had done.

So Ephraim sat down by his father, and expected to receive the invitation.

It was a mellow May evening. As the two sat side by side, old Ephraim came slowly into the room and joined them.

“Manton,” said the latter, “I am an old man.”

“Yes, father, but not very old.”

“I can travel on the cars.”

“Yes, as well as I.”

“I never been to many places in my long life.”

“No. I wish that you could go to the Fair, father.”

“Manton, I want to go. Why, I have been preaching peace in the old Meeting-House on the Hill for forty years, and I would feel as though I could depart in peace, if I could only attend the meetings of the Peace Congress. I have been reading about that proposed Congress, and dreaming about it.”

“Young Ephraim,” said Mr. Marlowe, “I know that you want to go to the Fair; but would you not rather have grandfather go?”

“Yes, father,” said the manly boy, “I shall be happy if he can go.”

“Thou hast well spoken,” said old Ephraim. “Thy heart is right, and I can see that it is already consecrated. But why can we not both go? I have a little money of my own. I will pay my own way.”

“Oh, grandfather, and we will see the world all living together in peace in one white city.”

“Yes, boy. I have seen it in visions. I never expected to see it in the flesh. What have you to say, Manton?”

AGRICULTURAL BUILDING.

“We will all go. The papers say that the White City by the Lake is the most beautiful sight that ever arose in this world under the sun. I am glad that we can see it together.”

“I am told,” said the old man, “that the white-bordered flag is to be carried there. That flag is the beginning of the peace of the world. To see it would turn this old heart into a psalm. It would make me sing like the men of old, Quaker that I am!”

The sunset lit up the far hills and faded, and the three sat together long into the evening, planning their journey to the White City.

Mr. Marlowe was a popular story-teller. His love of folk-lore stories had given him his place as leader of the Village Improvement Society. He liked to relate stories in which old-time characters could be imitated by voice and manner. We shall use in this volume several stories of this kind, as he told them at some folk-lore social gatherings at the Fair.

A favorite story of his, “The Old Auctioneer,” or “The Last Song of the Robin,” is a specimen of his peculiar stories, and a picture of that department of folk-lore called the “Folk-Lore Story.” We give it here:—

THE LAST SONG OF THE ROBIN.

“Susan, I can see that old farm now in my mind’s eye,—the country road, the guide-post on which was printed ‘20 Miles to Boston.’ I can see the painted tavern, and the dark pond where the mysterious travellers were killed. I can fancy hubbly oak-trees; the way-side orchard; the corner under the trees where the white avens bloomed; the balm bed, the red-pepper patch, the lilac-bushes, and the bouncing-bet. I can hear conquiddles, as we called the bobolinks, as they used to fly and sing in the windward meadows; red-winged blackbirds in the woodland pastures; martin birds under the eaves; and the first song of the robin as he came out of the woods, like the dove from Noah’s Ark, to see if the dry land had appeared. And, Susan, I can hear the last song of the robin.”

The old man’s eye looked over the great prairie, which spread out before him like a sea.

“It didn’t look like that, Susan, where the sun rises and sets in the same corn-field, and the rain-plover cries, and all is so wide, wide, wide.

“Susan, I’ve been thinking. I never told you much about my twin sister, who lives on the old farm now on the North River, in Massachusetts. She’s seventy-five years old, come yesterday. I’ve had a letter from her. She’s in trouble, Susan. I feel that I ought to go to her, old as I am. I do, Susan.”

“You are too old, grandpa.”

“The old place is about to be sold at auction. She says so in the letter, written in the same hand that we used to write together when we sat side by side on the wooden bench at school. She says that the poorhouse will soon be her home, but that there is One coming round soon who will settle all things. She means, Susan—Well, you know who it is that soon comes round and settles all things when a person passes the shadow of seventy years. I am able to go, Susan, and I must go. Somehow I can feel invisible hands pushing me like, as of the old folk, and I have dreamed twice of the last song of the robin.

“What was that? Well, well, the robins used to sing their last songs in the Indian-summer weather, before they went to their covers in the deep woods for the long winter. It was peculiarsome like. It was when the apples and leaves were falling, leaving bare the nests in the trees; after the wild-geese had flown over, and the partridges had begun to fly. I’ve heard ’em many a time. I would like to hear them once more, as I used to hear, them among the red trees by the old cranberry meadows. You may think me queer, Susan, and haunted like; but I long to see that old slanting roof just once more, and my twin sister, who was rocked in the same cradle with me, and is now in sorrow, and to hear that last song of the robin. It seems as though at times I could hear that now.”

He listened. There was a murmur of the wind in the cottonwood-trees.

“It is comin’ Thanksgiving, Susan. It makes me think of the folks and times that are gone; of the succotash, pandowdy, and puddings, and pumpkin pies. There never was no such days anywhere like those, and my hungry heart aches to spend one more Thanksgiving with my sister Susan. The last one I spent there was sort of queer. The old minister he ate of all the dishes in the kitchen before the table was set, and then there were so many of them that it made him heavy like, and he fell asleep saying grace, and we sat there feeling awkward like, and the victuals all got cold. Oh, how I would like to talk over those old times with Susan, my old sister Susan!

“And, Susan, my little granddaughter, I hid some letters behind a board in the haunted garret under the candle-poles, and there’s going to be a vendue, and I want to see them once again. That was more than fifty years ago.

THE POST OFFICE.

“Haunted garret? Such a place seems queer to you, does it, Susan? We have no haunted garrets here out West. All the old houses and farms in the Cape towns had their ghost-stories, and a family couldn’t have amounted to much who hadn’t been followed by a ghost sometime.”

It was near sunset. Like a high arch of glory rose the red light in the western air,—liquid rubies and gold. Against the sunset stood the black outlines of some Lombardy poplars and cottonwood-trees, and under the trees were three graves.

The old man’s face turned towards the graves. He sat musing for a time in deep thought. The wind rippled through the faded leaves, and scattered them about the graves.

“Susan!”

“Well, grandpa?”

“Susan!”

“Yes, I hear. What is it? Grandpa, I was thinking of the haunted garret.”

“Your grandmother and I brought those trees here. They were twigs then, and she was a bride. I brought her here some years after I took my claim. Now her grave is there, and the graves of two of our own little ones. I shall come back again. You and my sister Susan are all that is left me now,—just old Susan and young Susan. She needs me. He will take care of you. If I live a week, I am going to rocky old New England once more. I hear voices calling me sometimes, and then there drifts into the air that last song of the robin, peculiarsome like.”

“What were the letters you hid behind the board, grandpa?”

“In the haunted garret?”

“Yes.”

“I may tell you sometime. It is a long story. It was in the garret where I once saw the ghost of old Rachel, who ground red peppers with a calash over her head. They used to hear her wandering about at night in the herb-room, pounding, pounding, pounding with a pestle. What times those were!”

“I, too, would like to see the old house, and my great-aunt, and eat a Thanksgiving dinner with some of the good old families. What do you say, grandpa?”

“You would? Well, you may go too. You’ll hear them, all those ghost-stories and wonder-tales, right where they happened.”

The girl’s face brightened up with pleasure, followed by a doubtful shadow, as of ghostly thoughts. She was still thinking of the haunted garret.

The old man sat dreaming again. He at last said, “Susan!”

“Yes.”

“Susan!”

“Yes, I am listening.”

“I have a secret for you.”

“Yes? Let me hear.”

“We will not let the folks know that we are coming. We will meet ’em as strangers like. Old Susan will not know me—likely not. Not know me? and we were born on the same day and rocked in the same cradle. It takes two to be happy always, and I used to be happy with her.”

The girl sat thinking.

“Grandpa!”

But the old man’s mind was in New England now. He was listening in dreams to his sister’s voice, and perhaps the last song of the robin.

“Grandpa!”

“Yes, Susan.”

“Why could we not bring her back with us?”

“The old well is there, and the walls and the rooms where the folks all were married and died. We could not bring her back. There are some things that money cannot do. We might bring her body back; only that, Susan.”

“But those things are to be sold?”

“Yes; but they are there.”

“And we will be there too, on Thanksgiving Day.”

“Yes; under the old roof on which I used to hear the rain fall in the warm summer eves.”

The old man’s face contracted and turned away. He was crying.

“I have not cried before for years, Susan. Sing me that old song that your mother used to sing when you was a baby. They called it ‘Ben Bolt.’”

A piano stood in one corner of the room, and over it soon floated the words of the haunting song:

“Oh, don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,

Sweet Alice, whose hair was so brown?”

At the words,

“In the old church-yard by the orchard, Ben Bolt,

In the valley so sweet and so low,”

the old man bent over his cane, and great tears again ran down his cheeks.

“I used to sing, Susan, and play the violin in the old house at home. Father made me promise not to take that with me. He said it would hinder me. He meant well.”

Susan sang:

“But of all the boys that were schoolmates then,

There is left but you and me.”

Then there fell a silence, and the western twilight deepened, and the walls of the sun seemed melting down.

“Thank you, my girl. That reminds me of the old times and the last song of the robin.”

They sat in silence, save that the west winds rustled amid the withering leaves of the old cottonwoods.

---

One cool day in September Susan alighted from her horse after a long ride over the prairie. She was met at the door by her grandfather.

“I’ve brought you another letter from the old home,” she said. “It is in aunt’s hand, and I think that she is in very great trouble. See! it is blotted.”

The old man put on his spectacles, and held the letter close to his eyes. “Yes, she is in trouble, you may depend. I knew how it would be. Her hand shook when she wrote that. Let me open it.”

He sat down on the rude piazza and read the letter, rocking at times nervously.

“Yes, she is in deep trouble, sure enough, Susan. We must go. I haven’t done just right, Susan, by your aunt; I haven’t, now. When I was young, I used to climb trees, and so hide from her and leave her, and she used to cry. I can see her now. I do feel as though I had been climbing a tree all of my life and hiding and leaving her. It didn’t add to the stature of Zaccheus to climb a tree, but it did add to his reputation. So it is with me, Susan. I’ve gained some property by immigrating here to the prairies, but I am Zaccheus still, and I hear a voice calling me to come down. That’s the way we used to talk in the old New England times, in figures like, when I thought the tree-tops reached clear up to the sky.”

“What does aunt write, grandpa?”

“The old place is going to be sold by vendue, and the debts will take all—all.”

“What is a vendue?”

“Oh, it’s like this. When property people lose almost all they have, and can’t pay their mortgages, then comes the sheriff, and after him a man whom we call an auctioneer, and the auctioneer cries ‘Going, going, gone,’ and when he gets through there’s not so much as a birch broom left.”

The old man rocked uneasily.

“It’s my fault, Susan. I want to tell you, though I do it to my shame, what a woman your old aunt is. She always put a person’s feeling above money. You see, it was this way: I had a fever to go West, and to marry, and Susan she wanted to marry a young farmer who owned an old Cape farm. But one of us had to stay with the folks. She was tender-hearted, Susan was, and she used to love me more than her own life,—she always loved others more than herself,—and one day, under the apple-trees, she said to me, ‘Martin,’ said she, ‘you may go West, and I’ll live with father and mother.’ When I came to be propounded for the Church, my conscience troubled me so that I made a covenant with myself that I would always be true to my twin sister Susan. And I nailed that covenant behind a board in the garret. And now I am going back to find it, and to keep it. Just hear this letter. She says:—

“‘Mother’s long sickness caused the mortgage, and the interest on it grew. Now they are going to sell the old place at vendue, and I’ll have to go to the poorhouse, or else live on the church, which is poor. Even my Thanksgiving turkeys will be sold.’

“Did you hear that, Susan? I remember how we used to go together hunting turkeys’ nests when, we were young. A turkey is a sly bird, and hides her nest, and always goes an opposite way when she starts for her nest. How we used to follow the turkeys slyly amid the dews, wild roses, and laurels, so as to find their nests! And now even her turkeys are to be sold! Susan, I feel as though I hadn’t done as I ought to. I must go back East, and I will do the right thing in the end. I will keep the covenant. It was Susan that gave me a chance in life. I can hear the old folks that are dead callin’, ‘Come home, come home;’ seems as though I could.”

“Grandfather, have you any spare money?”

“What makes you ask that, child?”

“Couldn’t you buy the old place and give it to her?”

“To Susan? To Susan? Why, bless your heart, that’s just what I’ve just been thinking! If I ought to—and a man ought to do what he ought, or he’ll feel just as he hadn’t ought to, and I feel that way now. No, Susan, none of those auction-attending folks shall eat my sister Susan’s turkeys this year. We’ll get ready and go. You never saw the sea, did you?”

“No; nor old houses with ghost-rooms. It all seems like a story.”

“Nor rocks, nor walls, nor great apple-orchards, nor woods of old oak-trees?”

“No, nor a Thanksgiving—a real true one, grandpa.”

“Well, child, you shall see a real old New England Thanksgiving this year, and I think it will be one well worth seeing. We’ll roast those turkeys ourselves. They’re saying ‘quit, quit’ to the mortgage now. I’m going to keep my covenant. It makes me happy to think of it. But, as I said, we will not let them know that we are coming. And, Susan, Susan, you maybe will hear that last song of the robin.”

MANUFACTURES BUILDING AND ELECTRIC FOUNTAIN.

The old man paced the piazza, and hummed, in a broken voice,—

“How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood,

When fond recollection presents them to view;

The orchard, the meadow, the deep tangled wildwood,

And every loved spot which my infancy knew!

“I used to know the man that made that song,” he said. “He was a son of a Revolutionary soldier who lived at Scituate. He went to live in New York. Strange that people will go to live so far away! I used to hear the boys sing it during the war,” he added, absently, “when they would get Thanksgiving boxes from home. Seems as though I could hear it now in the air: there are some songs that haunt one’s heart, Susan: it seems as though I could hear it far away. Listen!”

He listened. The prairie air was still. He heard the song, but Susan—she did not hear. The wind rippled through the dry leaves of the cottonwoods over the three graves.

---

There are probably no roads in our country that are so legend-haunted as those between Boston and Plymouth. The making of those roads by the Massachusetts and Plymouth Bay colonies was the first map of the nation. The men who built them, and guarded them by heavy stone walls, were the descendants of some of the best families of England, whose soul-training had led them to place principle above wealth, pleasure, or fame. On their simple rural farms they lived, attended the church and the folkmote, as the town meeting may be called, and they made the latter the pattern of all future republics.

Their farms, with the gray stone walls, cool wells, and great elms, retaining their names, still remain. The purple swallows come to them as of old in the spring-time, and the ospreys, or fishing-hawks, drift over at noon, wheeling in the sun. The partridge and quail may still be found in the woodlands and woodland pastures, and a few woodpeckers may still be heard tapping the trees.

The byways in their seclusion are even more poetic than the main highways. The wild grape and clematis there cover the sinking walls. The ancient graveyards are there, and their slate stones, with their curious death’s-heads and virtuous poetry, still may be seen zigzagging as it were among the bright sumachs. The slanting roofs are covered with moss, and the great barn doors open to the sea.

It was down this way that the old man Martin Marlowe and his granddaughter rode in one of the last stage-coaches that ever passed down the winding roads by the sea,—past the homes of the two Presidents Adams, past the church of the eloquent Henry Ware, past the old Scituate farm, where Woodworth lived, who wrote “The Old Oaken Bucket,” to a once famous but now forgotten neighborhood on the North River, where a thousand ships had been built, and among them the one which first entered the Columbia River of Oregon, and that gave the river its name. The old Winslow place was near, as were the green farms on the Marshfield meadows, where Daniel Webster came to live, and the Winslow reservation, where live the last of the Wampanoags.

The old man seemed dwelling in the past as the stage rattled along.

“There are not many of them left now,” he said to Susan. “How I shall miss seeing my old friends! All that a man can have in this world is his friends, and when they go his world is gone.”

He looked out on the great elms, which were flaming with color, and dropping their leaves in golden showers. The weather was warm and the air had a swampy smell.

The old man began to tell the legends of the old houses and places as they passed along.

“Susan, there’s where old Parson White used to live in the Indian days. His house stood in the meadow; there’s the chimney there yet—see?—down by the alder-bushes. He preached nigh on to seventy year, and he lived to be ninety. He preached to the Indians in Eliot’s time, when old Waban was living. One day a good Indian came to him, as I’ve hearn the old folks tell, and said to him, ‘Matthew—Mark—Luke—John—Jonah.’ And the tall parson talked to him about his soul and redemption and heaven, and then gave him a mug of cider to encourage him in his inquiries. It did. He came again, and the minister was busy writing one of his long sermons that turned the hour-glass twice. ‘Matthew—Mark—Luke—John—Jonah,’ said the Indian. But the parson’s mind was in the skies now. So the poor Indian repeated over the Scripture names again; but the parson’s mind was absent, thinking,—Parson White was great on thinking. Then the Indian pounded with his walking-stick, making a great noise after each name, and especially after ‘Jonah.’ That brought the old parson down from his Jacob’s ladder. ‘What do you mean?’ he shouted, rising up like a steeple. ‘Cider!’ said the Indian, and the poor parson dropped his face. He was discouraged, Susan.”

The stage stopped here and there at the country stores, about whose doors hung woollens for winter wear, and on the wooden steps of which were barrels of apples, onions, and potatoes.

One of the saddest sights on a New England byway is a dead church, with its broken tower and silent bell, in some neighborhood where the “boys” have nearly all gone to the cities and the West. The coach rolled by such a one, with its briery graveyard and broken wall. The old man saw it, and his memory of boyhood legends revived again.

“Susan—Susan—Parson White preached his last sermon there. It is boarded up now. See the old bell that used to make the hills echo! Parson White had gone eighty then; almost ninety he must have been.

“It was a Sunday morning in balm-breathing June, with the wild roses blooming, and the orioles singing, and the bobolinks toppling in the clover. The windows were open, and the shadows of the elms fell across them. The communion-table was spread in front of the tall pulpit, which was hung with silk curtains under the sounding-board. Parson White, he went up the pulpit stairs and began to pray. The old folks used to say that they never heard such a prayer as that. He seemed to be looking into heaven. Suddenly he stopped. There was a long silence. The church was so still you might have heard the chippering of the wrens in the old trees. He said then: ‘The horsemen of Israel, and the chariots thereof,’ Then he was silent again, and then he seemed talking to himself, and said, in a low voice:—

“‘My willing soul would stay

In such a frame as this,

And sit and sing herself away

To everlasting bliss.’

He did not move again. Never. He lay there on the pulpit, his face encircled in the arms of his long black robe, and resting on the Bible. The deacons went up to him softly. He was dead.”

The old man dropped his head in silence for a time. The coach rolled on its dusty way over the red and russet leaves that were falling in the sun.

Little Susan was dreaming too,—of old Susan and haunted rooms and the fairy-like day of Thanksgiving.

“Susan—Susan—we are near the old farm,” said the old man, starting. “There’s the gable just over the savin-trees,—there, with the woodbine on it, where the martin-boxes used to be. Many’s the time I’ve looked out of that window. I was young then, Susan; we do not live twice in this world.”

A strange sound fell on the Western girl’s ears.

“Going! going! How much am I offered for the old family cradle? Fifty cents? Fifty cents am I offered for the old family cradle? Fifty cents for this old oak cradle? One generation has slept in it, and it is good for another. Fifty cents am I offered?”

The old man listened a moment, then thrust his head out of the coach-door, and said to the driver: “Hurry up! I want to bid on that cradle.”

The driver cracked his whip. The coach rolled by a thin grove of trees that partly hid the yard from the way, and a strange scene was brought to view. A crowd of people, young and old, were gathered around an old gray farmhouse with an open door. There were vehicles of almost all kinds about the place, with the horses hitched to the trees. In the yard in front of the door was the furniture of the house, and on a high chair stood the tall form of a country auctioneer, crying the articles for sale in the singsong tone of the old travelling preachers,—a tone that must be first heard to be imitated.

In the doorway, close by a great stone step, sat an old woman in a white cap and calico dress, and a handkerchief crossed over her breast. She was watching the sale. Her face was beautiful in its serenity, hope, and trust. Faith was written in it. She seemed to have a soul that had a life above all changes.

“Is that aunt?” said Susan.

“My girl, I do not know. It looks like her. Does she look like me?”

The stage stopped. The driver called to the auctioneer: “Hold on! Here’s a man that wants to bid on that cradle.”

The auctioneer ceased his singsong, and all eyes were turned on the old man and the girl alighting from the stage. No one knew them.

“Now we are all ready,” began the auctioneer again. “The old oak cradle. How much am I offered for the old oak cradle? Fifty cents am I offered for the oak cradle? Some good people have been rocked in this old cradle, and it is good enough yet. Fifty cents. Seventy-five? Yes, the old gentleman who has just arrived bids seventy-five. Eighty—do I hear it? Eighty now for the old oak cradle? There were many prayers made over that old oak cradle. S-e-v-e-n-t-ee-five! Eighty—do I hear it? Are you all done? S-e-v-e-n-t-ee-five! Going, going, going! Once, do I hear the eighty? Twice, do I hear the eighty? Three times—third and last call—do I hear the eighty? Gone—to—What is your name, stranger?”

“Cash,” said the old man, with a quivering lip, as he passed through the crowd, followed by the wondering girl.

“Sold to Cash,” said the auctioneer. “What have we here? The little oak chair for the child at the table. Are you all ready to bid for the little oak chair for the child at the table? It is as old as the family, and as good as new. Look at it,—the little oak chair for the child at the table,—how much am I offered? Here is another—two of them. How much am I offered for them both?”

THE FORESTRY BUILDING.

The old man Marlowe and Susan take a seat on the great stone step, close to the feet of the serene old woman. Marlowe looks into her face.

Her lip quivered.

“You bought that cradle,” said she. “Were you ever here before?”

“Yes, many years ago. I used to know your father.”

“You did!—and my mother, too?”

“Yes; they were good people.”

“They are buried over there, under the savin-bushes,” said the old woman. “I was rocked in that there cradle, and my twin brother, who went out West. I wish that he could have had that cradle. I think of him all the time of late. He and a little granddaughter are all that’s left. The auctioneer spoke true—he did; there’s been many a prayer made over that cradle, and now it is gone out of the family. I’ve prayed that it might not be so. It will all be right by-and-by. The Lord is tedious, but He’s sure. I almost lose my faith sometimes, and I can hardly keep back my tears now. Why did you come here, stranger?”

“To spend Thanksgiving. I used to live in this town.”

“Have you any relations here?”

“Yes, a sister. I came to visit her, and I want to buy some of the old furniture; it looks so natural.”

“There’s to be no more Thanksgivings for me in this world. Stranger, it does seem rather hard. I’ve always been industrious, and have done my best. Stranger, it is hard when a poor lone woman like me, that never did any one harm, can neither die nor live. Did you ever have any trouble, stranger? You have? Then you do feel for me, don’t you? The Lord forgive me!”

The voice of the auctioneer rang out, “How much am I offered?”

“Fifty cents,” says old Marlowe, looking at the two chairs as the auctioneer held one up in either hand.

“Fifty cents for two family chairs for children at the table. Oak—good as ever—fifty cents! Going, going, going, at fifty cents. Is that all? Fifty cents? Do I hear sixty? Sixty—do I hear it? Going, going; once—do I hear it? Twice—do I hear it? Three times—do I hear it? Are you all done? Fifty cents. Sold to—What shall I call you, stranger?”

“Cash,” said the old man.

“Cash again,” said the auctioneer.

The old woman touches Marlowe on the shoulder: “Have you any children?”

“No, my good woman. Only my grandchild here.”

“What is her name?”

“Susan.”

“That is my name, stranger. My twin brother and I used to sit in those chairs. I wish I were able to save some of these things for him. It is hard, isn’t it, stranger? But you and I will never be young again. The withered stalk never blooms any more. I’ve ’most got through.”

She looked out over the sunny fields in the last glow of the Indian-summer days.

“Stranger, you came home to spend Thanksgiving. I’ll have my next Thanksgiving in a better world than this. I did hope to see my twin brother once more, but that can never be. The sun that goes down will find me a burden to the world. There’s the old clock; they’re going to sell that, too. It struck on the day that I was born, and at all the weddings and funerals and Thanksgiving days. Are you going to buy that, too? I wish you would. I have a good feeling for you,—somehow I’m drawn towards you. I feel as though you felt for me. I’ve wound that clock myself nigh on to sixty years.”

“The old eight-day clock comes next. Many a day that clock has seen, and it is good yet. How much am I offered for the old family clock? Start it, some one. I’ll give five dollars for it myself.”

“Six,” said the old man on the door-step.

“Are you going to buy that, too?” said old Susan. “I’m proper glad to hear ye bid on that. How many times I’ve heard it strike one at the family funerals, and then seen the minister rise beside the coffin and say, ‘Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble.’ I used to hear it strike one at night, when I watched with my twin brother Martin, who went West, in the weeks and weeks when he laid between life and death with the typhus fever. I wish that he could be here to-day.

“Stranger, do you know of what I’ve been thinkin’? Of course you don’t. I’ve just been wishing like, dreaming like, that brother Martin would come here, as you have come, and would bid off the old farm, and that I might die here at last in peace—where they all died. I’ve been dreamin’ just that dream. It comes to me. Oh, what a Thanksgiving this old heart would have, could such a dream as that come true!”

“Six dollars I am offered. Six, six, six. Going, going, going. Do I hear seven?”

“Seven,” bid a neighbor.

“Seven—do I hear ten? Seven dollars am I offered. Yes, once eight, and nine. Do I hear ten? Ten, ten, ten—do I hear it?”

“Ten,” said the old man on the step.

“Ten I am offered. Do I hear the twelve? Ten, ten, ten. Going, going, going, at ten dollars. Once—do I hear it? Twice—do I hear it? Third and last call. Going at ten dollars, to—”

“Cash,” said the old man.

“Stranger,” said the auctioneer, “what shall we do with these things that you have bought?”

The crowd gathered densely about the door-step to hear the reply.

“You may leave them right where they are. I have a good use for them.”

The parlor looking-glass was next offered. The old man on the step bought that also. Then the old empty parrot-cage, and he bought that.

“I’m glad that you have bought the lookin’-glass,” said old Susan. “What if all the faces that have looked into it could appear again! What if I could see there my father and mother young again—and Martin! What does make me think so much of Martin of late? Seems as though sometimes he was hoverin’ around me. There, they are going to sell the Concord musket and the dinner-horn! How many times I’ve blown that old horn just at twelve o’clock, to call the folks to dinner! Martin learned me how to blow it when he was a boy. We used to blow a sea-shell at first.”

The sale continued without any regard to the order of the value of the articles,—the parlor furniture, old school-books and almanacs, china and pewter mugs. The old man on the step bought them all.

Mysterious looks began to pass from one to another of the country folks. Why was the quiet old man buying all those things? What was he going to do with them? Would he buy the house and farm? Had he any interest in the poor old woman who was watching him now with straining nerves and intense interest?

After the sale of the furniture the auctioneer said: “We will next offer the house and farm. The old woman will show you the deeds. There is no encumbrance on the property. We will stop the sale for an hour. Then you will be ready for the finish. Stranger, where shall we put all these things that you have been buying?”

“I’ll tell you later; I’m not ready to answer yet. Never mind me—don’t crowd around me, friends. I’m an honest man. Go and take your lunches under the trees.”

There was a jingle of bells on the clear bright air. The bread-cart man was coming. The people bought gingerbread and bunns, and lounged under the cool trees in a spot of ground where stood a large and a small grindstone, and overhead hung scythes and corn-knives. There was a buzzing of voices, and talking in a suppressed tone, and great inquiry about the stranger who simply called himself “Cash,” and who was purchasing everything.

The old woman now tried to find out the secret of the stranger’s interest in these things.

“You and I must be about the same age,” she said.

“Yes,” said the old man; “the same suns have lighted us both. They used to tell a ghost-story about the chambers here. My girl has often asked me about them. Did you ever see anything strange upstairs?”

“No; but I found, just before the auction, some papers hidden behind a board. They read mighty curious, and were signed with what the writing said was blood.”

“You don’t say?” said the old man, starting. “What were they?”

“It was a covenant that some one had made with the Lord. I think that it was Martin’s. Seemed as though his father asked him to make it. It promised many things. There was one thing in it that made me write to him. Whoever made it promised to be faithful to me. The signature was faded. It was made on the day that the writer was propounded for church.”

Martin Marlowe’s face fell. Had he been true to that covenant that he remembered so vividly?

“Say, stranger,” said old Susan, “I hope you will excuse me; but what may your name be?”

“Never mind my family history now. I will tell you later more about myself. What was the story about the haunted chamber? Tell it to my girl here.”

“About Rachel, who raised red peppers, and used to appear with a calash over her head?”

“Yes. That ghost was the terror of all the children and hired people. Rachel was an old maiden lady. She used to have charge of the balm bed, the sage bed, and the pepper bed, and the dried apples and red peppers, and sold them to get money for the church and her clothes. She ground the red peppers in the garret, and to keep the pepper dust from burning out her eyes, she used a calash, which was a great bonnet, with whalebone ribs, that stood up from the head all around as though it were hung on the air, and over the calash she wore a long green veil. She put over her body a long white nightgown; and when we went up to the top of the garret stairs to see her pound, she looked kind of awful and scary, like a picture in the old ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ When I heard that she had come back to haunt the old herb-room in the garret, and I pictured in my mind how she used to look, it fairly made my flesh creep. Of all ghosts I wouldn’t have liked to see old Rachel with her calash like a shay’s top and her pound, pound, pound. She used to punish me when I was a boy by snapping her thumb and finger on the top of my head. I remember it all as though it were yesterday. I once went up to the herb-room to get some—”

ENTRANCE TO EGYPTIAN THEATRE, STREET IN CAIRO.

“Not herbs, my good friend,” said Susan.

“No; some preserves or cake. They used to keep the goodies there, and I had been going there pretty often in a quiet way, when I felt, just as I was bending over the marmalade-jar, a snap on the top of my head, and I looked up suddenly, and there was the most awful sight that I ever saw,—old Rachael herself, in her white nightgown, calash, and all. I scooted after the first glance, and rolled over and over down the first flight of stairs, and leaped down the second. No barn or chimney swift could have gone quicker. I didn’t sleep much for a long time after that, and I never dared to tell the story, because I was at the marmalade-jar when she appeared. I never told it to anybody until after I went away.

“I used to lay awake until morning, and when I heard the wings of the swallows in the chimney my heart would beat like a trip-hammer, for I thought it was old Rachael and her pepper-mill. When the fowls crowed for day I would feel safe again, for no ghost ever could appear after the cock crew in the morning, so the old folks said. Susan, what do you think that ghost was?”

“Oh, my good friend, how can I tell it now? I think—oh, I know it was poor old grandmother! She scared Martin once in that way to keep him—oh, how can I say it?—to keep him from getting at her plum-cake.”

“How do you know?”

“She told me so, and told me never to tell.”

The two looked at each other.

“That accounts for it. I always thought it was kind o’ strange that they should have whalebone calashes in another world.”

“Stranger, how familiar you seem to be with this old place, the swallows in the chimney and all! You say you used to know our folks. Any relation?”

“I used to work for your father.”

“Did ye?”

The two looked at each other—after fifty years.

“Somehow I almost feel related,” said old Susan.

---

The shining hour of noon was now passed. The auctioneer rang his bell.

“Are you ready for the sale of the farm? Thirty acres and the house and buildings. Clear deed. How much am I offered? Some one start the farm. Been in the same family one hundred and thirty years. How much am I offered?”

“Five hundred dollars,” said a well-to-do-looking farmer named Pool.

“Five hundred dollars. Do I hear the six? Five hundred dollars am I offered. Do I hear the six? Five hundred dollars.”

“Six,” bid another.

“Seven,” another.

“Eight.”

“Nine.”

“Nine hundred dollars I am offered. Do I hear the thousand? Nine hundred dollars. Nine, nine, nine. Going, going, nine hundred dollars. One thousand—do I hear it? Nine hundred dollars. Are you all done? Going, going—”

“One thousand dollars.”

The voice came from the old man on the step. Old Susan rocked violently, and appeared greatly agitated. The people gathered in a close mass around the door-step, all eyes fixed upon the venerable stranger.

“One thousand dollars. Do I hear eleven hundred? One thousand dollars am I offered. Going, going, going. Once, twice, third and last call, going, going, going, for one thousand dollars. The hammer is about to fall. One th-o-u-s-a-n-d dollars. Sold.”

There was a deep silence that followed the fall of the hammer.

“Gone,” said the old woman, and she threw her apron over her white head and bent over, adding: “I am homeless now. I never thought to see a day like this.”

“What is to be done with these things?” asked the auctioneer.

The old man rises. His girl stands up beside him.

“Susan,” said he.

Old Susan uncovered her pitiful face.

“Susan, what will you have done with these things? I have bought them for you.”

Susan stops her rocking. She looks dazed. Her face is upturned, and her blue eye looks piercingly into the eye of the tall old man.

“I would have you have them. You do pity me, don’t you? It will do me good to think that you have them. You have spoken to me kindly.”

“The furniture shall all be brought back into the house again,” says the quiet old man. “The cradle, clock, and looking-glass shall all be placed where they were before.”

“To whom are the papers to be made out?” asks the auctioneer.

“My good friend, we shall need no new deeds. The old ones will do. I used to know the family when I was a boy, and Susan’s father and mother did much for me. To-morrow is Thanksgiving, and I shall spend it here. I’m going to be good to Susan for the old folks’ sake.”

He bends over old Susan. She sits like one dead. He takes her withered hand, stoops down and kisses her, and says,—

“I’ll let the place to her.”

There was a silence in the air that Indian-summer afternoon, and for many minutes the silence was unbroken. A woodpecker tapped a hollow tree at last, and a sea-bird on wide wings went screaming by.

“Let the place to me?” says old Susan. “Stranger, you are good, like one sent forth out of the doors of heaven, but I have no money. I must be plain, stranger. I have no money, and how are these old hands to earn any? Look at them. Their work is done.”

She bends her gray head.

“Stranger, I want to say something to you in private. I have something on my soul, and it troubles me. They have kept back a part of the price.”

“What?”

“The neighbors, some of them, the Brewster boys, they’ve driven away my Thanksgiving turkeys.”

“Why, my good woman?”

“So that the auctioneer should not sell them. The neighbors said that my Thanksgiving turkeys should not be sold. Now that was kind in ’em, wasn’t it? But it wasn’t quite right. I’ve always done just the thing that I thought to be right. My motto has been, ‘I will be what I ought to be.’ I’m poor, stranger, but, except the turkeys, my conscience is clear. My folks were all good people, as you know, if you used to work here when a boy, notwithstanding that grandmother used to keep the children away from the herb-room with old Rachel’s gown and calash. Now, stranger, what would you do? The folks here wouldn’t like it if I were to tell the auctioneer; they’re too good to me. But I must tell now; I must be honest, stranger. You are so good to me. I don’t understand it. It is all a wonderment; but the Lord will make it plain. Seems as though I was dreaming.”

She looks out over the hills, which are flaming with autumn glows. She starts.

“Stranger, there’s one other thing that I want to tell you. There’s another thing that I’ve kept back. But that is honest. My twin brother Martin had a violin, and he left it here. I’ve felt that it isn’t theirs; it’s his. He used to sing in the church over there. You may see the steeple now. And he used to play on the violin.”

There was a new movement among the people in the yard. One of the neighbors came up to the steps.

“It’s too bad, Susan; they’ve found those turkeys. The dog scented ’em out, and he’s driving ’em home. It is too bad; they might have left ye a Thanksgiving dinner.”

There was great gobbling in the hillside pasture. A flock of turkeys, one of which was white, was half running and half flying towards the house, followed by the auctioneer’s dog. One of the gobblers had lost his tail feathers, and he flew up in a zigzag way, and alighted in a maple-tree. Another turkey followed him, flying heavily and clumsily, and crying, almost like a human voice, “Quit! quit!”

“Stranger,” said old Susan, “seems’s though that turkey spoke, as Balaam’s turkey, if he had one, might have done. Stranger, I raised them turkeys myself, and I hoped that I might have one myself; and that perhaps—I dreamed of it, stranger—perhaps my twin brother Martin, who went out West, might be here, and that we might have one of them for Thanksgiving.”

“I’ll buy the turkeys for you.”

“You—well, you are proper good. But I don’t understand these things. I’ve never been used to receiving anything from strangers, though the neighbors have always been good to me. They tried not to have the farm sold, but it was the law. Stranger, it had to be—it was the law.”

The auctioneer mounted the bench again, rang his bell, and swung his hammer.

“There’s one thing we’ve overlooked. Hear, all! Here are the things that everybody wants. Turkeys—to-morrow is Thanksgiving. A fine lot of fat turkeys, and a white one. Just look at that fat old gobbler up in that tree! One seldom sees a finer bird than that. And look at that hen-turkey—”

“Quit! quit!” exclaimed the beautiful bird, in great astonishment, on seeing all eyes turned towards her.

“That’s the mother turkey,” said old Susan. “She’s lost her family before. She is a cosset turkey. I raised her in the chimney-corner. She is used to coming into the house to be fed.”

“How much am I offered for this fine lot of turkeys? Just a dozen of them. Twelve dollars. I am offered twelve dollars. Do I hear the thirteen? Twelve dollars, twelve dollars. Thirteen—thirteen I am offered. Thirteen—fourteen. Fifteen—do I hear it? Fourteen dollars. Going, going, going. Once, do I hear it? Twice, do I hear it? Third and last call—f-o-u-r-t-e-e-n dollars.”

He lifted his hammer.

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen dollars—fifteen I am offered. Going, going, going, for fifteen dollars. Are you all done? Going for fifteen dollars to—”

“Martin Marlowe,” said the old man in a firm voice.

He stood up and uncovered his white head. Old Susan’s form dropped together as though she had been smitten. She buried her face in her lap, and sobbed as she used to do in childhood.

The neighbors gather silently around the door-step, among the myrtles and bouncing-bet. Some are whispering, some laughing, and a few are crying.

“Susan,” says the old man, “get me my violin.”

The old woman sent for the instrument, and the old man saw that it had not been wholly out of use. He tuned it, and lifted it into the air. “Susan, we used to sing together in church, over there. What did we use to say on Thanksgiving days?

“I remember, neighbors. I’m going to play that hymn. My voice is almost gone, but I want you to sing it with me.”

He lifts the bow. “Tune—‘Hamburg.’”

The music floated out on the mellow autumn air, the violin playing as in the old church days. Before the people ran the river to the sea. The air was still; nature seemed listening.

“God is the Refuge of His saints

When storms of sharp distress invade;

Ere we can offer our complaints,

Behold Him present with His aid.

“Let mountains from their seats be hurled

Down to the deep and buried there,

Convulsions shake the solid world,

Our faith shall never yield to fear.

“Loud may the troubled ocean roar,

In sacred peace our souls abide,

While every nation, every shore,

Trembles and dreads the swelling tide.

“There is a stream whose gentle flow

Supplies the city of our God,

Life, love, and joy still gliding through,

And watering our divine abode.

“That sacred stream, thy Holy Word,

Our grief allays, our fear controls;

Sweet peace thy promises afford,

And give new strength to fainting souls.

“Zion enjoys her Monarch’s love,

Secure against a threatening hour;

Nor can her firm foundation move,

Built on His truth, and armed with power.”

“Now sing the Doxology!” He lifted his bow again. People turn aside their faces to hide their tears. Then the strains of thanksgiving rose up under the glimmering trees. And old Susan stood up and sung.

It is near sunset now. The red sky shines through the skeleton limbs of the still trees. The crows are cawing afar over a dead corn-field. The jaws are calling in the savin-bushes. Old Susan looks into her brother’s face. She takes little Susan by the hand.

A bird comes flying through the air out of the woods and alights on the top of an elm. It has a red breast, which shines in the sunset. It lifts its brown wings joyfully and begins to sing.

It was the last song of the robin.[1]

[1]This story is used by permission of Messrs. Harper and Brothers. I wrote it originally for the Thanksgiving number of “Harper’s Weekly,” 1893.

ELECTRICITY AND MINES BUILDINGS.

CHAPTER II.
THE STORY OF THE OPENING OF THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION.

SINGLE member of the Folk Lore Society was in Chicago at the opening of the Exposition. He returned a few days after the event. It was one of the plans of this Society to have its members give accounts of the new places they visited, and a meeting was called on the return of this fortunate member to hear him relate the story of the May Day opening of the Fair.

The story[2] increased the interest among the members in Mr. Marlowe’s visit. What suggestions might not Mr. Marlowe have to make?

[2]This account was written by Mr. C. A. Stephens for the “Youth’s Companion.”

MAY DAY AT THE WORLD’S FAIR.

It was almost twelve o’clock on the opening day of the World’s Fair. President Cleveland was on the grand stand in front of the Administration Building. The triumphant Columbian March had been rendered by the great orchestra; the director-general had given his admirable address; the ode and prophecy had been read, and the President was making his brief speech of the opening hour.

ADMINISTRATION BUILDING AND COURT OF HONOR.

“Look sharp! He will touch the button in a moment more! Watch for the flags and the fountains!”

Massed before the platform, and extending away down the grand square toward the Peristyle, still streaming in through the broad courts, thronging the immense façades and capacious balconies of the mighty buildings, and even perched by scores and by hundreds on the lofty battlements and amidst the huge statuary groups of the roofs, were wellnigh four hundred thousand people.

OPENING DAY PROCESSION.

It was a vast oceanic crowd, gathered from every land and nation of the globe to celebrate the inaugural day of the Columbian Exposition.

Turks, Arabs, Singhalese, and Malays; Algerians, Dahometans, Coreans, Samoans, Egyptians, and Eskimos, as well as Japanese, French, Germans, Spaniards, and Russians, were represented and mixed throughout that great throng, to which also were added a hundred or more painted and feathered Sioux Indians.

These last, in fact, were the only true, original Americans present, for in one sense all others are immigrants.

Although the preparations had been delayed by a long, cold, driving rainstorm, word had gone abroad that on Monday, May first, the World’s Fair would be opened, and foul weather did not keep the people at home.

When the President arrived, shortly before eleven o’clock, the sun, for the first time in several days, broke through the dark, low-lying clouds; but trailing fogs still half veiled the domes, towers, and finials of the gigantic buildings. Never, as it seemed to those who have marked their progress toward completion, had these huge structures looked so enormous, as now that their foundations were encompassed and blackened by the innumerable multitudes, while their domes and roofs were looming, half concealed, in the mist-clouds.

The magnitude of the grand square and the vastness of the assemblage alike defied the power of the human voice to fill or reach. The prayer and the ode were heard by but few. But the voice of the President was stronger, and audible farther; and when, advancing, amidst a tremendous outburst of cheers, he began his short address, the opening sentence, admirable in its simple modesty, “I am here, my fellow-citizens, to join in the congratulations which befit this occasion,” penetrated to a greater distance, and stimulated remote areas of the throng to try to approach nearer and hear more.

The pressure of these converging masses of humanity soon began to be felt alarmingly by the central concourse, directly in front of the platform. The lines of stalwart guards, although aided and re-enforced by platoons of United States infantry, were powerless to withstand this immense inward movement. Guards and soldiers were pushed aside, and borne on by the resistless pressure. Their brandished swords and shouts appeared not to be noticed or heeded; and for a time it seemed as if hundreds, perhaps thousands, would be borne down and crushed under foot.

Many women fainted, and were supported bodily by those near them; nor could the Red Cross chairs gain access, for a time, to take them away to the emergency hospitals.

STREET SCENE,—OPENING DAY.

The crowd swayed to and fro, oscillating rhythmically, and displaying within itself currents and counter-currents of human beings which met and mutually checked each other. At last, as if from restored equilibrium, the tumult ceased.

ADMINISTRATION BUILDING.

By good fortune no one had been seriously injured; but the spectacle of resistless might, presented by this movement of three hundred thousands of people, will not soon be forgotten by those who witnessed it from the platform.

From here and there in the great tract of human heads and faces, bursts of cheering rose at intervals, and were responded to from opposite quarters; and it was amidst such scenes as these that the President finished his speech and advanced to the little triple dais of oak and velvet, draped with the national colors, and pressed the electric key, or “button,” by means of which the great Allis engine in Machinery Hall was set in motion.

The same key also gave the signal to all the flagmen, fountain-men, cannoneers, and boatmen on the lagoons, to enact their parts in the great programme of display.

But louder even than the artillery salutes and the shrieking of steam whistles was the mighty roar of applause from the multitude. It was, in truth, vox populi: the voice of the people in their united might. Then for a few moments a kind of silence fell, and the great sea of faces was seen to be rapt and intent on the brilliant spectacle of the unfurling flags, and leaping white jets and spray-bursts from the fountains.

On the instant, at the touch of the button, the great buildings turned suddenly resplendent with gay colors: the flags, ensigns, streamers, gonfalons, and emblems of all nations. In a moment the stately “white city of palaces” had grown deliriously gay with bright bunting; and on the lagoons swiftly propelled gondolas, in Venetian red and blue, mingled with the even brighter-hued electric launches.

And over all—a curious, pleasing feature of the hour—wheeled hundreds of white gulls, visitors from the great lake just outside, whose peculiar wild cries blended with the human acclamations.

The President had spoken, and had opened the Exposition. The brief ceremonies were over, and the mighty concourse in Administration Square melted away, in streamlets and groups, for a day of sight-seeing in the grounds.

Many made their way to the Manufactures Building, to behold the largest edifice in the world, and also in the hope of gaining another glimpse of the President and Cabinet, who were soon to proceed thither in company with the Duke of Veragua, a direct descendant, in the eleventh generation, of Christopher Columbus.

Almost as many more turned toward Machinery Hall, to see the huge engines and dynamos which had been so recently set in motion. The rest distributed themselves in many directions through the grounds.

Then indeed it was apparent that half a million of people may be present at the Exposition without crowding or mutual inconvenience. From many points of view, in fact, no one would now have suspected that an unusual number of visitors were on the grounds. The great squares, plazas, avenues, courts, and interspaces swallowed them up, and if one may use the expression, gaped for more.

Eighty thousand may visit the Manufactures Building at one time. Agricultural Building has room for thirty thousand, Machinery Hall for as many more, and so on of all the other great structures. A million of people may be present at the Fair on a single day without serious obstruction to sight-seeing.

The four hundred thousand or more who attended the May-day opening were a remarkably quiet and orderly assemblage. Very few dissensions or disturbances of any kind occurred. Few rogues were present, so far as known; if present, they contented themselves with sight-seeing. But one pickpocket attempted to ply his vocation, and he was detected in the act.

After the opening exercises, the great assemblage gave an observer the impression of being unusually silent, as if awed by the grandeur and magnitude of the buildings. On every hand people were seen to be gazing in absorbed contemplation. Foreigners present remarked this silence of the people with surprise, it was so unlike the vivacious chatter of a European crowd. Americans are unemotional, irresponsive, stupid, they exclaimed.

They failed to understand the American type of mind. Our people were beholding, intelligently comparing, estimating, thinking; and one who really thinks is not apt to chatter. These silent gazers were taking in the height, breadth, beauty, and magnificent variety of the great Exposition,—taking it in and storing it away for future use.

MACHINERY HALL.

PORT OF CHICAGO.

CHAPTER III.
THE FOLK-LORE SOCIETY’S QUEER STORIES.

HE Folk-Lore Society which became a part of the Village Improvement Society in West Roxbury, used to have Story-Telling Nights, and on these occasions elderly people were invited to attend and relate old village stories. The Folk-Lore story is a very interesting department of Folk-Lore; and of all places in America, the towns that follow the windings of the Charles River, are rich in quaint old tales. The Brook Farm-House, now the German Orphan Asylum, sent into the world a coterie of magic story-tellers. The old houses around the Dedham Woods all have their legends. West Roxbury and the Newtons are haunted places.

Among the popular subjects of this antique story-telling, are “The Old New England Ghost Story,” and “Funny Tales of Old Independence Days.”

There were several of these stories that were particularly popular. One of them was the reading of that masterpiece of old wonder-books, known as “The Devil and Tom Walker,” a warning to usurers, speculators, and all over-reaching people.

GOVERNMENT BUILDING.

Stories of “Lord Timothy Dexter” and old New England Ghost Stories were among the interesting narratives that had entertained the society. We give two of these,— Blingo the Blacksmith, or Lord Timothy Dexter’s Poet and The Darby Ring.

THE AGRICULTURAL BUILDING.

BLINGO, THE BLACKSMITH.

Tommy Topp sat sunning himself in the wide open door of Blingo’s blacksmith shop, when a cloud of dust appeared in the highway; a chariot presently broke into view from the dusty cloud, and four black horses stopped under the golden elms that shaded a rustic watering-trough near the rural smithy.

This was a strange event. People did not ride in “chariots” in Massachusetts during the last century, as a rule, and never in a chariot like this.

MACMONNIES (COLUMBIAN) FOUNTAIN.

The vehicle was not of the classic Roman pattern, such as swept under the triumphal arches in the purple days of the emperors; nor, indeed, a state coach like the disjointed affairs of the days of good Queen Anne. But it was as lively and picturesque in color as a band carriage of to-day, and it was ornamented with a very curious coat-of-arms, the design of which was mysterious, and probably was intended to be so.

Tommy Topp started up with eyes wide with wonder. Blingo dropped an iron whiffle-tree that he was making, and ran to the door, shading his eyes with his sooty hand.

THE PERISTYLE.

The horses having drank at the watering-trough, the liveried coachman, or charioteer, drove them toward the door, exclaiming, “Whoa!” in an imperial tone, as a footman alighted, in a glory of shining buttons.

The door of the chariot was opened, and another wonder appeared in the shape of an old man in a cocked hat, cape-cloak, and knee-buckles, carrying a gold-headed cane. He rose up from under a kind of canopy, and said in a terrific tone:—

CHICAGO HOTELS.

“Where’s the blacksmith?”

The word “where” rasped the very air.

“Ah, ah—I see,—Lord Dexter,” stammered Blingo. “You do me great honor. How can I serve you? What can I do for you?”

The old man turned to his coachman, and said, laconically,—

“You talk with him.”

“One of the horses has cast a shoe,” said the coachman.

The blacksmith at once examined the foot of the horse,—a matter in which Tommy Topp took little interest, as that was a common affair. The boy’s eyes were riveted on the infirm but pompous old man, as he hobbled about with the aid of his gold-headed cane.

The strange restlessness of his eyes would have excited the curiosity of any one, and seemed to fascinate Tommy, whose life had been uneventful, but who had a very lively imagination.

The old man took a few turns under the trees, through which the sunlight was sifting that bright, mellow afternoon. Then he turned suddenly and exclaimed in a tone of command,—

“Plummer, get out.”

Another marvel appeared, a marvel to Tommy, and a spectacle that would have been equally exciting to almost any one outside of the sea-town of Newburyport and its neighborhoods.

Out of a richly embroidered or figured robe rose a figure covered by a cloak that was decorated with stars and fringes. It was a poet,—an unusual curiosity, for poets were not common in those days. He, too, had a cocked hat, large silver knee-buckles, and a gold-headed cane.

Tommy had heard of Jonathan Plummer, the former fish-peddler, who had discovered that he could make rhymes, and had been appointed laureate by “Lord” Timothy Dexter, whose château, with its remarkable statues and gilded eagle, looked down from a high street on the blue harbor of Newburyport. To Tommy, this transformation of a poor fish-peddler into the poet of the self-created “lord” was one of the most marvellous events since the days of which he had read in the “Thousand and One Nights.”

The poems of Jonathan Plummer are still to be found in the quaint lore of antiquarian societies, in whose safe deposits so much of the world’s genius has to wait appreciation.

Who was this strange man, thus impatiently waiting for the shoeing of his horse, who so greatly excited the curiosity of the Yankee boy?

A more picturesque answer cannot be given than that presented in the words of Jonathan Plummer, the poet, quoted from a long poem which relates his master’s history:—

“Lord Dexter is a man of fame;

Most celebrated is his name,

More precious far than gold that’s pure

Lord Dexter shines forevermore.”

GOVERNMENT BUILDING.

It will be seen that the poet sometimes used imperfect rhymes.

“His house is white, and trimmed with green;

For many miles it may be seen.

It shines as bright as any star;

The fame of it has spread afar.

“Lord Dexter, like King Solomon,

Had gold and silver by the ton,

And bells to churches he hath given,

To worship the Great King of Heaven.”

The Arabian kings had their astrologers, and so had other kings in the Middle Ages. “Lord” Dexter was as famous for his intimacy with fortune-tellers as for his garden of statues of heroes, among which his own effigy occupied two pedestals at Newburyport.

THE TRANSPORTATION BUILDING.

He was on the way to Lynn, when he drove up before Blingo’s door, to visit “Moll” Pitcher, a woman who was reputed to have the gift of second sight, and who “told fortunes by tea-cups.”

“Lord” Dexter, as he was called, but really Timothy Dexter, of Newburyport, was a real and very famous character of the last century. He was a mildly insane man, who had acquired a large fortune by trading adventurously at sea. The grotesque fact of his sending warming-pans to hot climates, and of the ship’s captain selling them for ladles for molasses and returning with a fortune, was an old-time wonder-tale, as well as the joke of his writing a book called “A Pickle for the Knowing Ones,” and putting all the punctuation marks on the last page, with the direction to the readers to “Pepper the dish to suit themselves.”

His strange mansion and gardens and statues are still to be seen pictured in old books, as is his own portrait in costume, with embroidered vest, cocked hat, and laced trousers. There were many stories of this eccentric man who so greatly enjoyed the fancy that he was a lord.

Curious as is this history, well-known to the old New England families, it is hardly more so than that of “Moll” Pitcher, who figures in one of Whittier’s poems, and who was equally celebrated as an odd character in New England a century ago, when trading by sea was the principal business along the coast.

This strange woman seems to have been sincere in her belief that she possessed the gift of “second sight,”—an hallucination that she probably inherited from her grandfather, who thought that he was a “wizard,” whatever that may have been.

The sailors went to consult her in regard to their voyages, and crews sometimes refused to depart from port if her predictions were unfavorable. She had a strong, masculine face, with something hidden behind it; a rather kindly face withal, but self-conscious and keen.

Apart from her hallucination and its evil influences, she was a good and self-respecting woman. The simple cottage where she lived was visited for many years after her death, which occurred in 1813, by collectors of traditions and folk-lore, and by nearly all strangers who made a pilgrimage to Lynn.

Like Lord Dexter, this woman seems to have been mildly insane. The two seemed to be confidential friends, and Dexter used to ride over to Lynn to consult with her. He was reputed to have gained a part of his wealth by the aid of her divining tea-cups.

Blingo soon shod the horse. The imaginary “lord” and his plebeian poet entered the coach. The driver mounted his box, and the footman his post. There was a crack of the whip, a rush of the startled black horses, and a great cloud of dust rose again, as the grotesque vehicle wheeled away under the glimmering autumn leaves, in the direction of the blue capes of Lynn.

As it passed from the view of the humble smithy, Blingo the blacksmith and Tommy Topp sat down beside each other in the open door, and discussed the import of this curious event. The effect of this harlequinade on the mind of the old blacksmith and the boy was to make them ill at ease in their simple stations of life.

“This is a strange world,” said Blingo,—“a very strange, strange world. Look at Timothy Dexter. He got rich by accident, and thinks he’s a lord. Here I have to work hard all day in order to live, and pay my honest debts, and then have nothing left for old age. That man never worked as I work a day in his life. Now he’s going to see that lying old fortune-teller. It’s all wrong, yet see how he prospers! I declare I lose faith in everything.”

The sun was sinking over the autumn hills in mingled lustres of vermilion and gold. The shadows were darkening in the woods and orchards. Everywhere the crickets were chirping in the fading grasses, and their lonesome notes only added to the honest blacksmith’s dissatisfaction. There are times when even a true heart becomes discouraged.

“Blingo!” said Tommy, “I’m thinkin’ that we might be rich.”

“Are you? I should like to know how?”

“We might get Moll Pitcher to tell our fortunes, as well as Lord Dexter. I have been told something that I believe is true.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve been told that there is a pot of gold hidden in the High Rock of Lynn.”

“Who told you that?”

“Grandma Pennypacker.”

There was a thoughtful silence.

“Well, what if there is?” continued Blingo.

“I’ve a plan,” said Tommy, hesitatingly. “I’d like to go and ask Moll Pitcher if she’ll tell me where the money-pot is hidden. And then if she tells me we can go and dig it up, and you can have half of the gold and I will have half. That will be fair. Everybody knows it’s up there somewheres, but no one knows where. She only asks three shillings to look into her tea-cup. And then—and then—perhaps we might ride in a chariot and have a big house.”

There had been a legend for nearly a hundred years in Lynn that certain pirates landed on the coast, and buried treasures at High Rock or Dungeon Rock, two well-known places near the village. Three of these men were captured and taken to England, but a third one, Thomas Veale, continued to live there for many years, but, it is supposed, was buried in the rocks by the earthquake of 1658.

THE HORTICULTURAL BUILDING.

This legend, as is usual with legends, grew with years, and it is still repeated in Lynn. It filled the popular fancy more than one hundred years ago, and was especially vivid in Lord Timothy Dexter’s day.

Visions of riches began to expand in the boy’s mind, and his mental mood perceptibly affected the honest soul of Blingo.

“Think what we might do if we were only rich!” said the boy, with eager eyes.

“I don’t know. I’m afraid we shouldn’t feel just honest as we do now, if we had money that we had not earned ourselves, and that didn’t belong to us,” said Blingo. “It’s a great thing to feel that one’s honest.”

“But the money-pot don’t belong to anybody. It’s as much yours and mine as any one’s. It belongs to the man that finds it.”

“Yes, yes; p’r’aps so; p’r’aps not; and p’r’aps I’d lose my own respect if I was to let you go to a fortune-teller to find it. Stands to reason that the Lord don’t reveal His secrets through Moll Pitcher’s tea-cups; and if He don’t who does? That’s what I’d like to know—who does? It’s the Evil One himself.”

The boy sat silent. The sounds around the farm-houses were echoed here and there,—the dog’s bark and the chore-boy’s whistle. Now and then a light gust of wind, like the passing of a messenger unseen, shook down the yellow leaves, and left a rustling in the withered trees.

Afar, a bell was ringing in a steeple of Lynn, and nearer there was a rumble of cart-wheels laboring under a weight of corn.

“There is a great deal of comfort,” said Blingo, after this pause, as if talking to himself, “there is a great deal of comfort to be taken with money if it can be got honestly.”

“But I’ll go to the fortune-teller.”

“That wouldn’t help me inwardly. I’m afeard it wouldn’t be right for me to allow you to do what I wouldn’t like to do myself, and I never heard of any good that ever come from consulting tea-grounds. Still—” and there was another pause—“Still, money would be handy with a wife and seven children, and gray hairs comin’. Yes, it would.”

The word “still” settled the question with Tommy, and he started up and walked away without another word. He had almost reached the decision to pay a visit to the Lynn fortune-teller, after the example of Lord Dexter. As he hurried home that wish was confirmed, and he fell asleep in the attic to dream of fortune and fame, chariots and poets, and a château overlooking the blue capes of the sea.

MACHINERY HALL.

The next morning Tommy arose, and after breakfast started in the direction of Lynn. The first pause in his rapid journey he made at Blingo’s smithy.

“Blingo, I’m goin’.”

“Do tell!” said Blingo, dropping his hammer. “Well, it may be right, but I don’t feel quite right about it. Still, I would not fly into the face of good fortune. Here, she’ll charge you three shillings for lookin’ into the tea-cup, and I’ll pay my part. Here it is.”

Tommy took the money. Then his feet flew along the path by the side of the turnpike. He did not stop again until he reached the fortune-teller’s door.

The simple cottage of Moll Pitcher was gay with the last blossoms of a morning-glory vine. Tommy paused to wonder a moment at the pile of variegated bloom, when the small front door opened, and the fortune-teller herself appeared, with an inquiring face.

“The frost has spoiled them,” said she, seeing Tommy looking at the morning-glories. “They will all die in a few days; it is a pity. Won’t you come in?”

Tommy entered the solitary cottage, and was shown a chair in a simple, plain room.

“I’ve come to ask you about something,” he said. “I’m poor. We’re all poor at home, and—and—I—I wish I had money. I’ve come to see if you’ll help me to find some.”

“To find some? Mercy, child,—

“If I only knew, if I only knew,

What do you think that I would do?”

She sat down in a patched chair, and rocked to and fro.

“They say that you know everything,—all the secrets of the hidden treasures, where the money-pots are, and all,” ventured Tommy.

She looked the lad sharply in the face with her keen eyes, then smiled and said:—

“If I only knew, if I only knew,

What do you think that I would do?”

There was another silence, which Tommy ventured to break.

“Would you be willing to look into the tea-cup for me? I’ve brought the pay with me.”

“What for?” asked the old woman.

“To tell me where the pirates hid the money-pot,” said Tommy, his voice trembling.

“Mercy on ye, boy,—

“If I only knew, if I only knew,

What do you think that I would do?”

There was another long silence. Tommy was very nervous; he waited until it seemed to him he could wait no longer, and then he asked, faintly, “What would you do, if you only knew?”

She drew her chair near to him. “Listen. What would I do? I’d go and get it for myself. Now you’d better go home, my lad. This is all I can do for you this morning. Go to work and honestly earn your money. There, don’t say that Moll Pitcher has not given you good advice, and I won’t charge you anything for it.”

The disappointed boy dragged his feet back to the smithy over the highways and byways during the long autumn afternoon, and sank down at last on the doorsill of the shop, where the vision of Lord Dexter’s magnificence had appeared to him.

Blingo came and leaned over him.

“Well, what did she tell you?”

“She couldn’t find it,” said Tommy.

“What did she say?”

“She only said if she knew where the money was, she’d get it herself.”

THE “DARBY RING.”[3]

When I was young, it was common to hear boys upon the skating ponds speak of “cutting the Darby,” by which expression they were supposed to indicate a swift ring movement upon the ice. The term, I believe, is still used, although comparatively few people may be acquainted with its origin. It came into use through a very singular occurrence, which for a time was the one great local event of a considerable farming and maritime region stretching along the northeastern shore of Narragansett Bay.

In the summer of 1798, many respectable persons, whose homes were in the pleasant towns of Bristol, Warren, and Barrington, R. I., together with some few in the neighboring communities of Swansea and Rehoboth, Mass., were made the victims of a queer delusion.

A short time previous, a man named Darby, or Derby,—the first being the form generally accepted by tradition,—had come to Warren from some part of Connecticut, taken up his abode in the town, and opened a school. As he was a person of pleasing address, he soon became a decided favorite with the honest sea-captains and farmers, who constituted the “solid men” of a population at once rural and commercial.

A keen judge of human nature, he knew how to adapt his speech to suit the character of the person whose sympathies he wished to engage; while the fact that he was a schoolmaster made his utterances oracular to a degree with a people to whom the “Columbiad” of good Joel Barlow was the only known classic.

He was fond of conversing upon mineralogy; and thence gliding easily into necromancy and kindred subjects, he would dwell upon the possibility of unearthing buried treasure through the exercise of some mysterious art akin to the supernatural.

[3]Adapted from a story by Mr. George Coomer in “Youth’s Companion.”

With abundant citations and authorities at his tongue’s end, he would call up the traditions of Kidd, Bellamy and other freebooters, and show how probable it was that much of their ill-gotten gain remained somewhere hidden about the New England shores.

In the course of a few months he had wormed himself into the confidence of a number of sober and substantial people,—but he always chose for his intimate friends those who had property.

The generation of our great-grandfathers must have been much more credulous than our own, for it is agreed upon all sides that the crafty adventurer met with no difficulty in obtaining converts to his pretended golden views. His operations were systematized more and more, till they extended from Warren to the neighboring towns, where he readily found those who became eager to sit at the feet of one possessed of so much mystic learning.

Thus the plans of the schemer progressed to his complete satisfaction, until the “Darbyites” began to hold regular night-gatherings with a view to a more complete organization, and for the perfecting of certain necessary charms. It appears surprising that in so short a time he should have been able to find so many victims, all of excellent character and social position. Of course, the “Nobodies,” as the uninvited were called, were not wanted,—and it was this class which stood off and hooted at the “Somebodies.”

The impostor was not long in giving his adherents to understand that nothing could be effected without money,—metal must be made to attract metal; and, however close-fisted they may have been in the ordinary affairs of life, the excited old farmers and shipmasters contributed liberally of their substance to further Darby’s scheme. Would they not be repaid a thousandfold when the treasures of the “Adventure” galley, buried with many a charm by Kidd’s own hand, should be given forth to the light of the moon?

Imagination must have wrought powerfully with them, giving their plodding, everyday hearts for the time a kind of poetry. No doubt they had wonderful dreams by night and day, and saw many a tempting vision:

“Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl;

Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels.”

And now came the placing of the famous “Darby Rings,” one of which was situated near the main road between the villages of Warren and Bristol, and another at Mount Hope, once the home of the great Indian sachem, King Philip; while others still were, I believe, established.

The “Darby Ring” was merely a circle of some forty feet in diameter, about which the treasure-seekers, in single file, would follow their leader at a dog-trot, reciting some exceedingly silly jargon, and at times pausing to perform such grotesque and childish acts as at a more rational moment would have disgusted them. A part of my childhood was passed on the premises which embraced one of these; and although nearly forty years had then gone by since the feet of the Darbyites had paced its magic round, there were still visible some faint traces of what had been. The earth was a little depressed, and the outer edge of the circle showed something like a ridge.

It was in the southeast corner of an orchard; and, no doubt the soft, golden buttercups sprang there in Darby’s time, as they did when we children played about the spot years and years after.

The excitement was now at its height. Nothing was thought of among the dancing, prancing treasure-hunters but Kidd, with his black flag and his kegs of broad doubloons. With wild enthusiasm they recited the lines of the old doggerel, wherein he recounts his fortune:—

“I had ninety bars of gold,

As I sailed, as I sailed;

I had ninety bars of gold,

As I sailed;

I had ninety bars of gold,

And dollars manifold,

And riches uncontrolled,

As I sailed.”

At each nightly meeting they were required to carry in their hands sticks of witch-hazel, which were supposed to possess the power of enabling their holders to detect the presence of buried treasure. Thus each devotee had his little rod, carefully cut and trimmed in some deep old swamp, where he had sought it out with a seriousness and intentness of purpose that one smiles to think upon.

How they must have looked capering about the ring, each with his stick of witch-hazel!—not boys, but men,—grave, practical old fellows, some of whom had, perhaps, that very afternoon been hoeing corn in their own broad fields, and others taking account of cargoes of molasses and sugar at the village wharves.

That there might be no disposition to waver in the ranks, it was Darby’s custom to cheer his retainers with encouraging words; and his smooth and confident tones were as reassuring to them as the “honk” of the leading gander to a flock of wild geese.

“Only be true to me,” he would say, “and I will get the money,”—a remark of which they saw the significance a great deal better afterwards than they did at the time.

MINES AND MINING BUILDING.

Their case illustrated the homely aphorism that “they who dance must pay the fiddler.”

They were subjected among other things to a constant expenditure for a certain wonderful kind of sand, costing sixteen dollars an ounce, which was indispensable to the success of Darby’s magic, and which he alone could procure. It was this which was to unlock the secret of the old-time buccaneer.

Again and again the supply was exhausted, only to be again and again renewed; until it must have seemed, even to those patient trotters about the ring, that the spirit who guarded the pirate’s gold could be nothing short of sand-proof!

In the centre of the circle there was a hole several feet deep, into which the schoolmaster magician and his followers would successively pour small quantities of the precious material, during the intervals of their antics.

A sight more unique than that of these decent, well-meaning gentlemen, trotting about the enchanted ring, under the shadow of the apple-trees, it would not be easy to imagine. Some of them were fat and duck-legged, others tall and lean; but each one kept his pace with tolerable accuracy to the music of the Darby chant.

The inexpressibly comic feature of the case was the entire respectability of the actors in this strange scene. They were householders, owners of broad farms and tall ships. Yet trot, trot, trot, they went, around and around, like so many mad dogs, in that old Bristol Neck orchard! They were required, upon going home, to write some strange characters with onion juice upon bits of paper, which were to be carefully placed under their pillows as assistants to divination. The characters were, of course, invisible, but this did not affect their potency.

A paper called the “Herald of the United States” was at the time published in Warren, and in its issue of August 25, 1798, we find a communication written while the Darby affair was in full blast, describing many of the performances, and expressing great disgust at the silliness of the delusion. From this it appears that not all our great-grandsires were trotters or prancers, but that some of them looked upon the matter very much as we should do to-day.

At last, even the credulous victims themselves began to lose patience, and whispers of discontent were passed from mouth to mouth. It was the beginning of one of those revolutions which never go backwards. It was discovered that the magic sand was obtained from Connecticut, and two trusty members of the circle were appointed to visit that State, for the purpose of gathering further information with regard to the mysterious mineral, which, to eyes in some measure disenchanted, had already begun to assume a woefully common appearance.

The result of their mission was a complete exposure of the fraud. With but little difficulty they obtained an interview with the very person by whom the sand had been furnished, but who, however, disclaimed all knowledge of Darby’s scheme. As to the magic article itself, they discovered it to be the common burden of the seashore in the neighborhood of New London, although of a more silvery hue than the sand of the Narragansett shore,—a difference which the wily impostor had turned to account through the simplicity of his followers.

And now arose the question as to what should be done with the recreant magician. Surrounded by his enraged dupes, he was still more than a match for them in subtlety of tongue.

“I never told you that you would get anything,” he said. “What I did tell was, that if you would only be true to me, I should get the money, and so I should have done!”

We have thus far followed and quoted our friend Coomer’s historical narrative, as it appeared in a popular paper. Mr. Coomer, an excellent poet and writer of sea-stories, lives on the borders of the Mt. Hope Lands, near the boundary-line between the towns of Warren and Bristol, and quite near the place where these strange events occurred. The high lands near to his home, overlooking the Mt. Hope and Narragansett Bays, are full of haunting traditions. They are best visited from the ancient highway between the two towns, now known as the Back Road. The Rhode Island Soldiers’ Home is on this beautiful elevation, and the outlook from it commands the most picturesque waters in New England. The Kickemuit River is particularly beautiful, seen from these flowery and orchard-shaded highlands on a mid-summer day. One of Massasoit’s Springs was on this river, and the great legend of the Northmen is connected with the Mt. Hope Bay. We will give this legend later in verse. A ride of a few miles, out of Bristol or Warren, would enable the visitor to Rhode Island to view from these Back Road farms, or from Mt. Hope, the old Pokonoket country, which has the oldest traditional history in America. Here it is supposed that the Northmen landed, and here certainly is the ancient burying-grounds of the Indian race. Near Massasoit Spring in Warren, R. I., Roger Williams spent the famous winter of his exile, intent on the problems of soul freedom, and the separation of church and state. King Philip must have been a boy then. It is proposed to erect a memorial of Massasoit at this spring.

UTAH STATE BUILDING.

A very curious legend is associated with the Darby episode. We do not know how well it is founded, but we give it here:—

The men whom he had deceived tarred and feathered him. In this disgraceful garment of woe, looking like a gigantic half-plucked bird, he ran away, and found shelter for the night in the cellar of one of the quiet farmsteads.

The next morning the good woman of the house had occasion to go down into the cellar. Her soap barrel, pork barrels, and probably cider barrels were there.

A dark place is an old-time New England cellar,—dark and damp, with an earthy smell. Lights burned low there.

Our good woman probably passed around the foundation walls of the great chimney, where was a flue for ashes, passed the potato-bins and turnip covers, and, with peering eyes, looked down on one of the many platforms for barrels.

Cellars were haunted places. There was an awful story of a woman who murdered her husband, and hid his body under the ash barrel, that had taken hold of popular imagination in those revengeful times, and most people thought of it as they made their uncertain ways around the cellars. It was all poky and still, grewsome and tomb-like.

Our good woman heard a noise. That was not strange. Cats and rats dwelt in the cellar, and the latter came out of their hiding-places when the former were not at home.

She was ill prepared for what followed.

There arose up before her an awful object. Whatever ghost-stories she may have heard by kitchen fires in the long evenings, she had never had any account of anything like this.

Its body was like that of Apollyon, as represented in the never-to-be-forgotten picture in the “Pilgrim’s Progress.” But it wore the feathers of a goose.

Erupit! evasit! Our good woman ascended the cellar stairs with a celerity that spoke well for the power of latent nervous force. The dreadful figure followed her, begging for mercy, and confessing that he was Darby the Impostor. The poor woman supplied his wants, and probably provided him with a suit of clothes, when he disappeared from society forever.

MADISON STREET.

THE LAKE FRONT.

CHAPTER IV.
THE STORY OF THE BUILDING OF THE WHITE CITY.

UT of this legendary and story-telling atmosphere, the three Marlowes passed through the country in beautiful June, and found themselves, in the longest days of the year, in that wonder-city of the new world,—Chicago.

“The first story that we will have to hear,” said Mr. Marlowe, “will be that of the Fair itself.”

THE STORY OF THE FAIR.

If ever there was a man with the heart and intelligence to welcome the world, it is Judge Bonney, whose generous spirit and hearty words millions of people will remember. As the leading mind of the Exposition’s Auxiliary Congresses, as many as possible of the delegates to the many Congresses met him, and the questions which he answered in the Art Palace in Chicago, would have filled many Bibles. We hope that he took a long rest after the close of the Exposition, for no man ever better earned such a right.

With a patience that was beautiful, and ought to serve as a national lesson, he met every one courteously, and every last person that met him felt that he had found a friend, and left him rejoicing that the newly-collected world was so friendly in its representative. His intelligence was equal to his courtesy, and his tact to both. The people all have good wishes forever for Judge Bonney.

Our trio had been told to report to Judge Bonney. They found him at his desk in the Art Palace in the city, and one look from him assured them that they were expected.

“Judge,” said Ephraim the elder, “I have called with my son here, who is a delegate to the Folk-Lore Congress. There are a few things about the Fair that I would like to know.”

“I shall be most happy to give you any information that I have, my friend. Sit down, sit down.” We give the judge’s answers from a general memory of like scenes.

“I thank thee, friend Bonney.”

“I see that you are a Quaker,” said Judge Bonney. “There are several people here already who are interested in the Folk-Lore Congress. I will see that you are introduced to them. What are some of the questions which you wish to ask?”

“Well, friend Bonney, what is the history of this great Fair? How did it originate?”

“In the minds of many, who agreed to act as one,” we may imagine the answer to have been. We shall speak of this topic again. We are inclined to the belief that the secret of the success of the Fair may be found in the fact of this supposed answer.

“By whom was Chicago selected as the site of the Fair?”

“This city was selected as the site of the Fair by vote of the National House of Representatives, February 24, 1890.”

“What other cities were voted upon?”

“New York, St. Louis, and Washington.”

“When did Congress authorize the Fair?”

“The Act of Congress authorizing the Fair was approved April 25, 1890. This was followed by the President’s Proclamation, inviting all nations to participate, which was issued December 24, 1890. The World’s Fair Grounds were dedicated October 21, 1892. Preceding the opening of the Fair, May 1, 1893, was the grand Naval Review in New York Harbor, April 26, 27, 28, 1893.”

“How about the appropriations, friend Bonney? Where did the money come from?”

STATUE OF THE REPUBLIC AND MANUFACTURES BUILDING.

“From various sources. The States and territories appropriated nearly $5,000,000, and foreign countries nearly $6,000,000. The capital stock amounts to $5,000,000, the City of Chicago Bonds to $5,000,000, the Souvenir half-dollars (appropriated by Congress), to $2,500,000, and the Debenture Bonds to $4,000,000.”

“What is the total value of the exhibits?”

“It is estimated to be $300,000,000.”

“What will the Fair cost?”

“The total estimated expense is $21,250,000.”

“How many visitors are expected?”

“It is expected that there will be about 20,000,000 visitors.”

“The gate receipts from them would amount to $10,000,000. How much ground does the Fair cover?”

“The total number of acres in the Exposition Grounds is 633, of which Jackson Park occupies 553 acres, the Midway Plaisance, 80, the space available for buildings, 556, and the Interior Waterways (61 acres) and Wooded Island, 77.”

“Now I wish to know something about the size of the different buildings. Which is the largest one?”

“The Manufactures Building is the largest. It is 1,687 feet long, and 787 feet wide, covering 44 acres of floor. Its cost was $1,600,750. Of the other buildings, the Stock Sheds cover 25 acres, the Machinery Building and Annex, 23.2 acres, the Agricultural Building and Annex, 19 acres, the Transportation Building, 17.9 acres, the Electricity Building, 9.3 acres, the Building of Mines, 8.5 acres, and the Building of Horticulture, 8 acres. The total number of acres covered by buildings is 240.”

“How much did they cost, Judge Bonney?”

“Twelve million two hundred and sixty-seven thousand dollars.”

“How many other World’s Fairs have been held, and where?”

“Between the years 1851 and 1889, eight World’s Fairs were held,—two of them in London, four in Paris, one in Vienna, and one in Philadelphia.”

“How does the size of the grounds here compare with those of the other World’s Fairs, Judge Bonney?”

“Of the previous World’s Fairs, that of Paris in 1889 covered the largest area—200 acres—which is not quite one third the size of this.”

“How many visitors had that Fair?”

“Twenty-eight million, one hundred and forty-nine thousand, three hundred and fifty-three.”

“Now, Judge Bonney, tell me about the World’s Fair Auxiliary and its Congresses, of which you are the representative. When do the Congresses meet, and where?”

“There are nineteen Departments of the Congresses of the World Fair Auxiliary. Each lasts usually a week. In May we held the Congress of Woman’s Progress, Public Press, and Medicine; in June, will be those of Temperance, Moral and Social Reform, and Commerce and Finance; in July, of Music, Literature, Education, Engineering, and Art; in August, of Government, Science and Philosophy, and Labor; in September, of the Departments of Religion; and in October, the closing month of the Fair, those of Sunday Rest, Public Health, and Agriculture.”

THE ART PALACE.

The good judge took the trio into the Hall of Columbus and the Hall of Washington, and the various art rooms in the Palace where the Congresses were to meet. The engines shrieked as they passed the sunny windows, and the blue lake rolled afar as in fathomless distance. The world seemed on the march in the great avenues below the balconies. Near by rose the Great Auditorium, and near it a colossal bridge led the way to the steamers and cars.

How bright and happy the world looked from the open windows of the smoke-colored Art Palace. As they passed one of those windows, the White City some miles distant, gleamed afar over the blue lake like a radiant vision. Constantinople from the Golden Horn was not as celestial and beautiful.

“White, Judge Bonney,” said old Ephraim.

“Yes, my friend, it is built of Staff.”

“Judge Bonney, what is Staff?”

“Staff is a mixture of plaster—often called plaster of Paris—and a small per cent of cement, into which are introduced frequent fibres of hemp, jute, or Sisal grass, to give it toughness, so that it may be bent, sawn, nailed, or bored, at will.”

“How is it cast?”

“It is cast in moulds. The plaster and cement are first wet up to the consistency of thick treacle, a layer of which is spread on the well-lubricated mould. Then follows a layer of the long, tough fibres; over this is poured another coating of the liquid plaster, covering in the fibre and filling the mould to the required depth.”

“Are there many moulds?”

“Yes, there are a thousand or more of different patterns and sizes, from those for casting plain staff-board for walls, to those for the most complex, beautiful, or fantastic ornamentation.”

“Are statues ever made of it?”

“Yes, both statues and statuary groups. The moulds are first fashioned in clay, then coated with staff.”

“How long does it take to make it ready for use?”

“Oh, in the course of half an hour the composition hardens sufficiently to be handled and taken away to the buildings in process of construction.”

“How long will it last?”

“If kept painted, it will withstand the weather for a number of years. If it cracks or crumbles off, it can readily be repaired with a brush or trowel, from a tub of the liquid mixture. It is fireproof, and, to a great degree, waterproof.”

“They say, Judge Bonney, that there is a sidewalk there that goes all by itself. Is that so? Tell us all about it.”

MICHIGAN AVENUE.

“The Multiple Speed Sidewalk is also called the Travelling Sidewalk, or the Locomotive Sidewalk. It is a mechanical device for facilitating travel on the long pier—nearly one half a mile long and two hundred and fifty feet wide—near the Peristyle, thus enabling the tourist to make the trip over the pier in ease and comfort, refreshed by the lake breeze. The sidewalk, which traverses the entire length of the pier on one side, returns on the other, making a loop at each end. It is on low wheels. There are two parallel sections, or platforms, one moving at a rate of three miles an hour, about ordinary walking speed, and the other at six miles an hour, an easy driving rate. One may ride on either section.”

The Judge led the trio back to his room. It was crowded with people seeking information.

“I am obliged to you, Judge Bonney, for those bits of information. But what are these few things that I have learned to a Fair like that? I’ll call again, Judge Bonney, and give you a chance to tell us some more. ’Tisn’t often that I find a man so well stocked with information about the world.”

Judge Bonney did not look tired. With a serene face he met the crowd awaiting him, many of whom would ask him these questions over again. Our fancied interview is but a picture of the Judge’s work for nearly a year.

The Marlowes, under the influence of the officers of the World’s Auxiliary, who invited them to a literary reception soon after their arrival, arranged to spend their home-life in Chicago with Mr. and Mrs. Edmand, who led a Folk-Lore Society which met at their home on Michigan Avenue. The Edmands family were from New England, and had known the Marlowes by reputation, and received them as their guests. It was agreed between the Edmands and their guests that the Folk-Lore Society should meet every Saturday evening, and that, on these occasions, the Marlowes should relate as a part of the exercises Folk-Lore stories.

The first of these stories that was told at the Saturday evening meetings was “Miraculous Susan of Quaker Hill.” It was told by Grandfather Marlowe, and we shall give it in its place. Another of these stories was “Hannah, Who Sang Countre.” It was told by Mr. Marlowe, who illustrated it by singing old-time tunes. This we shall also give in an interval between the sight-seeing at the Fair.

CHICAGO IN 1830.

CHAPTER V.
CHICAGO AND ITS MAKERS—THE CITY OF THE 20TH CENTURY.

HE first purpose of our tourists was to see Chicago, the wonder of the West.

They began at the Art Palace, where the statue of La Salle met their view on the boulevard, bringing to mind those December days of 1681, when the bold explorer coasted along the southern shore of Lake Michigan, and ascended the Chicago River, on his way to the Mississippi. Did he dream on that day that he entered the Chicago that the live city of the West would be there?

There were great arches of bridges between the statue and the Art Palace, and all the world seemed passing to the railroad and the boats. The Lake rolled in splendor before the towering buildings, but everything, the Art Palace included, seemed discolored with smoke. The doors of the great Art Palace stood open, as it were, to receive the homeless multitudes, coming from everywhere. It was the hospitable door of Chicago.

CHICAGO FROM THE AUDITORIUM.

LA SALLE.

It was a short walk from the Art Palace to the Auditorium Building, which is a grand hotel and a theatre, and whose corridors might have been halls of the Pharaohs, they are so dazzling, airy, and beautiful. Every one here seemed to be in a hurry. If each one’s life were to be fated to end with the day, no one could be more in a hurry. Yet every one looked happy; it was not an anxious hurry, but an inspired hurry. New York is slow and Boston slower, but here is the clock of destiny, and one must do, ere it strike. The Chicagoan loves Chicago, and resolves to make it the grandest city in the world.

The dream is likely to be fulfilled. Our good Quaker friend said to a boy in the pillared waiting-room of the Auditorium:

“My boy, how many miles is it to Boston?”

The boy gave a lightning glance, gathered up his mouth for one long breath, and answered:—

“Thirty-two hours from Boston (1150 miles); twenty-nine hours from Montreal; twenty-six hours from New York; twenty-four hours from Philadelphia; twenty-six hours from Washington; three and a half days from San Francisco; five days from the City of Mexico; nine days from Queenstown; ten days from Paris; fifteen days from Rome, and sixteen from St. Petersburg. Are there any other places that you would like to inquire about?”

“The land of the ocean! No, not now. You seem to know all about the world. Who is your father, my lad?”

“Daddyism don’t count in Chicago. You came from the East.”

“Yes, I came from the East; and how might a man from the East best see Chicago?”

“Take an elevator—don’t you know the dining-room here is up top, and the roof sweeps the city, the Lake, the Fair and everything!”

“Take an elevator?” said our sedate friend. “I never take any; I favor temperance principles.”

“Oh, then take the elevator. There, it is running now!”

“How many inhabitants do you claim, my lad?”

The answer was as extraordinary as the first:—

“South Division, half a million and more; West Division, half a million and more; North Division, quarter of a million and more. I reckon we are about two million in all. Can’t keep the run of the census here.”

“My boy, if I should conclude to go to Lincoln’s tomb at Springfield, what road would I take?”

The answer was more amazing still:—

“Oh, take the C. A. or the A. T. S. F. and change, or the C. A. and change, or the C. I. If you take the C. A. or the A. T. S. F. or the C. I., you will have to change in this way”—Here the boy began such a distortion of the alphabet as could only be heard in a primary school.

“Do you know all the railroads that go out of Chicago?” asked the Quaker.

“Most of them. There’s the A. T. and S. F; the B. and O.; the C. B. and Q.; the C. E. and L. S.; the C. M. and S. P.; the C. R. I. and P.; the C. S. P. and K. C.; the C. and A.; the C. and E.; the C. and E. I.; the C. and G. T.; the C. and N.; the C. and N. P.; the C. and S.; the C. and W. M.; the C. and W. I.; the C. C. C. and S. L., which is the Big 4; the I. C.; the L. S. and M. C.; the M. C.; the M. L. S. and W.; the M. P.; the N. Y. C. and St. L. Nickle Plate; the P. F. W. and W.; and the W. C.”

ILLINOIS CENTRAL TERMINUS AND THE HARBOR.

“If you wish to go to Springfield by a zigzag, picturesque kind of route, take the—” Here the boy went off into the alphabet again.

“I am afraid I would never get there,” said our good friend, with uplifted hands. “I think that we have about concluded to go to Lincoln Park.”

The party did not find this an easy matter. They went to State Street; the sidewalks were thronged with hurrying crowds; high buildings towered in the sunny and smoky air.

“If I were to come to Chicago,” said the confused Quaker, “I would go into the business of collars and cuffs. Mine were clean when I started out—just see them now! But everybody looks clean; how do they do it?”

After many directions from policemen, the party found the car for the famous park which is the delight and summer rest of Chicago. How lovely it was! The great bronze statue of Lincoln arose before the province of greenery; the Lake rippled near, expanding in purple glory. They hurried toward the Zoölogical Gardens, which are among the finest in the world. The parks and park lands of Chicago are many, and cover nearly two thousand acres. But Lincoln Park, with its lake view and animal shows, has a charm that exceeds all others, and not the least of its attractions is “Admission Free.”

On their return from the park, where they visited the Grant Statue, the flower gardens, and the wonderful collections of tamed animals, the party went to the Auditorium Building, and looked down from the top on the city as it lay spread out in the sunset. How different was the scene from the fort and little hamlet in 1830! The city practically filled the view.

The Post Office and Masonic Buildings are works of marvellous strength and beauty; the stranger would pause in awe before them, did not the crowd at all hours of the day hurry him on. One cannot conveniently stop to talk on the streets in the activity of this rapid city. The Women’s Temple is one of the noblest structures ever erected for benevolent work by women, and the Produce Exchange fittingly expresses its purpose.

PRODUCE EXCHANGE.

The Palmer House is associated with the history of the city since the fire, as few other buildings have been. There are few business men in the country who have not at some time stopped there. The beautiful private residence of its proprietor is famous for its hospitality, and is as unique as it is noble. The women of America are proud of the record of Mrs. Potter Palmer, and are glad that a woman of such public spirit can organize her plans in such a liberal home. The private residences of Mr. Kimball, Mr. McVeach, and the long procession of mansions on Michigan Avenue, display an air, not of ease and rest, but of purpose and energy. They picture the spirit of the times.

STATE STREET.

There are few public buildings in Europe that display a more massive grandeur than the City Hall. It looks like a colossal palace reared upon lofty foundations, and one from abroad would think that such a structure would have cost the labor of a score of years. The city is full of buildings from eight to sixteen or more stories high, that look like towers.

The Union Stock-Yards here are the largest in the world. They cover three hundred and fifty or more acres with more than eight miles of streets,—a city of cattle. More than $200,000,000 worth of live-stock are sold here annually.

Chicago is the world’s granary. Her grain-elevators would make a city. She handles some 150,000,000 bushels of grain a year.

RESIDENCE OF MR. M^cVEACH.

The Chicago River in 1830 flowed clear and full in view. It is now shut into bridges, and is hardly noticed. The arrival and clearances of vessels in Chicago harbor greatly exceed those of New York, and are probably as many as or more than at the ports of New York and Boston combined.

The lofty and substantial buildings greatly interested the good Quaker, and on returning to the waiting-room of the Auditorium, he met the bright boy who had given him such luminous instructions in regard to the railroads.

“Well, I found the park,” said our friend.

“Took the N. C. S. or W. S. cable, I suppose?” said the boy.

“I think so; the X. Y. Z. or Q. R. S. T. it might have been. I like that park; it is like the story that had no end. What are your very tallest houses here, my lad?”

“There’s the Ashland Block, sixteen stories high; this Auditorium, seventeen stories high; C. C. B., thirteen stories high; C. M. B., fourteen stories high; M. B., sixteen stories high; and the Masonic Building, twenty stories high.”

“There, there, that will do—twenty stories high!”

GREAT UNION STOCK-YARD.

“There are many others, sir; the U. B., sixteen stories high, and—”

RESIDENCE OF MR. KIMBALL.

“You needn’t go over the alphabet any more. Why, boy, it would make me crazy to live here. My house isn’t but two stories high; it is an A. B. C. D. house in the perpendicular style of architecture.”

The party went to the great pork-packing establishment. Here the poor pig has hardly a chance to squeal between his easy rural life and sausage meat. The name of Mr. P. D. Armour is associated with an industry, or business, such as the good New England farmer never dreamed of in his simple life, when two pigs, killed after an heroic struggle, were the supply for his frugal pork barrel. Corn, beef, and pork are supply cities by themselves.

HIGH BUILDINGS IN CHICAGO.

The railroad stations, too, would constitute a city. What wonder that the boys say C. B. Q. and I. C. and C. N. W. and C. S. M. W. D.!

The city stretches into suburbs, which themselves widen away and exhibit the outlines of new suburbs. The Hyde Park suburb, Pullman, and other towns that make a semi-circle, are in themselves famous. The Mississippi Valley, the old East, the great lake country of the North,—all seem to focus here. Chicago will be the City of the Twentieth Century.

A TEN-STORY HOUSE.

The eastern and the old world tourists come here, with narrow views and criticism, to which the true Chicagoan has neither the time nor the interest to so much as listen. When this type of man enters into the spirit of Chicago, and feels the new life, he often becomes wonderfully enthusiastic. He lives for the future, and under new horizons; his soul becomes prophetic; he feels that the age of humanity is at hand, and that the city by the great inland sea is to be the capital; and he merges himself in the multitude, and his private interest becomes the good of the whole. All of the enterprises are his; all of the builders are building for him. He has a part in every new structure, enterprise, and beautiful house. One cannot understand this spirit until he has felt it.

A PORK-PACKING ESTABLISHMENT.

MR. P. D. ARMOUR.

The men who lead, inspire him. Davis, Palmer, Pullman, Armour, the grain-merchants, the public officers, are self-made men. Invention and energy are here rewarded. The whole spirit of the place says “Advance;” progress proclaims “I will.” Force and Chicago are one.

A PIG KILLER.

Go to the Temple, the scene of the activities of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. It cost a million of dollars. It is the centre of the work of the largest organization of women in the world; of ten thousand moral reform societies in the country. All its directors are women.

Glance at the life of its President, Miss Frances Elizabeth Willard: of New England ancestry, educated at Oberlin, taking a front rank as an educator, living now on the platform, and wherever she goes carrying her pen in hand. She projected the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, is the leader of the White Cross work, and one of the leaders of the National Council of Women. She has set her New England character everywhere in the West. She represents what the true Chicago woman means to be to her age and generation. What does such an example say to girls? What to all aspirators towards a worthy life?

RESIDENCE OF MR. POTTER PALMER.

MR. PULLMAN.

Stand before the hospitable doors of the castle-like mansion where Mrs. Potter Palmer has been accustomed to receive all worthy workers in the cause of humanity and progress. One is proud to feel, in the atmosphere of such a place, that in America queens are born, and that their social thrones are won by nobility. That woman and her friends gave to the Exposition a soul, or made the White City voice what is spiritual. Such women put reform into stone and called it the Temple. They will one day begin a daily journalism that shall lead all that is best in the mind and heart of mankind.

RESIDENCE OF MR. PULLMAN.

Go to Pullman, some ten miles away. It has been called the model town of the working-men. What does such a suburb say to the American youth? Mr. George M. Pullman once rode on an old-fashioned sleeping-car. He found it a hard experience. He did not sleep. But out of that experience he invented. The Pullman Sleeping Car was the result. People now travel and sleep. “Invent what is needed,” so says Pullman.

Mr. Pullman began life as a clerk in a country store. He now owns a town and employs fifteen thousand people. “Answer the world’s needs,” says the spirit of the thrifty town, “and you shall be supplied in the supply.”

The builders of the expanding city by the Lake were poor boys. Invention, energy, honesty made their success. Like Dr. Livingston, when he graduated from Glasgow University, most of them can say,—“I never had a dollar that I did not earn!” They do not merely exist,—they live. When they have passed their generation they will have left behind them a new creation of life.

BYZANTINE DOOR OF THE TRANSPORTATION BUILDING.

CHAPTER VI.
THE MARLOWES’ FIRST DAY AT THE FAIR. THE MOST USEFUL THING AT THE FAIR.

AKING a Cottage Grove car, the Marlowes entered the Fair Grounds on one beautiful summer morning, by the long way of the Midway Plaisance, in search of the Funniest Thing, the Most Useful Thing, and the Grandest Thing.

The sky was as blue as the Lake, and the Lake as blue as the sky on this morning, and the sun filled the sky with living light, and under it shone the White City, the most beautiful city on which the sun ever shone,—the city of all the ideals of the past and the hopes of the future, the first city of the new order of the world.

They passed the turn-style, and looking round, saw the word exit.