But for solid worth and display, as I say, Great Britain and the United States are where they always are—­in the first rank.

But, speakin’ of the visitors of the nation, if you want to git a good sight of ’em, jest stand in the clock tower, which looms up in the centre of the forty-acre buildin’, as high as a Chicago house (and that is sayin’ enough for hite), and you’ll see all round you all the nations of the earth.

The guests of the nation occupy the place of honor, as they ort to.

Lookin’ down, you see the flags of Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria, Japan, India, Switzerland, Persia, Mexico, etc., etc., etc.

Wall, Josiah wanted to go up to the top of the buildin’ on the elevator, and though I considered it resky, I consented, and would you believe it—­I don’t suppose you will—­but to look down from that hite, human bein’s don’t look much larger than flies.  There they wuz, a-creepin’ round in their toy-house fly-traps; it wuz a sight never to be forgot as long as Memory sets upon her high throne.

Wall, as I said, in them pavilions and gorgeous glass cases in that vast buildin’ you can find everything from every country on the globe.

Everything you ever hearn on, and everything you ever didn’t hearn on, from the finest lace to iron gates and fences—­

From big, splendid rooms, all furnished off in the most splendid manner with the most gorgeous draperies and furniture, to a tiny gold and diamond ring for a baby, and everything else under the sun, moon, and stars, from a pill to a monument.

Pictures, and statuary, and bronzes, and every other kind of beautiful ornament, that makes you fairly stunted with admiration as you look on ’em.

At one place a silver fountain wuz sendin’ up constantly a spray of the sweetest perfume, and when I first looked at it, Josiah wuz a-holdin’ his bandana handkerchief under it, and he wuz a-dickerin’ with the girl that stood behind it as to what such a fountain cost, and where he could git the water to run one.

Sez he, “I’d give a dollar bill to have such a stream a-runnin’ through our front yard.”

I hunched him, and sez I, “Keep still; don’t show your ignorance.  It hain’t nateral water; it is manafactured.”

“Wall, all water is manafactured!  Dum it, the stream that runs through our beaver medder is made somehow, or most probable it wouldn’t be there.”

But I drawed him away and headed him up before some lovely dresses—­the handsomest you ever see in your life—­all trimmed with gold and pearl trimmin’.  The price of that outfit wuz only twenty thousand dollars.

And when I mentioned how becomin’ such a dress would become me, I see by his words and mean that he had forgot the fountain.

The demeanin’ words that he used about my figger would keep females back from matrimony, if they knew on ’em.

But I won’t tell.  No, indeed!