“Josiah Allen,” sez I, “the language you have used over that Jonesville road in muddy times has been enough to chill the blood in my veins.  Tell me that men hain’t profane!”

“Not naterally, I said; biles and country roads is enough to make Job and me swear.”  And he looked gloomy as he thought of the stretch from Grout Hozletons to Jonesville, and how it looked from March till June.

“Wall,” sez I, “less get our minds off on’t,” and I hurried him on to look at the Austrian exhibit, and the Alps seemed to git his mind off some.

There they wuz.  There was the Alps, with a railroad in the foreground; then the ship of the Invincible Armada, in the Madrid exhibit, seemed to take up his mind; and all of the guns, from the fifteenth century on to our day; and the Spanish collection of models of block-houses, forts, castles, towers, and so forth.

In the middle of the main buildin’ stood two big masts fifty feet high—­one of our own day, with every modern convenience; the other like them masts on them ships of Columbus.

I hope our sails will waft on the ship of our country to as great a success as Columbuses did.  Mebby it will; I hope so.

Wall, after we left the Transportation Buildin’, sez Josiah, “I am dead sick of grandeur, and palaces 30 and 40 acres big, and gildin’, and arches, and pillars, and iron.”

Sez he, “I would give a cent this minute to see our sugar house, and if I could see Sam Widrig’s hovel, where he keeps his sheep, and our old log milk house, I’d be willin’ to give a dollar bill.”

“Wall,” sez I, in a kinder low voice, for I didn’t want it to git out—­I felt that I would ruther lose no end of comfort than to hurt the Christopher Columbus World’s Fair’s feelin’s—­

I whispered, “I feel jest exactly as you do.  And,” sez I, “less go and find a cabin and some huts if we can, and a board.”

So we, havin’ been told before where we should find these, wended our way to the Esquimo village, and lo! there wuz a big board fence round it.

And Josiah went up and laid his hand on them good hemlock boards lovin’ly, and sez he, “It looks good enough to eat.”  I could hardly withdraw him from it—­he clung to it like a brother.

[Illustration:  “It looks good enough to eat.”]

Wall, inside that board fence wuz a number of cabins or huts, containin’ some of ’em a hide bag or a bed, a dog sled with some strips of tin for a harness, and some plain tables, white as snow in some huts, and in some as black as dirt could make ’em.

There wuz about fifty or sixty males and females and children there, and one on ’em, a little bit of a baby, born right there on the Fair ground.

She wuz about as big as a little toy doll.  She wuz a-swingin’ there in a little hammock, and she didn’t seem to care a mite whether she wuz born up to the Arctic Pole or in Chicago.  Good land! what did she care about the pole?  Mother love wuz the hull equatorial circle to her, and it wuz a-bendin’ right over her.