cackle the hub all to pieces.

Cousin Dempster hasn't much to do in summer-time, so he was on hand for
the Great High Jubilee; and E. E. was just crazy to go; for she is what
you call musical, and goes right off the handle whenever a fellow that
can't speak English plays on the piano or sings to her in some language
that she don't know a word of.

Well, we went, and found Boston just running over with people. Every
house along the crooked streets had one or two flags a-streaming from
the roof, or out of the windows--star-spangled banners tangled-up with
red and yellow and all sorts of colors; some with eagles, some without,
but making every street gorgeous, as if the Fourth of July had burst out
before its time.

The Coliseum is a tremendous building, big enough to roof-in forty
thousand people, and leave room for the whole swarm of drummers,
toot-horners, piano-thrashers, blacksmiths, anvils, and swivel-guns,
with a thousand people to blow, thrash, and blast them off, and twenty
thousand singers behind, ready to pile in the thunder of their voices.

The Coliseum is grand, barny in its structure, and all outdoorish when
you get into it; but there is a good deal to see before you do get into
it. The streets were just jammed-up with people when we came in sight of
the great building, which stands out in a bare piece of ground, without
a tree near it, and the hottest sun you ever wilted under beating down
on everything around it, till I felt as if approaching the mouth of a
great New England brisk oven, heated to bake a thousand tons of beans
in. The streets were blocked with people.

The little wooden bridges built over the railroads were creaking under
the tramp of a never-ending crowd. The street cars were crowded like
beehives till the horses could not move, and some of the cars broke
down, choking up the track.

Female women, with red books in their hands, scrambled through the
crowd. Little tents and shanties were scattered all about, everybody
talked fast and loud--some in one language, some in another. It was like
going into the Tower of Babel, with all the languages in full blast.

From one of the shanties we heard the sound of a loud, eager, wild
voice, as of some fellow going to be hung, and wrestling for his life.

"What is that?" says I to Dempster. "What on earth are they doing in
there?"

"Oh, it's a prayer-meeting," says he; "some man is wrestling with the
Lord in behalf of sinful souls."

"Oh,