beautiful creeter.

There she stood, in sun or shade, knee-deep in them fresh green grasses,
a-lookin' off onto them sunset clouds always rosy and golden, by the
side of that streamlet that always had the sparkle on its tiny waves.

I might be tired and weak as a cat, and Mr. Freeman might have the
headache, and Josiah Allen be cross, and all fagged out--

But her face wuz always serene, and lit up with the glow of joy and
health, and her sweet, deep eyes always held the secret that she
couldn't be made to tell.

Mr. Bolster was a stout, middle-aged man, with bald head, side whiskers,
and a double chin. And his big blue eyes kinder stood out from his face
some. He was a real estate agent, so Miss Plank said. But his principal
business seemed to be a-praisin' up Chicago, and a-puffin' up the
World's Fair.

Good land! Columbus didn't need none of his patronizin' and puffin' up,
and Chicago didn't, not by his tell.

Josiah wuz dretful impressed by him. We didn't lead off to the Fair
ground the next day after our arrival. No; at my request, we took life
easy--onpacked our trunks and got good and rested, and the mornin'
follerin' we got up middlin' early, bein' used to keepin' good hours in
Jonesville, and on goin' down to the breakfast-table we found that there
wuzn't nobody there but Mr. Bolster. He always had a early breakfast,
and drove his own horse into the city to his place of business.

He looked that wide awake and active as if he never had been asleep, and
never meant to.

And my companion bein' willin', and Mr. Bolster bein' more than willin',
they plunged to once into a conversation concernin' Chicago, Miss Plank
and I a-listenin' to 'em some of the time, and some of the time
a-talkin' on our own hook, as is the ways of wimmen.

Mr. Bolster--and I believe he knew that we wuz from York State, and did
it partly in a boastin' way--he begun most to once to prove that Chicago
wuz the only place in America at all suitable to hold the World's Fair
in.

And I gin him to understand that I thought that New York would have been
a good place for it, and it wuz a disapintment to me and to several
other men and wimmen in the State to not have it there.

But Mr. Bolster says, "Why, Chicago is the only place at all proper for
it. Why," sez he, "in a way of politeness, Chicago is the only place for
it. In what other city could the foreigners be welcomed by their own
people as they can here?" Sez he--

"In Chicago o