k Amanda by the hand, and sez--

"Here, Amanda, is one house that covers as much ground as your hull
farm!"

I believe she would have fell right down in a coniption fit.

But Amanda wuzn't there; I had only my faithful pardner to share my
emotions, as I went into one of its four great entrances, under its
triumphal arches, each one bein' 40 feet wide and 80 feet high--as long
as from our house to the back pasture.

The idee! the idee!

Why, to change my metafor a little about the bigness of this buildin',
so's to let foreign nations git a little clearer idee of the size on't,
I will state--

This one house is bigger than all those of Jonesville, and Loontown, and
Shackville, and Zoar. It is the biggest house on this planet. Whether
they have got any bigger ones in Mars, or Jupiter, or Saturn, I don't
know; but I will say this--if they have, and the Marites, and
Jupiterians, and Satens, are made up as we be, and calculate to go
through the buildin's, I am sorry for their legs.

It faces the lake, in plain view of all admirin' mariners, the long row
of arches, and columns; is ornamented beyend anything that Jonesville
ever drempt of, or Zoar, and a gallery fifty feet wide runs all round
the buildin'; and from this gallery runs eighty-six smaller galleries,
so nothin' hinders folks from lookin' down into the big hall below, and
seein' the gorgeous seen of the Exposition, and the immense throng of
people admirin' it.

As Josiah and I wuz a-wendin' along on the gallery a-frontin' the lake,
I heard a man--he looked some like a minister, too--say to another one,
sez he, "The style of this buildin' is Corinthian."

[Illustration: "This Buildin' is Corinthian."]

And I spoke right up, bein' determined that Josiah and I too should be
took for what we wuz--good, Bible-readin' Methodists.

I said to Josiah, but loud enough so that the man should hear--

"The New Testament hain't got a better book in it than Corinthians--it
is one of my favorites; I am glad that this buildin' takes after it."

He looked kinder dumfoundered, and then he looked tickled; he see that
we wuz congenial, though we met only as two barks that meet on the
ocean, or two night-hawks a-sailin' past each other in the woods at
Jonesville.

But true it is that a good-principled person is always ready to stand by
his colors.

But the crowd swept us on, and we wuz divided--he to carry his good,
solid principles out-doors, and disseminate 'em under