as red as fire--and I sez, "I
hain't got no call to look at wine.

[Illustration: His nose wuz as red as fire.]

"I wouldn't give a cent a barrel for the best there is there, if I had
got to consoom it myself.

"Though," sez I, reasonably, "I wouldn't object to havin' a pint bottle
on't to keep in the house in case of sickness, or to make jell, or
sunthin'.

"But I will not go and encourage the makin' of such quantities as there
is there, I will not encourage 'em in makin' that show."

He looked mad, and sez he, "I guess they won't stop their show because
you won't go and see it."

"Probable not," sez I; but sez I, real eloquent, "I will hold up my
banner afoot or on horseback."

And then I sez to my husband, with quite a good deal of dignity--

"Less proceed to the Wooded Island, Josiah Allen."

But alas! for Josiah's hope of seein' sunthin' plain and simple. When we
got there, that seemed to be the very central garden of the earth for
flowers, and beauty, and bloom, and there it wuz that we see the most
gorgeous rainbow--all made of pansies--glow and dazzlement.

The island contains seventeen acres, and it stands on such a rise of
ground, that every buildin' on the Fair ground can be seen plain.

In the centre of the south end wuz the rose garden, where the choicest
and most beautiful roses from all over the world bloom in their glowin'
richness.

When I thought how much store I had sot by one little monthly rose
a-growin' in a old earthen teapot of Mother Allen's--and when it wuz
all blowed out I had reason to be proud on't--

But jest think of seein' fifty thousand of the choicest roses in the
world, all a-blowin' out at one time.

Why, I had a immense number of emotions.

I thought of the ancient rose gardens we read of, and Solomon's Songs,
and most everything.

It wuz surrounded on all four sides with a wire trellis, with archways
openin' on four sides, and all over these pretty trellises climbin'
roses and honeysuckles, and all lovely climbin' plants covered it into
four walls of perfect beauty.

It wuz truly the World's Rose Garden.

Well might Josiah say he wuz sick of flowers, and wanted to see some
plain cord wood! Why, that day we see in one batch twenty thousand
orchids, six thousand Parmee violets, and one man--jest one man--sent
'leven hundred ivies and one thousand hydarangeas, and every flower you
ever hearn on in proportion, let alone what all the other men all over
the earth