s, and dumbfoundered, "any whale story I
could hear about Chicago wouldn't surprise me a mite."

And I wiped my brow on my white linen handkerchief, for though the idee
didn't surprise me none, it started the sweat.

Sez Josiah, "It is 225 feet long, and has a fountain in it, and a
skylight 138 feet long."

But jest at that minute, before I could frame a reply, even if I could
have found a frame queer-shaped enough to hold my curious--curious
feelin's--

Miss Plank knocked at the door and said she wuz ready to go--we had made
arrangements to go together that mornin'--and Josiah tackled her about
the whale; and sez she briskly--

"Oh, yes; the whaleback Christopher Columbus! It would be a good idee to
go to the grounds in it; you can go down in it in half an hour--it is
only seven or eight milds."

So we fell in with her idee; and bein' ust to the place, she took the
lead, and also the street cars, and we soon found ourselves on board the
biggest floatin' ship I ever laid eyes on. And I couldn't see as it
looked much like a whale, unless it wuz that it wuz long, and kinder
pinted, and turned up at both ends, some the shape of a whale.

Wall, I guess the hull five thousand folks wuz on board, and had brung
their relations on both sides. It looked like it, and we steamed along
by the shore for quite a spell, the city a-layin' in plain view for mild
after mild--or that is, in as plain view as it could be under its
envelopin' curtain of smoke.

But bimeby the smoke all cleared away, the air wuz clear and pure, and
the lake lay fair and placid fur off as we could see. It might a been
the ocean, for all we could tell, for you can't see no further than you
_can_, anyway, and you can't see no further than that on the Atlantic or
the Pacific.

Way beyend what you can't see might stretch thousands and thousands of
milds and a new continent; or it might be a loggin' camp, or Kalamazoo.
It don't make no difference to your feelin's, it has all the illimitable
expanse, the vastness of the great ocean.

So it wuz with the outlook on the flashin' blue waters on that magic
mornin'.

And pretty soon the White City riz up like a city of bewilderin' beauty
and enchantment, with the sun a-lookin' down from a blue sky, and
lightin' up the tall, white walls, and gilded domes, and towers, and
minarets. And as we floated along by Jackson Park, and could git a plain
view of the perfect buildin's--the lagoons with fairy boats a-skimm