culptured heights of palaces--long, green, flower-gemmed avenues of
beauty--with the blue waters a-shinin' calm behind towerin' statutes of
marvellous conception, and sez I--

"Behold a vista!"

[Illustration: "Behold a vista!"]

He put on his specs and looked clost, and sez he--

"I don't see nothin' out of the common."

"No," sez I; "spiritual things are spiritually discerned. The wind
bloweth where it listeth," sez I.

"Oh, bring up the Bible," sez he; "there is a time for all things."

He acted real pudgiky.

But I at last got him to understand what a vista wuz, and I told him
that Mr. Burnham and the others who had charge of buildin' this
marvellous city took no end of pains to design these marvellous
picters--more lovely than wuz ever painted on canvas sence the world
begun.

And sez I, as I looked round me once more, some as Moses did on Pisga's
height, "and viewed the landscape o'er"--

Sez I, "I _must_ thank the head one here--I _must_ thank
Director-General Davis in my own name, and in the name of Jonesville,
and the world, for gittin' up this incomparable spectacle, the like of
which will never be seen agin by livin' eyes."

And if you'll believe it, I hadn't hardly finished speakin' when who
should come towards us but General Davis himself. I knew him in a
minute, for his picter had been printed in papers as many as two or
three times since the Fair begun--it wuz a real good-lookin' face,
anyway, in a paper or out of it.

And I gathered up the folds of my cotton umbrell more gracefully in my
left hand, and kinder shook out the drapery of my alpaca skirt, and wuz
jest advancin' to accost him, when Josiah laid holt of my arm and
whispered in a sharp axent--

"I won't have it. You hain't a-goin' to stop and visit with that man."

I faced him with dignity and with some madness in my liniment, and sez
I, "Why?"

Sez he, "Do you ask why?"

"Yes," sez I, with that same noble, riz-up look on my eyebrow--"why?"

"Wall," sez he, a-lookin' kinder meachin', "I want sunthin' to eat, and
you'd probable talk a hour with him by the way you've praised up his
doin's here."

By this time General Davis wuz fur away.

And I sithed, when I thought on't, what he'd lost by not receivin' my
eloquent and heartfelt thanks, and what I'd lost in not givin' 'em.

I d'no as Josiah was jealous--mebby he wuzn't. But General Davis is
considerable handsome, and Josiah can't bear to have me praise up any
man, livin'