of their friends, and so on, and so forth.

Wall, we laid out to pay attention to a lot on 'em that day.

But, as it turned out, we didn't go to but jest three on 'em, the
reasons of which I will set down, and recapitulate.

I felt that we _had_ to go to New York and Illinois. Loyalty and
Politeness stood on both sides of us, a-leadin' us to the home of our
own native State, and the folks we wuz a-visitin'; and we found New York
a perfect palace, modelled after an Italian one. And the row of green
plants a-standin' on the ruff all round made it look real uneek and
dretful handsome. And inside it wuz fitted up as luxurious as any palace
need to be, with a banquet hall eighty-four feet long and forty-six feet
high; a glow of white, and gold, and red, and crystal.

Yes, the hull house wuz pleasant and horsepitable, as become the
dwellin' place of the Empire State.

And Illinois! You might know what you'd expect to find inside, when you
see what they had outside on't.

That statute, "Hide and Seek," before the entrance, wuz, I do believe,
the very best thing I see to the hull Fair--

Five little children with merry, laughin' faces a-playin' at hide and
seek in a broken gray old stump, and flowers, and vines, and mosses
a-runnin' round it and over it as nateral as life.

Wall, I stood before that beautiful object till Josiah had to draw me
away from it almost by main force.

But inside it come my time to draw him away.

When we see that picter of the old farm made in seeds, he wuz as rooted
to the spot as if he intended to remain sot out there, and grow up with
the State.

[Illustration: He wuz rooted to the spot.]

And it wuz a dretful interestin' sight--the farm-house, the barns, the
well, the old windmill, the long fields a-stretchin' back, and fenced
off, with different crops on 'em, the good-lookin' men and wimmen, and
the horses, with their glossy hides and silky manes and tails, and all
made of different kinds of seeds and grasses. It wuz a sight to see the
crowd that stood before that from mornin' till night, and you ask ten
folks what impressed 'em the most at the Fair, and more'n half on 'em
would most likely say that it wuz that seed picter in the Illinois
Buildin'. Over one side on't wuz draped sunthin' that I took to be the
very richest silk or velvet, all fringed out with a deep fringe on the
end on't. But it wuz all made of grasses of different kinds--the idee!
Fifteen young ladies of Illinois m