a had the best exhibits of all kinds of any of the States.
But I wouldn't want it told from me. I don't want to git thirty or
forty States mad as a hen at me; the States are dretful touchy, anyway,
in the matter of State Rights and pride.

But the show wuz impressive--dretful.

This house wuz built, I spoze, in honor of Spain, like a old Spanish
Mission Buildin'; and up in the towers which rise up on the four corners
are belfrys, in which are some of the old Spanish bells, that still ring
out and call to prayers, when the good old Fathers that used to hear
'em, and the Injun converts, generations and generations of 'em, have
slept so sound that the bells can't wake 'em.

And the bells still swing out over this restless and ambitious
generation, and they will swing and echo jest the same when we too have
gone to sleep, and sleep sound.

Queer, hain't it, that a little dead lump of metal should outlive the
beatin' human heart--the active, outreachin' human life, with its
world-wide activities and Heaven-high aspiration?

But so it is; generations and generations are born, live, and die, and
the old bells, a-takin' life easy, jest swing on, and ring out jest as
sweet and calm and kinder careless at our death as at our birth.

The bells sounded dretful melancholy and heart achin' to me; that day
they seemed to be soundin' a requiem clear from California to
Jonesville for the good Man who had passed away.

Jest as we went down the steps we hearn a bystander a-tellin' another
one "that Leland Stanford wuz dead." And I wuz fearful rousted up about
it; I felt like death to hear on't; and to think that I never had a
chance to tell him what I thought on him. I was fearful agitated, and
almost by the side of myself; but jest at that juncture--jest as I sez
to Josiah, "I shouldn't felt so bad if I had had a chance to tell him
what I thought on him, and encourage him in his noble doin's, and warn
him in one or two things"--jest at that minit, sez Josiah, "I've lost my
bandanny handkerchief;" and he told me, "To wait there for him, that he
thought that he remembered where he had dropped it--back in a antick
room in the back part of the house."

And I thought more'n like as not that wuz the last I should see of him
for hours and hours, the crowd wuz so immense and the search wuz so
oncertain.

But it wuz a good new handkerchief--red and yeller, with a palm-tree
pattern on it--and I couldn't discourage him from huntin' for it