nd makes the trip in seventeen minutes. It was like going
around the world in that time, so much was to be seen on either side.

The four made a fine picture of age and youth gathering mental breadth
from this great exhibition of human wisdom and achievement. They passed
around the west end of Machinery hall and along the south side of it,
then between the Agricultural annex and the stock pavilion. Here they
emerged into what seemed to be the waste yard of the Exposition, debris
of all kinds, beer houses, lunch rooms, hundreds of windmills flying in
the breeze and heavily loaded cars, back of which could be seen bonfires
of waste materials, these making a striking contrast to the white beauty
and massive art on the opposite side of the car.

The queer looking Forestry building flew by, the leather exhibit was
passed, and the train ran around a station not far from the Krupp gun
works. They had not yet made the grand tour of the grounds, but another
investment in tickets sent them back again, the way they had come, on
the parallel track. When they reached the west side they looked away
from the massive buildings across Stony Island avenue at the amusing
medley of hotels, booths for lunches, and tents for blue snakes, sea
monsters, and fat women strung along the front. Little merry-go-rounds
buzzed like tops in cramped corners between pine lemonade stands and
cheap shooting-galleries. Looking eastward, the eye rests with
satisfaction upon the gilded satin of the Administration dome, and then
it may take an observation to the westward of a flaunting placard:

|-------------------------|
| _Four Tintypes |
| for Twenty-five Cents_ |
|-------------------------|

Back of the sandwich counters and fortune-telling booths are stored the
World's Fair hotels, looking like overgrown store boxes, with holes
punched in them.

The train flew on, and uncle saw little of the outside because of his
interest in the strange machinery that was propelling them forward. The
engineer pulled a lever and then there was a buzz and a whirr; another
lever was turned, and the car would come to a standstill at some
station. It was amazing to see such simple movements by one man control
such unseen energy. From the farm to the Exposition grounds was as
marvelous a change as from one world to another, and to the simple
genius of rural work it was like going from the peaceful valley to the
mysteries beyond the clouds.

Past the Esquima