The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair Part 3

There was a band-stand in front of them, and beyond that was a ma.s.sive building, which f.a.n.n.y found was Machinery hall. As they went on to it, f.a.n.n.y read to them that it covered over twenty acres of ground and cost nearly a million and a half dollars. As they entered the door they saw one awful ma.s.s of moving machinery.

Uncle said he thought they had better sit down again and think awhile before venturing further, but Johnny urged them to come on so they could see something and do their thinking afterward.

They came to one of the doors of the power house, and Uncle sat down.

"I can't stand this pressure," he said, "I tell you I've got to sit down and look at this thing." At his left he could see into the power house nearly five hundred feet long and full from one end to the other of great boilers with the red fires glowing underneath.

On the right he looked across the hall where the great power wheel was flying and saw five hundred feet of whirling wheels, while before him there was an un.o.bstructed view of machines but little short of a thousand feet.

They went over to the middle aisle and on past the larger machinery.

"Why Grandma, you are walking by me with your eyes shut. What's the matter?"

"Well you see, f.a.n.n.y, it's too much to look at so many millions of things so I just shut my eyes and think. What's the difference if I do miss a few thousand sights."

"That's so, f.a.n.n.y, we aint got used to looking yet. It looks like they had everything a working here but my old shaving horse. I wouldn't be surprised any minute to see that it had walked away from the woodshed and come over to show itself off in this here exposition. I believe I'll go over and offer them my old barlow knife. It's a score of years old but it'll bore a hole for a hame string all right yet."

They came to the place where they were making watches with the complex, automatic machinery that defies the eye to detect its movements, then there was the sewing machine with a man riding it like a bicycle and sewing carpet in strips a hundred feet long. There were knitting machines and clothing machines, and carving and molding machines, and type-setting machines, till the day was spent and they had seen only how much there was to see.

"It takes taste to paint pictures, and art to make sculpture, and mind to write books, and genius to carry on war, but I tell you, my girl,"

said Uncle, "that it takes brains to make machinery."

Pa.s.sing through a south door they went on around Machinery hall. Some working men were pa.s.sing by singly or in twos and threes. One had a wrench in one hand and a queer looking bottle in the other. The ludicrous side of the exposition now began to appear. Nothing can become so great that amusing things will not occur. They are the relaxations of mental life. One of the guards saw the man and his bottle.

"Hi, there," he shouted. The workman came to a stop, the bottle being ostensibly concealed behind his ap.r.o.n. "What are you bringing beer into machinery hall for?"

"I ain't got any beer," replied the workman.

"Don't tell me any such stuff. You've got a bottle under your ap.r.o.n."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The Guard was determined to do his duty."]

"No I haven't," and the culprit as if by accident let a portion of the bottle drop into sight. The guard made a grab for it and held it up before the seemingly confused workman.

"I'll just take you to the station-house," declared the officer. "What did you mean by telling me you had no beer?"

"It ain't beer. It's--it's--ginger ale."

The prisoner was lying. That was evident to the guard. At the same time he did not want to be placed in the position of disobeying orders against making trivial arrests. He knew by the color of the liquid it was not ginger ale. A brilliant thought came to him. He would test the beer and thus have the evidence. But here a difficulty was encountered.

While the rule prohibiting employees from bringing intoxicants into the grounds is a strict one, there is a much severer regulation against guards tasting the stuff while on duty. What if his sergeant should see him with a bottle of beer to his lips! To meet this obstacle the guard led his prisoner to a secluded place behind a big packing case, and after looking fearfully around hastily uncorked the bottle and sent a huge swallow of the contents down his throat.

The result was unexpected so far as the blue coat was concerned. With a howl of anguish he dropped the bottle. Both eyes started from his head and his face turned to ashen paleness as he danced about the floor shrieking "I am poisoned." Finally he sank down with a moan and the men attracted by his cries carried him to a bench and laid him down. On the edge of the human circle about him the guard beheld the face of his prisoner. Beckoning him to his side the guard feebly said, "What was that stuff in the bottle?"

"Lard oil and naphtha," replied the workman.

The guard was removed to the hospital, while the workmen were laughing their heartiest. In an hour the stricken officer was back at his post.

That afternoon, as the family climbed the stairs to the station on their way back to the hotel, Uncle Jeremiah was a study to the student of human nature. The size of the Exposition had dazed and awed him. He wore a neat paper collar with an old-fashioned ready-made necktie pushed under the points. The slouch hat was down over his ears, as a heavy wind was tearing across the high landing. His manner was that of one oppressed by a great sorrow. He looked at the turrets and domes and the hundreds of dancing flags and shook his head solemnly. When the people around him gabbled and pointed their fingers and piled up the same old adjectives he glanced around at them timidly and then stepped softly away where he could gaze without being interrupted. After boarding the car he stood up between the seats and held on to the railing. At each curve of the track, as new visions swung into view, he shook his head again and again, but said nothing. He had been for a good many years taking in a daily landscape of stubble-field, orchard and straight country roads. His experience had taught him that a red two-story hay press was a big building. To him the huddle of huckster stands at the county fair made a pretty lively spectacle. Then he was rushed into Chicago. With the roar of wheels still in his ears and the points of the compa.s.s hopelessly mixed, he found himself being fed into the Exposition gate with a lot of strange people. The magnitude of the great enterprise was more than any intellect could fully grasp. His mind perceived so much that was strange and new that he became as that one who saw men as trees walking. His eyes were opened to a new world. He was now a living part of the intellectual vision and prophecy of the "Dream City."

_CHAPTER III_

AROUND THE WORLD FOR TWENTY CENTS

The next day, when the "Alley L" road let them off at the station next to the electric road, they decided to ride around and view the "White City" from that elevated position. The intramural road is about three miles around, and 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 pa.s.sed 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 ma.s.sive art on the opposite side of the car.

The queer looking Forestry building flew by, the leather exhibit was pa.s.sed, 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 ma.s.sive 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 Esquimau village, the richly varied city of state and foreign buildings came into view. All the varieties of architectural genius from the different countries of the world appeared one after another and it was easy to imagine a flight of incredible speed all over the earth. The terminal station at the northeast was reached and uncle wanted to ride back again. In this way the panorama of the great Fair was quite well fixed in their minds when they descended from the southeast station at the entrance of Agricultural hall. For once Uncle felt at home when he walked into that paradise of gra.s.s and grain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE STOOD CHEWING A WISP OF HAY."]

"Every body but me and Sarah can scatter and we'll all meet at the far end of this house, or if not there at the south side of the Sixty-third street gate at six o'clock." f.a.n.n.y and Johnny took Uncle at his word and were soon strolling among the booths, but they were more intent upon watching the maneuvers of the various types of people than of observing what the earth is able to produce out of its soil. They heard a band playing somewhere in the distance and they moved on that way.

As a curious observer of this moving world, f.a.n.n.y made note of the many interesting exhibitions about her of country ignorance and enthusiasm.

At one place she stopped near a tall, lank farmer, whose cowhide boots had left their ma.s.sive imprint on every roadway on the grounds. He stood chewing a wisp of hay plucked from an exhibit, while he gazed in delight at the harvesters, plows and sheaves of wheat which stretched away before him in an endless vista.

"Wall, I swan," he at length confided to the dignified guard, who stood like a sign-post near the door, "this 'ere's the only thing I've seed 'minded me of hum. Bin tramping raound these 'ere grounds, scence 7 o'clock, b'gosh, an' ain't seen a blamed thing did my ole heart so much good as this show right here. By George! wish I'd a struck this buildin'

fust thing I come in. Would a saved me a power of walkin'. Say, had a great show out our way a spell ago. Had a corn palace--Sioux City, you know. Be they goin' to have a corn palace at this 'ere fair?"

The guard unbent enough to guess not.

"Sho! y' don't say so. Wall, that's curious. Corn palace out to hum was the biggest show ever give out that way. And crowd! Say, I'll bet a nickel I've seed as many as hundreds of people thar in one day. In one day, reclect, all just looking at that there corn palace. Wonder these fellows didn't think of that. Would a drawd all the folks from out in our section, sh.o.r.e. Tell you what I don't like about this show," he went on, waxing confidential, "Too much furrin stuff here. Don't see nothing from Keokuk, Sioux City, Independence or even old Davenport. But all London and Berlin and Paris, and all them other places where they's kings and things. Ought to a give the folks here more of a show, b'gosh, same as we did out to hum. Why, they wasn't none of this statoo stuff thar, I tell you. Wasn't no picters and the like of that. What good is them picters over there, I'd like to know? Why, some on 'em, the folks ain't got a st.i.tch of clothes on 'em, and you couldn't hang them air picters in a barn. Ought to have more of these things here--oats and wheat and seedin' machines. Them's what people want to see. And say, I was daown here below this mornin', and by gum, I seed the damdest lookin' fellows I ever seen in all my born days. They was heathen Turks, I reckon, with rags round their heads and wimmin's clo'es on all o' 'em.

I was a-scared to stay there, b'gosh, and I jest lit out, I tell ye.

Well, I'm goin' through here and see what you've got, but I jest tell you this is the part of this show that'll do. Yes, sir." And the rural visitor stalked away.

In less than two hours the brother and sister had reached the west doorway, but uncle and aunt were nowhere to be seen. Then they went up into the gallery to hear the musicians again. It was very evident that Agricultural hall had swallowed their grandparents for that day and the grandchildren were left to shift for themselves. It was now past noon and they were both hungry enough to welcome the first lunch counter they could find. One o'clock found them again wandering listlessly about the gallery absorbed in the sights about them.

_CHAPTER IV_

ESCORT AND BODY GUARD

"Hist, me boys," said one of a group of young men near the band-stand, who were watching the people moving about them, "Me eye has caught sight of something forbidden to all the rest of the world. You can look but you must mustn't touch. Give me your prayers boys." He sauntered away from them and came near to f.a.n.n.y and Johnny as if intensely interested in all that was about him. f.a.n.n.y was standing near the bal.u.s.trade that was around the gallery, when the opportunity the young man was watching for soon came. Some rude man hurrying by struck her arm in such a way as to knock her hand-satchel out of her hand and it fell to the main floor far below. In an instant the young man lifted his hat, and bowing to her ran down the near flight of stairs; taking the satchel from some one near whom it had fallen, he hurried back and gave it to her with a profound bow. Seeming to recognize her all at once he made another bow and said, "Ah, pardon me but I see I have just had the honor of serving Miss Jones, whom I met on the train a few days ago." Hardly knowing just what to do, she thanked him and hesitated, but he was not slow to turn the tide in his favor and was soon chatting in such a very agreeable way about the many scenes that she soon forgot all doubts as to propriety.