I couldn't have imagined such a place as the Emporium, and when I was in the thick of it I said to myself that it would be worth one's while coming over to the States just to visit it, if nothing else. If I had to choose between, I believe I'd rather see it than Niagara Falls; for one knows Niagara Falls from biographs and things, and nothing short of actually seeing could give one the slightest idea of Mr. Whit Walker and his Emporium. My first impression of the Emporium was a huge, rambling wooden building rather like a vast barn with a dozen smaller barns tacked on to it, and windows let in. It is painted pea-green, and has a rough verandah running partly round it--a high verandah with no steps, or if any, at such long intervals that you must search for them. But as there's no pavement we just scrambled out of the buggy and cart onto the verandah, and there we were landed among the most extraordinary collection of things I ever dreamed of. The stock in the Emporium having overflowed from the inside onto the verandah, we stumbled about among boxes of eggs, sewing machines, crates of dishes, garden tools, brooms, rocking chairs, perambulators, boots, "canned" fruit, children's toys, luggage, green vegetables, ice cream freezers, bales of calico, men's suits, piled-up books, clothes lines, and a thousand other "goods." A number of young men were sitting about on the biggest of the boxes, and on chicken coops, wherever they could clear a space, and had the air of being in a club. Our party knew them, almost all, and they exchanged "how do you do's." Mr. Brett seemed the only stranger; but as he told me, he hasn't often visited his cousins. From the open doors and windows of the Emporium streamed out the strangely mingled smells of all the things in the world which happened to be missing on the verandah, and most of those that were there. As a fragrance it was indescribable, but it was nice, and rather exciting, I don't know why, unless there was a quantity of spice in it. Just as we threaded our way through the groups of young men, who looked at us a good deal, people were lighting the gas in the Emporium. It was incandescent, and blazed up suddenly with a fierce light as if it were a volcano having an eruption. All the women inside (there was quite a crowd of them, bareheaded, or in perfectly fascinating frilled sunbonnets), shrieked and then giggled. A man who was surrounded by girls said something we couldn't hear, which made everybody laugh; and Mr. Trowbridge exclaimed: "That's Whit, sure, holding court. Couldn't be anybody else." "And I guess that's the Honourable," said the voice we had heard--such a nice voice; it was enough to make you laugh with pleasure just to hear it--and the head we could see towering over the sunbonnets began to move towards us. The girls edged away good-naturedly, and there was a man almost as fine-looking as Mr. Brett, smiling at us, and holding out his big hand.