Secretary Robeson took the lead, closely followed by Bennett, the latter being hotly pressed by Forbes of Boston. Then McGinnis of St. Louis, made a spurt, got alongside of the “Herald,” which was soaking up water like a sponge. The race was now bow to bow for a few seconds, when O’Brien of Chicago, got rapidly forward. Robeson would still have had a good lead if the boats had been on the return trip. Opposite the Girard Bridge Commodore O’Shaughnessy of Baltimore, fouled Commodore Riley of New Orleans, and the other contestants being in the rear, the race narrowed down to Bennett, Lorillard, Forbes, and McGinnis. Near the Columbia Bridge, McGinnis ran his penknife through Forbes of Boston’s tub, and though Lorillard promptly tendered a plug from his vessel to stop the leak, this delayed all but the irrepressible Bennett, who won the race in 23 minutes 33½ seconds. This, strangely enough, was the same result which had been published in the “N. Y. Herald” that same morning, five hours before the race began. [Illustration] There remains now but little more to record. “Screw up your courage to the sticking point” (sticking things into the fire), for we shall soon part, mayhap to meet no more in print. We are happily permitted, however, before concluding, to add weight to the oft-repeated assertion that HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF. Let sceptics reading what follows, change the current of their unbelieving thoughts. Now the end of the days of the Exposition was drawing nigh, and it came to pass that the chief of all the city’s people dreamed a dream. And lo, in this dream he beheld a man sitting lonely upon a lump of frozen water; his features were set and stern in mould, and icicles dangled from the tips of his fingers and his nose. [AND THE VOICE SAID “WOE!”] And it seemed to the chief that he heard in his dream a voice, and the voice said, “Woe!” Yea, “woe to those who have done this thing, who have placed me here in this frigid spot and forgotten my existence.” “When they die may their noses long for icicles and long in vain, may their parched tongues cleave into the gum roofing of their mouths, and in their misery may they think of me.” And the chief man rose up early in the morning and summoned before him, Mr. Sansom, the interpreter of the court, and related to him his dream. But the interpreter shrugged his shoulders, and muttering, “nix firstay,” he retired to his studies of the mystic and the profound. But it happened that when the city’s organs published the dream, the minds of men reverted to their solicitor in the vaults of the Knickerbocker Ice Co., and the interpretation of the dream was clear. And the hearts of men were moved to pity and impulses of compassion, and they desired that the incarcerated man might view the fading glories, which in their brilliancy, had gladdened his fellow-citizens.