But jest at that minute, before I could frame a reply, even if I could have found a frame queer-shaped enough to hold my curious--curious feelin's-- Miss Plank knocked at the door and said she wuz ready to go--we had made arrangements to go together that mornin'--and Josiah tackled her about the whale; and sez she briskly-- "Oh, yes; the whaleback Christopher Columbus! It would be a good idee to go to the grounds in it; you can go down in it in half an hour--it is only seven or eight milds." So we fell in with her idee; and bein' ust to the place, she took the lead, and also the street cars, and we soon found ourselves on board the biggest floatin' ship I ever laid eyes on. And I couldn't see as it looked much like a whale, unless it wuz that it wuz long, and kinder pinted, and turned up at both ends, some the shape of a whale. Wall, I guess the hull five thousand folks wuz on board, and had brung their relations on both sides. It looked like it, and we steamed along by the shore for quite a spell, the city a-layin' in plain view for mild after mild--or that is, in as plain view as it could be under its envelopin' curtain of smoke. But bimeby the smoke all cleared away, the air wuz clear and pure, and the lake lay fair and placid fur off as we could see. It might a been the ocean, for all we could tell, for you can't see no further than you _can_, anyway, and you can't see no further than that on the Atlantic or the Pacific. Way beyend what you can't see might stretch thousands and thousands of milds and a new continent; or it might be a loggin' camp, or Kalamazoo. It don't make no difference to your feelin's, it has all the illimitable expanse, the vastness of the great ocean. So it wuz with the outlook on the flashin' blue waters on that magic mornin'. And pretty soon the White City riz up like a city of bewilderin' beauty and enchantment, with the sun a-lookin' down from a blue sky, and lightin' up the tall, white walls, and gilded domes, and towers, and minarets. And as we floated along by Jackson Park, and could git a plain view of the perfect buildin's--the lagoons with fairy boats a-skimmin' over the sparklin' surface--in fact, in plain view of the hull vast, bewilderin' seen of matchless splendor--why, I declare I felt almost as if I wuz took back clear into the Arabian Nights Entertainments, and magic seens wuz bein' unfolded before my enraptured vision. Why, I almost felt that my Josiah wuz a genii, and Miss Plank a geniess. I wouldn't a wondered a mite any minute if a carpet had dropped down for us to git onto, and we floated off into Bagdad. I felt queer--extremely. But Bagdad nor no other Dad wuz ever so enchantin'ly lovely as the seen outspread before our eyes. As surpassin'ly beautiful as the Exposition is from every side, hind side and fore side, and from top to bottom, it is, I do believe, most radiantly lovely from the water approach.