Even Nony acted a trifle less bitter and austeer when he heard the news, and made the remark, "That he hoped that he would be happy." But there wuz a dark and shudderin' oncertainty and onbelief in his cold eyes as he said that "Hope" that wuz dretful deprestin' to me--not to Mr. Freeman; no, that blessed creeter wuz too happy to be affected by such glacial congratulations as Nony Piddock's. CHAPTER XVIII. Of course, feelin' as I did about my Uncle Samuel, it wouldn't have done to not gone to the Government Buildin', where he makes his headquarters, so to say. Like the other palaces, this is so vast that it seemed as we stepped up to it some like wadin' out into Lake Michigan to examine her. We couldn't do it--we couldn't do justice to Michigan with one pair of feet and eyes--no, indeed. Wall, no more we couldn't do justice to these buildin's unless we laid out to live as long as Methusleah did, and hang round here for a hundred years or so. We had to go by a lot of officers all dressed up in uniforms. But we wuzn't afraid--we knew we hadn't done anything to make us afraid. Josiah wuz considerable interested in the enormous display of rifles, and all the machinery for makin' 'em, and showin' how and where the destructive instruments used in war are made. And then there wuz dummy cavalry horses, and men, and ponies, and cattle, showin' the early means for transportation of the mails, compared with the modern way of carryin' it on lightnin' coaches. But it wuz a treat indeed to me to see the original papers writ by our noble forefathers. To be sure, they wuz considerable faded out, so that I couldn't read 'em much of any; but it wuz a treat indeed to jest see the paper on which the hands of them good old creeters had rested while they shaped the Destinies of the New World. They held the pen, but the Almighty held the hands, and guided them over the paper. When I see with my own two eyes, and my Josiah's eyes, which makes four eyes of my own (for are we two not one? Yes, indeed, we are a good deal of the time)-- Wall, when I see with these four eyes the very paper that Washington, the Immortal Founder of His Country, had rested his own hand on--when I see the very handwritin' of his right hand and the written thoughts of hisen, which made it seem some like lookin' into the inside of that revered and noble head, my feelin's riz up so that they wuz almost beyend my control, and I had to lean back hard on the pillow of megumness that I always carry with me to stiddy myself with. I had to lean hard, or I should have been perfectly wobblin' and broke up. And then to see Jefferson's writin', and Hamilton's, and Benjamin Franklin's--he who also discovered a New World, the mystic World that we draw on with such a stiddy and increasin' demand for supplies of light, and heat, and motion, and everything-- When I see the very writin' of that hand that had drawed down the lightnin', and had hitched it to the car of commerce and progress--