And there wuz gardens and orange groves nigh by, too, where you could
see ripe oranges and green ones hangin' to the same trees--dretful
interestin' sight.
Wall, if you would turn back agin and go towards the Fair ground on the
south side, a Hungarian Orpheum is seen first. This is a dance hall,
theatre, and restaurant all combined.
Folks can dance here all the time from mornin' till night, if they want
to, but we didn't want to dance--no, indeed! nor see it; our legs wuz
too wore out, and so wuz our eyes, so we wended on to the Lapland
Village.
The main buildin' in this is a hundred feet long, with a square tower in
the centre.
Above the main entrance is a large paintin' representin' a scene in
Lapland. Inside the inclosure are the huts of a Lapland Village, with
the Laps all there to work at their own work.
What a marvellous change for them! Transported from a country where
there is eight months of total darkness, and four months of twilight or
midnight sun, and so cold that no instrument has ever been invented to
tell how cold it is.
When the frozen seas and ice and snow is all they can see from birth
till death.
I wonder what they think of the change to this dazzlin' daylight, and
the grandeur and bloom of 1893!
But still they seem to weather it out a considerable time in their own
icy home.
King Bull, who is in Chicago, is one hundred and twelve years old, and
is a five great-grandpa.
And most of the five generations of children is with him here. But
marryin' as they do at ten or twelve, they can be grandpa a good many
times in a hundred years, as well as not.
In this village is their housen, their earth huts, their tepees,
orniments, reindeers, dogs, sledges, fur clothin', boats, fishin'
tackle, etc., etc.
As queer a sight as I ever see, and here it wuz agin, my Josiah and me
a-journeyin' way off in Lapland--the idee!
[Illustration: My Josiah and me a-journeyin' way off in Lapland--the
idee!]
The Dahomey Village come next. This shows the homes and customs of that
country where the wimmen do all the fightin'.
I sez to Josiah, "What a curiosity that wuz!"
And he sez, "I d'no about the curiosity on't. It don't seem so to me;
some wimmen fight with their fists," sez he, "and some with their
tongues."
That wuz his mean, onderhanded way of talkin'.
But these wimmen are about as humbly as they make wimmen anywhere.
And as for clothes, they are about as poor on't for 'em as anybody I see
to the Fair. They had on jest as few as they could.
They say their war dances is a sight to see. But I didn't let Josiah
look on any dancin' or anything of the kind that I could help. I did not
forget what I mistrusted he sometimes lost sight on, when he's on
towers--that he wuz a deacon and a grandpa.
He acted kinder longin' to the last. He said "he spozed it wuz a sight
to see 'em dance and beat their tom-toms."
And I sez, "I don't want to see no children beat; and," sez I, "what did
Tom do to deserve beatin'?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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