One on 'em wuz a good-lookin' man a-holdin' two prancin' horses, and I
sez to myself, I am glad to see a man a-holdin' the bits for once.
But come to look closter, I see that there wuz two figgers--little
girls, I guess--that wuz holt of the horses' heads. And then I see the
man had a sword in one hand and a club in the other. He wuzn't to
blame--he couldn't hold 'em. Jest like Josiah; lots of times he would be
real glad to do things, only his hands are full.
And then another group wuz a beautiful female a-standin' up between two
great, big, long-horned oxen, a-holdin' them powerful-lookin' beasts
with a rope made of posies.
Good land! I wouldn't held 'em with iron chains. They looked so
high-headed, and their horns looked so long, and it seemed too bad to
put her at such a dangerous job.
But she didn't seem to be a mite afraid; she looked calm, and she had on
plenty of store clothes, which wuz indeed a comfort.
[Illustration: She didn't seem to be a mite afraid.]
And then, besides these main piers, with their large, beautiful groups,
there wuz fifty-two smaller piers, each one havin' a handsome statute,
representin' winged Geniis, sometimes a-holdin' tablets in their hands,
and anon horns of plenty, and abundance.
Most of this beautiful sculpture wuz designed by a man named Martiney,
French born, but I guess a-callin' himself an American now.
And I thought, as I looked at it, I would love to see him, and tell him
how well I thought on him and his works. He also made the beautiful
orniments in the interior of the large rotunda, and the great figger of
Ceres that stands in the centre.
In the pediment over the main entrance stands another beautiful figger
of Ceres--she that wuz Demetor Saturn.
I spoze, mebby, now we ort to call her Miss Jupiter. But, anyway, she is
as good-hearted as can be, always a-handin' out grain and food to the
perishin'.
Here she stands in the sculpture, which is made by an American, Mr. Mead
by name--here she stands, tall and benignant, in the centre of as many
as twenty men, wimmen, and children, a-sufferin' from hunger the most on
'em, and she a-handin' out food right and left. What a good creeter she
is, anyway!
Wall, mebby I have gin you a faint, a very faint idee of the beauty of
the hull twenty-six hundred feet of solid loveliness and perfection.
But who--who will tell what we see inside on't?
In this buildin' every State in the Union, and almost every civilized
nation of the world, is represented with agricultural exhibits, and food
products in their manufactured state. Prizes will be gin at the end of
the Fair to the _best_.
Every nation is shown up here; and if you have got any learnin', you
can look it up in your own Gography, and realize the number on 'em, and
the immense size of the exhibition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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