As I stood and looked at them books I got carried a good ways off
a-ridin' on Wonder--a-wonderin' whether them books had done any good in
the world.
I'd wanted 'em to, I'd wanted 'em to like a dog. Sometimes I'd felt real
riz up a-thinkin' they had, and then agin I've felt dubersome.
But I knew they had gin great enjoyment, I'd hearn on't. Why, the
minister up to Zoar had told me of as many as seven relations of hisen,
who, when they wuz run down and weak, and had kinder lost their minds,
had jest clung to them books.
In softenin' of the brain now, or bein' kicked on the head, or nateral
brain weakness--why, them books are invaluable, so I spoze.
But to resoom. The corner pavilion, like all the rest of the buildin',
have each a open colonade above the main cornice. Here are the hangin'
gardens, and also the committee rooms of the lady managers.
This palace of beauty wuz designed by a woman--woman has got to have the
credit for everything about it.
A woman designed the hull buildin'; a woman modelled the figgers that
support the ruff; a woman won fairly in competition the right to
decorate the cornice. The interior decoration, much of it carved work,
is done by wimmen; panels wuz carved by wimmen all over the country and
brought here to decorate the walls.
And not only decorated, but in a good many rooms the woodwork wuz
finished by wimmen. California has a room walled and ceiled with redwood
by wimmen.
And wimmen of all the States, from Maine and Florida, have joined to
make the place beautiful. Even the Indian wimmen made richly embroidered
hangin's for the doors and windows.
The wimmen managers wuz the first wimmen that wuz ever officially
commissioned by Congress, and never have wimmen swung out so, or, to be
poetical, never have they cut so wide and broad a swath on the seedy old
fields of Time, as they do to this Fair. They can exhibit with the best
of the contestants, men or wimmen, and by act of Congress represent
their own sect on the Jury of Award.
Congress did the fair thing by wimmen in this matter. Let him step up
one step higher on the hill of justice, and gin 'em the right to set on
the jury of award or punishment when their own honor is at the stake.
It has let wimmen tell which is the best piece of woosted work, or
tattin'; now let her be judged by her peers when life or death is the
award meted out to 'em. But to resoom.
The Gallery of Honor is the centre hall of the buildin', and runs almost
the entire length, and openin' out of it is the display that shows that
wimmen wuz really the first inventors and producers of what wuz useful
as well as beautiful, and that men took up the work when money could be
made from it.
Here is the work of the first and rudest people, but all made by female
wimmen--the rough, hard buds of beauty and labor; and in the Central
hall, like these buds open in full bloom and beauty, is the fruit of the
most advanced thought and genius.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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