No one said anything for a few minutes, when Johnny startled them by
yelling "Gorgeous! gorgeous!"
"Of course it's gorgeous," said Fanny; "but you needn't yell that way.
You must not forget that you are not in our barnyard now."
Johnny subsided. He had expressed his opinion, and he was ready to move
on.
Uncle arose and said: "I guess we are able to go to the next scene now,
and I warn you all that the word gorgeous is as high as we will be
allowed to go in expressing ourselves, no matter what we see. There has
got to be a limit somewhere, and I judge that gorgeous is far enough."
"Is that the statyure of Mrs. Columbus?" asked Johnny.
"No, it's the Statue of the Republic."
"I declare I've been watching them things on that Statue of the
Republic, and I really believe they're men instead of being pigeons."
"They are men," said Fanny. "No wonder that they look so little, for the
book here says her forefinger is four feet long. Look at that figure on
the top of the big building yonder. That Is Diana, the huntress. How
tall do you think she is?"
"Nine feet," said Johnny, promptly.
"Life-size," said Uncle.
"Both wrong. The book says she is eighteen feet tall."
"Well, well, my girl, this looks like a dream, but it ain't, is it?"
There was a band-stand in front of them, and beyond that was a massive
building, which Fanny found was Machinery hall. As they went on to it,
Fanny read to them that it covered over twenty acres of ground and cost
nearly a million and a half dollars. As they entered the door they saw
one awful mass of moving machinery.
Uncle said he thought they had better sit down again and think awhile
before venturing further, but Johnny urged them to come on so they could
see something and do their thinking afterward.
They came to one of the doors of the power house, and Uncle sat down.
"I can't stand this pressure," he said, "I tell you I've got to sit down
and look at this thing." At his left he could see into the power house
nearly five hundred feet long and full from one end to the other of
great boilers with the red fires glowing underneath.
On the right he looked across the hall where the great power wheel was
flying and saw five hundred feet of whirling wheels, while before him
there was an unobstructed view of machines but little short of a
thousand feet.
They went over to the middle aisle and on past the larger machinery.
"Why Grandma, you are walking by me with your eyes shut. What's the
matter?"
"Well you see, Fanny, it's too much to look at so many millions of
things so I just shut my eyes and think. What's the difference if I do
miss a few thousand sights."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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