The sky was as blue as the Lake, and the Lake as blue as the sky on this morning, and the sun filled the sky with living light, and under it shone the White City, the most beautiful city on which the sun ever shone,—the city of all the ideals of the past and the hopes of the future, the first city of the new order of the world. They passed the turn-style, and looking round, saw the word _exit_. “I will tell you a funny story which I heard at the boarding-house in regard to that word,” said young Ephraim. “There was an Illinois boy who had earned money enough to go to the Fair, and fifty cents to go in, and he planned to enter early and stay late, and so see all of the Fair in one day. He paid his fifty cents for a ticket, and passed through the turn-style, and looked up and read ‘E-x-i-t.’ ‘Does it cost anything to go in there?’ he asked of an officer. ‘Of course not,’ answered the officer. ‘Then I must see it,’ he said; ‘I want to see everything.’ _And he saw it._” [Illustration: A VIEW OF MIDWAY, LOOKING EAST.] “I do not regard that as a funny story,” said Mr. Marlowe. “I could hardly think of anything more pathetic. How that poor boy must have felt when he found himself on the outside. It would be like entering a gate of Paradise, and going back by some by-way into the world again. I shall not put that among the funny stories in my note-book.” The long Plaisance, which was an avenue where lived nearly all of the nations of the world in harmony, swept before them, and over it gleamed the towers and domes of the White City. If young Ephraim’s story was pathetic rather than funny, an incident occurred at their first journey up the Plaisance which was comical. A street performer was taking gold crowns or sovereigns out of his nose. The trio stopped to witness the wonderful feat. When the wonder-worker wanted a gold piece, he had only to tap his nose, and out it would come. Old Ephraim, whose quiet Quaker life had not made him much acquainted with such tricks, looked on with curious surprise. “Where do those gold pieces come from?” he asked. “Out of my nose!” said the juggler. “Don’t you see?” “It does look so, but thee can’t trust experience always, so Kant says. Let me see thee do that again.” “Here you see the gold pieces in my hand. See! Now I will close my hand. See! Now the coins are in my nose. You can’t see. Now I will take them out again. See!” He did. “That is a very wonderful thing to do, my friend. I never saw the like of it before. Suppose now you put those gold pieces into my pocket here, and see if you can take them out again!” [Illustration: GERMAN VILLAGE.] The man of wonders stared, and shook his head. “Na, na. Where you come from? You be one Yankee. Goot day!”