The white walls of the Court of Honor, with their heroic statues, and allegories in plaster, shone in the sun in blinding glory. Just below in the lagoon was the most beautiful fountain on earth. At the end of the lagoon rose the golden-hued Statue of Liberty, and beyond it the most beautiful and majestic structure in all the world, called the Peristyle, white as glistening marble, and surmounted by the Quadriga. Through the white arches of the Peristyle and its procession of heroic statues lay the Lake, blue as a June sky, and covered with boats, vessels, and steamers. Multiform and many-colored flags bloomed like flowers over and against all these colossal walls of white. Congresses of statued heroes were here and there assembled in the niches of immortality. Overhead rose the white allegories of the elements, controlled and uncontrolled. Bands played. Tens of thousands of people darkened the walks and avenues. There was happiness everywhere; continuance was all that was wanting. The trio stood there amazed, bewildered, and unable for a time to speak. [Illustration: THE WHALEBACK PASSENGER STEAMER.] Grandfather Marlowe was the first to break the silence. “Let us go away, and find some little corner and die. That is how I feel.” “Let us sit down on the steps,” said Mr. Marlowe, “and thank God that we are alive.” “Let us go into the Liberal Arts Building,” said young Ephraim. [Illustration: ATLAS.] “I have no wish to see any exhibits to-day,” said Mr. Marlowe. “I shall never again behold a vision like this,—I could gaze for weeks upon it.” “There is only one thing that is wanting,” said Grandfather Marlowe. “What is that?” asked Mr. Marlowe. “A white-bordered flag!” “They may raise one here some day,” said Mr. Marlowe. “I hope that I may live to see that sight,” said the aged Quaker; “to me it would be a sign of the Second Coming. I could die content could I see the sight.” They went to the Liberal Arts Building, and looked in upon its forty acres of floors. They then passed down to the long wharf, and sat down to rest on the seats of the movable Sidewalk; in which they might sit for hours for five cents each, and go around and around in the cool breezes of the Lake. Here they took the famous “whaleback” steamer for the City. They never had passed a day like that! No one ever passed such a day as one’s first day at the Exposition, and none ever will again. The Past emptied itself there; the Future anticipated there her glory. The Fair! the Fair! It was all the world was, is, or ever could be. “Father,” said young Ephraim, “across whose mind did the conception of the White City first pass?” “I do not know.” “We must ask Judge Bonney,” said Grandfather Marlowe. When they asked this information, they were told that the White City was the product of the minds of an assembly of artists, each of whom promised to _give up in_ his own work “anything that might interfere with the beauty of the whole.”