"Grandpa," said Fanny, when they were comfortably at rest, "I can't help but get angry at the women as I walk about, for I do see them do so much foolishness. Why, to-day I saw one crazy for souvenirs, and I believe she thought everything was a souvenir. I saw her pick up a nail and put it into her handbag, and when she came up to the Pennsylvania coal monument in the Mining building, she commenced putting pieces of the coal in her pocket. Then one of the working men played really a mean joke on her. He came up with a lump as big as a water bucket. Then he asked her if she wouldn't like to have that to remember the Fair by. And what do you think, she just said she thought he was very kind, but she didn't believe she could take it, for it was so big. But she would like awfully to have it. I saw the man shut one eye and say to the other man that the woman was crazy, because it was just the same kind of coal that she put into the stove every day at home."

"Now the only thing I've got to grumble about," said Uncle, "is what's models and what's facts. There is no use of scaring people to death with things that ain't so. Now over in the Government building I saw some hop plant lice that was not less than a foot long; there was a potato bug nine inches long, and there was a chinch bug two feet long, for I out with my rule and measured it. When I seen them I said, the Lord help the people who live where them things do, and then some city folks laughed at me, when at last Fanny came along and said they was models. Then we went into another room and there was soldiers from everywhere and army things that made me believe I was back again with Sherman, but there again they were wax, excepting the wagons and guns. I went up to one of the officers when I fust come in and I says, says I, "Are you regular army folks or Illinois militia?" and he didn't answer, and I turned to one of the privates and I asked why there was so many of them bunched together, then I seed some folks a laughing at me and I slunk away. I say the government is in poor business when it makes sport of its own defenders."

"A souvenir for her."

"Over there in the Transportation building I seen what it said was the boat Columbus sailed in; but after all, Fanny said it was a model. Right close to it was the boat what Grace Darling rowed out into the storming sea and saved so many lives. I thought it was a model, but Fanny said it was the very boat she used. I jest thought ef that was really the boat, we could all be sure that Grace Darling didn't stand o' Sunday mornins afore the glass a paintin' and a powderin'." He was getting himself worked up to the belief that he was a very much abused old soldier, when Fanny said:

"Grandpa, I have just cut a splendid piece of poetry out of the paper about the Fair. The man who wrote it don't live far from us, for his address says at the bottom, 'Mr. Matthews, from Effingham County,' and I'm going to keep it in my scrap-book. Let me read it to you:

The City of the Workers of the World
THE BUILDING OF IT
In a wilderness of wonders they are piling up the stores
Gathered by the hands of labor on a hundred happy shores;
In a palpitating plexus of white palaces they heap
The marvels of the earth and air—the treasures of the deep;
They have reached their restless fingers in the pockets of the past,
And robbed the sleeping miser of the wealth he had amassed—
To the festival of nations—to the tournament of toil,
They have garnered in the offerings of every sun and soil;
They have levied on the genius of the age, and it replies
Full handed, with the blessed light of heaven in its eyes;
In honor of old Spain they have taxed the brawn and brain
Of a planet, for the glory of that Master of the Main,
Whose fortitude is written on each flag that is unfurled
Above the great white city of the world.
THE MEETING OF THE NATIONS
They are climbing over mountains, they are sailing over seas,
From the artics, from the tropics, from the dim antipodes;
In the steamship, in the warship, under banners loved the best,
They are laughing up the waters from the east and from the west;
From the courts of Andalusia, from the castles of the Rhone,
To the meeting of the brotherhood of nations they are blown;
From the kraals beside the Congo, from the harems of the Nile,
They are thronging to the occident in never-ending file;
From the farthest crags of Asia, from the continents of snow,
The long-converging rivers of mankind begin to flow;
In the twilight of the century, its wars forever past,
The nations of the universe are clasping hands at last
By Columbia's inland waters, where in beauty lies impearled
The imperial white city of the workers of the world.
THE PASSING OF THE PAGEANT
When the roses of the summer burn to ashes in the sun,
When the feast of love is finished, and the heart is overrun;
When the hungry soul is sated and the tongue at last denies
Expression to the wonders that are wearing out the eyes,
Then the splendor it will wane like a dream that haunts the brain,
Or the swift dissolving beauty of the bow above the rain;
And the summer domes of pleasure that bubble up the sky
Will tumble into legends in the twinkling of an eye;
But the art of man endureth, and the heart of man will glow
With reanimated ardor as the ages come and go.
The pageants of the present are but pledges of a time
When strifes shall be forgotten in a cycle more sublime
When the fancies of the future into golden wreaths are curled
O'er the dim, remembered city of the workers of the world.