There is the girl with the notebook, a schoolmarm presumably, though heaven only knows, she may be a lecturer. She usually numbers glasses and a dark velvet bag among her accoutrements.
She is possessed of all of the catalogues and guide books sold on the grounds, and in the bag is a further supply of heavier literature for the improvement of her idle moments. It would puzzle anybody to find out when these idle moments occur, for when visible she is engaged in a frantic rush from place to place, pausing only for a moment to ask a question or jot down an impression, sometimes doing both at once without even looking at the dispenser of information.
She must have a miscellaneous mind, this girl, for anything seems to go with her from pig iron to poetry. One of her stopped for an instant in the Electricity building to inquire the name of a queer, compact, powerful looking machine. The impression which she received from the laconic attendant in charge went into her notebook in this form:
Multiple intensifier is round and black; looks powerful; attendant says 360 horse power. Mem., look up multiple intensifiers in Century dictionary on return, and find how they are applied to horses.
The machine in question was a dynamo, but perhaps she will never know.
In the Japanese section of the Manufactures building two dear little old women sat down to rest their tired feet in the midst of a bewildering display of pottery, whose brilliant tints contrasted strongly with the rusty crape and bombazine in which they were dressed.
"I don't see," said one of them, "the use of sending missionaries to Japan. I suppose they do worship all them things, but, even if they do, I think that if they had as much pretty china to home as they've got here, I'd be inclined to worship it myself. I just don't see how they can help doing it. Do you?"
"No, I don't," said the other. "It seems almost what you could expect. I don't believe they are so very bad after all. I can't believe that anyone who could make such lovely things could be a very wicked heathen. I should think the Japanese would almost feel like sending missionaries over here."
But Fanny was of a different type, she realized the sublime display of mind and she grew months in the excellence of womanhood every hour of her enthronement in the soul of this great panorama of intellect and labor. Aunt was silently seeing everything like the great dream that it was but Uncle was storing his mind with facts whereby he could confound his neighbors.