PLAISANCE SOCIETY
When Monday morning came the family were promptly at the 60th street gate at nine o'clock. Johnny espied Louis with his eye over a knot hole that seemed designed by providence to let the hungry outsiders have a morsel of the Midway Plaisance scenery. Inside of the grounds Johnny determinedly led the way at once to the great Ferris go-round. They stood before it measuring their chances of living through such a revolution. It did not take much to persuade Fanny to accompany the venturesome boys; Uncle positively refused to discuss such a piece of folly, but Aunt decided at last that if Fanny went she must go also.
Like a forbidden specter the skeleton of the Ferris Wheel stands out gaunt and fleshless. All around is full of light and gayety.
A devout Moslem may be pardoned if, as he passes, he touches his forehead with three fingers of his right hand and murmurs: "Allah il Allah!" Some such exorcism seems to be needed to ward off the evil spirits that one would think must cluster around the ponderous structure, perching, perhaps, like the broomstick riders of Salem, on its spare metal ribs.
They entered the car of the great wheel, and when the signal to start was given they found that another old lady with her dudish son were to be their companions in the aerial flight.
The earth was dropping away. Higher and higher they went. Johnny was holding with a death-like grip on to the car. Fanny's whole life was passing before her like a procession of spectres. In a few minutes they had gone more than one hundred and fifty feet, and the sky seemed to be falling upon them.
"Stop her!" shouted the dude, accompanying his words with a frantic waving of his hands. Higher yet they ascended and his face assumed the look depicted in the features of Dante's characters when about to enter the infernal regions.
"HIS PLANS IN LIFE WERE INTERFERED WITH."
"Now, if the good Lord ever permits me to get back to the earth safely," said the old woman, "I promise never to leave it again till I am called to die."