"No, I've seen enough of it if I can't be a missionary, but I'm glad all the natives have got it warm at last, anyway."
"Which natives?"
"Oh, all those foreign folks. They're all natives of some place, I s'pose, and they do say when 't was rainy and cold and muddy they had a forlorn time of it in the Pleasance."
"Yes; we used to read about it, and my brother Robert nicknamed the street then the Mudway Nuisance. We all laughed at the joke but Jack. It is against Jack's principles to jest at sacred things like Chicago and her Fair. I shall have to get him to show me the fine points of the Midway. He won't refuse me."
"No, indeed. There's plenty that like it. The place gets more crowded every day. Why, Mr. Gorham," Miss Berry dropped her rather sad, musing tone, and spoke feelingly. "That Midway is just a representation of matter, and this great White City is an emblem of mind. In the Midway it's some dirty and all barbaric. It deafens you with noise; the worst folks in there are avaricious and bad, and the best are just children in their ignorance, and when you're feelin' bewildered with the smells and sounds and sights, always changin' like one o' these kaleidoscopes, and when you come out o' that mile-long babel where you've been elbowed and cheated, you pass under a bridge—and all of a sudden you are in a great, beautiful silence. The angels on the Woman's Buildin' smile down and bless you, and you know that in what seemed like one step, you've passed out o' darkness into light." Aunt Love paused thoughtfully. "It's come to me, Mr. Gorham, that perhaps dyin' is goin' to be somethin' like crossin' the dividin' line that separates the Midway from the White City. I've asked myself when I've passed under that bridge and felt the difference down so deep, what did make it so strong? 'T ain't only the quiet and the grandeur o' those buildin's compared with the fantastic things you've left behind; I believe it's just the fact that the makers o' the Fair believed in God and put Him and their enlightenment from Him into what they did; and we feel it some like we'd feel an electric shock."
Page nodded. "You make me more interested than ever in my prospect of sightseeing," he said. "Now I propose that you show me the way to that café where you say the others will come this evening, and we will take lunch together there. Not a word of objection, Aunt Love. This is a great day. United we stand, divided we fall. Let us charge on the café under the candle-snuffers."
The two friends descended to the street, and Page, submitting to Miss Berry's guidance, was led through the archway running beneath the eastern corridor of the Art Building. "I won't attempt to take you through the buildin' itself," said Miss Berry, "'cause I know well enough I shouldn't get you through before the middle o' the afternoon; partly 'cause you'd stop to look at the statuary, and partly 'cause the first thing I always do when I get in there is to lose myself. I've thought, up to this summer, that I had a pretty good bump o' locality; but land! let me turn around in that place a few times and all those signs, 'East Wall,' 'North Wall,' and the rest, don't mean any more to me than Greek would. You'll see how 't is when you try it."
Page was only half listening. He paused by the brink of the water, fascinated by the sparkling, shining, noonday beauty before him. Gondolas were stealing from beneath the bridges, and electric launches passing and repassing silently and smoothly over the changing waves.
"We must get into one of those boats, Aunt Love," he said with enthusiasm.
"You can't sail to the restaurant. That's right over yonder," observed Miss Berry practically, indicating with her parasol the many-towered roof of the Marine Café.