Foreign Departments.
The foreign display within the Main Building was grand, that outside was grander still. Had our minds been one whit less strong, we should have been bewildered by the conglomeration.
Turkish kiosks, Chinese pagodas, Japanese pavilions, Arabian tents, Persian bazaars, Egyptian temples, Mohammedan mosques, Gypsy encampments, and American drinks, enough to confuse any one. Then monuments, booths, fountains, and cigar stands innumerable. We will give one day as an example of our travels.
We enter an Egyptian structure and behold an oriental barber shaving one of his countrymen. Egypt cannot teach us anything about shaving our countrymen; we do not linger here. As we leave the building a Russian britzska, a carriage invented especially for the use of spelling bees, dashes by us drawn by the very cream of Tartar steeds. We catch on behind until we reach a Persian bazaar. We gaze upon the long bearded native men, and the white shrouded native women, busily engaged in their national occupation of going to sleep, and become wrapped up in the shawls of imagination. We are aroused by a wailing outside, cries of grief mingled with curses and lamentations in choice Persian and gum Arabic. The cause of this wailing was soon made evident.
Little Johnny Shah,
heir-apparent to the throne of Persia, in a laudable thirst for knowledge, offered a piece of cake to one of the young lions in the Zoological Gardens. He wished to find out how old he was, by his teeth. The experiment will not affect the scientific world as much as it did the young Persian. That lion may still be seen picking finger-nails out of his teeth, and as all loyal subjects in Persia are expected to do as their sovereign does, a dispatch sent to Teheran announced the pleasing intelligence, that under the next Shah it would be the fashion to wear but half a finger and a thumb on the left hand. We remain awhile to share the grief of the stricken father and seventeen mothers, and then resume our pilgrimage.
We pause for a moment before the French restaurant, enraptured, looking at the pretty girls and other dainties served up there. We decline the invitation of a Chinese drummer, hanging around to inveigle parties into the restaurant established by his country, with a long rigmarole about “kittens fried in castor oil,” and enter the Main Hall.
We land in the desert of Sahara, but desert Sahara and step over to Spain. We look for bright-eyed señoritas, with black lace veils and stringless guitars; we have been educated to expect this in Spain, by the ladies of the “International Tea Party.” WE SEE NO
SEÑORITAS.We are disappointed; we find a few men who look as if they had walked all the way from Madrid, selling wine, fruit, and olive oil. We pass through Portugal; more wine, fruit, and olive oil. We hop through Japan, change a ten cent note for a bushel of their “hard money,” and sachey on. We linger for hours in fair France, principally in the Paris department. We saunter through Austria, stopping to speak a word of complimentary encouragement to the Emperor, who looks a little down-hearted, evidently thinking of Vienna; then through Germany and Switzerland, until we reach Great Britain.
She is gay and festive. She exhibits models of all her public buildings, among the most interesting being the tower in which Anna Bowlegs was decapitated. The order of this lady’s garter too is very curious, and is exhibited, together with her marriage certificate. The only article sold in this department is
Windsor Soap,