put up in neat boxes, fac similes of the castle in which its peculiar properties were first discovered. Victoria and the girls are faithful attendants at the table. They are assisted by Mr. John Bright, the eminent proprietor of a popular kidney disease, and also by the Chief of our Fire Department, who is suspiciously attentive to the oldest of the ladies. We end up our day’s travels in Russia. The tardy participation of this power was attributed in some quarters to the exertions of a Mrs. Catacrazy, who was offended by a Washington lady, and took this means, it is said, of “getting even.” Such is not the fact. The cause was, briefly, as follows:—
Prince Gortschakoff
visited this country incognitoA STATE
SECRET. a short time ago, and of course passed a few days in Philadelphia. One day, leisurely walking through East Park, with his clay pipe in his mouth and his shillalah in his hand, he carelessly broke a small spray of green from a bush by the wayside and stuck it in his hat. A careful Park guard saw him and arrested him at once, on a charge of malicious mischief. The Prince remonstrated in choice Russian. The guard, pretending not to understand him, answered in Chaldaic, and dragged him before Magistrate Smith. He was fined five dollars for destroying the shrubbery and ten dollars for speaking disrespectfully to a Park guard. When it was discovered who the offender was, Mr. Wm. M. Bunn, in his capacity as Guardian of the Poor, at once paid the fine. Mr. Bunn explained to the Prince what a valuable country this was, when a foreigner is obliged to pay five dollars for a single green sprig.
Gortschakoff gratefully presented Mr. Bunn with the order of the “Golden Fleece,” and regretted that he hadn’t another to bestow upon the magistrate.
This and this alone was the cause, and we tell it confidentially to our countrymen.
The tardiness, however, did not materially affect either the exhibit of Russia or the success of the Exposition. Indeed, the French visitors freely asserted that the Exhibition far surpassed the Vienna fair of ’72, and the German guests boldly declared, with a unanimous voice, its superiority to the Paris Exhibition of ’67.
CHAPTER IX.
“THE FLICKERING.” ... How it dimmed and how it brightened.
Father Time seemed to be the only Philadelphian who did not deviate from his ordinary course of life during the Exhibition months. He continued sowing and reaping as usual; cutting the blooming flowers from the stem of the year, and counting the sands which carried with them into oblivion, gradually but surely, exhibition, visitors, commissioners, and restaurant keepers. But though his children were unable to prolong a single passing moment, they managed to crowd into each day as much novelty and excitement as would ordinarily suffice for a twelvemonth, and they got the better of the old man in this way.
To attempt a record of one tithe of the many occurrences deserving immortalization at our hands, would be to meet with failure as complete as that which attended the experiment of Mr. Charles Airy, of Georgia, with his flying-machine, upon the third day of June, 1876.