“I will tell you a funny story which I heard at the boarding-house in regard to that word,” said young Ephraim. “There was an Illinois boy who had earned money enough to go to the Fair, and fifty cents to go in, and he planned to enter early and stay late, and so see all of the Fair in one day. He paid his fifty cents for a ticket, and passed through the turn-style, and looked up and read ‘E-x-i-t.’ ‘Does it cost anything to go in there?’ he asked of an officer. ‘Of course not,’ answered the officer. ‘Then I must see it,’ he said; ‘I want to see everything.’ And he saw it.”
A VIEW OF MIDWAY, LOOKING EAST.
“I do not regard that as a funny story,” said Mr. Marlowe. “I could hardly think of anything more pathetic. How that poor boy must have felt when he found himself on the outside. It would be like entering a gate of Paradise, and going back by some by-way into the world again. I shall not put that among the funny stories in my note-book.”
The long Plaisance, which was an avenue where lived nearly all of the nations of the world in harmony, swept before them, and over it gleamed the towers and domes of the White City.
If young Ephraim’s story was pathetic rather than funny, an incident occurred at their first journey up the Plaisance which was comical.
A street performer was taking gold crowns or sovereigns out of his nose.
The trio stopped to witness the wonderful feat. When the wonder-worker wanted a gold piece, he had only to tap his nose, and out it would come.
Old Ephraim, whose quiet Quaker life had not made him much acquainted with such tricks, looked on with curious surprise.
“Where do those gold pieces come from?” he asked.