Samantha at the World's Fair

by Marietta Holley

Water wheels, freight elevators—cranes a-cranin', derricks a-derrickin', divin' apparatus, fire-extinguishin' apparatus—

Machines of all sorts and kinds to manufacture all sorts of goods, and all hands to work at it—silk, cotton, wool, linen, ingy-rubber, ropes, and paper.

Saw-mills, wind-mills, printin'-presses a-pressin'. All sorts of tools to make all sorts of picters—engravin's, color printin'—picters from the 16th century up to 1893—they wuz relief engravin's.

I spoze they are called so because it is such a relief to think we don't have to look at them old picters now.

And there wuz half-tone processes, mechanical and medicinal processes, and every other process you ever hearn on, and didn't ever hear on, right there in a procession in front of me, and all a-processin'.

And there wuz machines for makin' clocks, and watches, and jewelry, and buttons, and pins, and all kinds of appliances ever used in machinery, and stun, sawin', and glass-grindin' machinery a-grindin' and makin' bricks and pottery, and used in makin' artificial stun—the idee!

You'd a thought the stun wuz all made before the Lord rested.

And there wuz rollin' mills a-rollin', and forges a-forgin', and rollin' trains, and harnesses, and squeezers a-squeezin'—and every machine that wuz ever made to shape metals and tire mills, and mills that wuzn't tired, I guess—I didn't see any, but I spoze they wuz there. But they all looked tired to me—tired as a dog, but I spoze it wuz my feelin's.

I see all through this buildin' that there wuz more wimmen than men there—which shows what interest wimmen takes in solid things as well as ornimental.