“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Harry, “to come upon a Greek temple built exclusively of old shoes.”
Here they were stopped by a bit of fun. A bright-faced young woman was throwing little tin forks out among the crowd; these tin forks advertised a brand of sardines, and were made in the shape of a little fish, the tail reaching to the tines of the fork. Picking up the forks, the boys naturally went to see the exhibit, and were invited to take a sardine, free, from an open box. They declined, but others were not so lucky. One old man eagerly plunged his fork into the box only to discover that the fish were painted tin. He fled into the crowd while the bystanders laughed at him. This device certainly attracted plenty of attention, but whether it was wise was doubtful.
GREAT CENTRAL PORCH OF AGRICULTURAL BUILDING.
They finished the aisle they were in, and crossed to another, which they walked down, having gone up the first.
In the Greek exhibit they saw some tobacco labeled as from Thermopylæ, which at the moment seemed incongruous; but reflection showed that Thermopylæ must be something beside a battle-field. Louisiana had built herself an Egyptian temple of sugar-cane, and again Harry made a sketch, for he found the effect very pleasing. Passing a number of other booths, they at last came to the agricultural implements, and found that there was more to know than shovel, spade, and hoe, or even plow and harrow. They frankly confessed ignorance of the mechanism and purpose of most of the nickel-plated apparatus, and concluded that in their present state of ignorance time spent here would be wasted. They did smile, however, at seeing a harvesting-machine labeled: “The judges ordered this harvester to be tried in a field of standing grain. It is a little disfigured, but still in the ring.”
A sign revealing the location of the “Sandwich Manufacturing Co.” somehow reminded them that they must see something of Machinery Hall before lunch, and they started toward that building, passing on their way a “prairie-breaking plow”—a rude but enormous implement that had been used with a team of six or eight oxen in first turning up the new Western soil.
As they were coming out, they paused, even in the rain, to admire the fine proportions of the Agricultural Building; its dignified portico, the fine groups and single statues that adorned its principal features,—such as Martiny’s “Abundance,” for example, and the signs of the zodiac, and the great corridors that unite Agricultural and Machinery Halls.
PORTICO OF THE
AGRICULTURAL BUILDING.