He told Mr. Douglass that he couldn’t make much of it; but the tutor consoled him.
“You never know how much you have learned until long after you’ve studied and gone past a subject,” said Mr. Douglass. “Some day you’ll read more about this old building and its documents, and then you’ll find a peg to hang the knowledge upon. Have you ever seen a negro minstrel try to hang his hat on a wall where there is no hook?”
Harry laughed, and said he had.
“That is what people must do who have no general ideas to hang particular bits of information upon. Now, in this case you would be surprised to see how much you know about Columbus compared with what you knew before you came to this Fair. I won’t bother you now to review it; but some day, when we are studying again, I’ll let you note down the facts about Columbus that you learned at the World’s Fair.”
“Thank you,” said Harry, smiling.
“You’ll like to do it,” said Mr. Douglass. “You’ll see. Now let us take something a little simpler. I hear that the Cliff-Dwellers exhibit is really good. Suppose we go over there?”
Harry was very glad to agree, and they walked still further southward past the Anthropological Hall and the Forestry Building,—a most interesting place, where none of them had yet been,—and came to the curious imitation of a great cliff which gave room to the Cliff-Dwellers museum and models.
Here they found that there were guides to go about and explain the different parts of the show. They followed one of them for a while, but found that he talked so fast and paused so short a time in any place that they could hear and see little.
Starting out upon their own account, they looked first at models built into the sides of the imitation rock,—for they were inside a great structure dimly lighted, and looking like a great cavern,—showing that the “villages” were really a collection of rooms made by erecting walls from floor to roof of a cleft in the cliff.
