“What I should like to see,” said Mr. Douglass, “is a fair from which all the ordinary, commonplace exhibits are excluded. Cans and boxes of ordinary merchandise, even if piled up in ornamental forms, are better suited to an agricultural county fair than to a World’s Exposition. A small, choice exposition, where every exhibit was unique of its kind, would be more manageable and much better worth seeing. This Chicago World’s Fair has in it the very best material the world can produce. But it would take two years to see it thoroughly, and no one man could understand it then.”
“I’ll tell you what I should like to see,” said Harry; “and that is a grand procession where people of the same States should be in ranks together. Then we should see how they differed.”
“And my idea,” added Philip, “is to have a Children’s Fair, where everything that is interesting to boys and girls should be on exhibition. That would be something like!”
VIEW LOOKING SOUTH FROM THE TOP OF THE WOMAN’S BUILDING—BY MOONLIGHT.
CHAPTER XV
The Electricity Building — Small Beginnings — A New Souvenir — The Curious Exhibits — Telephones and Colored Lights — The Telautograph — Telegraphy — Mines and Mining — A Puzzled Guard.
“It is interesting to reflect that the beginnings of all the marvels we shall see in this building,” said Mr. Douglass, as he walked with the two boys toward the Electricity Building, “are found in two trifling circumstances that the majority of men would have overlooked. Do you remember what led to electrical research?”
“I know,” said Philip, “that the word comes from the Greek for amber, and I suppose you mean the attraction of amber for little things was one of the two.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Douglass. “Now what was the other?”