Really Harry could not help a feeling of great admiration for Mrs. French-Sheldon, and he would have liked to own a tent and palanquin of his own. Passing through a corridor of photographs showing “foreign scenes in New Jersey,” as they heard a jocular Irishman remark, they saw next an Indian ox-cart, heavy enough and clumsy enough to make any civilized Buck and Bright weep. Then came a tobacco-hogshead to which was attached a branched iron pole, so that the hogshead was its own wheel and cart in one.
They heard a Southern girl say to her friend, “I’ve seen one just like that in Richmond.” But she hadn’t seen the next exhibit, for it was the model of an antique chariot found near Thebes, and supposed to be a racing-sulky of such antiquity as to be labeled “the oldest vehicle known.”
Harry, and indeed all three of the party, wondered at its beauty and elegant finish. It was made of some smooth-grained wood and rounded into exquisite curves. Harry made a hasty sketch of it, but had little hope that he could really draw its exquisite curves when he got home.
BIT OF ORNAMENT,
TRANSPORTATION BUILDING.
Then they went on, to be stopped by some African palanquins, fitted with carrying-poles, and, in sharp contrast to the Theban chariot, an African log-canoe so rude that it looked like the Missing Link’s private yacht. In close succession came vehicles for carrying such different articles as babies, dolls, and cash in dry-goods shops; but all were quite familiar to the New York boys. They found two “bicycle-railroads” more interesting, especially the one that hung from an overhead track.
“It wouldn’t be surprising,” said Mr. Douglass, “if we should live to see those tracks put up over large sections of the land. For the bicycle is capable of displacing almost all passenger-carriers except in special cases. You see them here in this gallery so arranged as to be ridden by one, two, or three riders, so as to carry children with their parents, or fitted up for the use of firemen or soldiers.”
At the end of a gallery they found figures showing how Mexican donkeys are loaded, men carrying chairs for transporting passengers over mountain-trails, and richly attired cavaliers mounted upon finer specimens of the same patient donkeys that carry panniers.
An exhibition of leather saddles and similar wares brought them to a counter where whips were being covered by little bobbins revolving about as dancers whirl in the german. These whips were also for sale as sou—. “I wonder,” said Mr. Douglass, “that they didn’t offer to sell us the Cliff-Dwellers’ mummies as souvenirs. They certainly would outlast most of the cheap bric-à-brac offered for sale.”
Japan showed in this building only a few models of engineering-works, and the boys did not give much time to her exhibit. They were most attracted by the smaller articles displayed on both sides of the galleries: an English sedan-chair, such as they had seen in old paintings; a springless velocipede called the “Dandy Horse,” and dated 1810; the small model of an old stage-coach; a wonderfully fine model of Forth Bridge, Scotland, showing a miniature train of cars hardly thicker than a lead-pencil; a modern club canoe, side by side with barbaric outrigger canoes from the Friendly Isles (maybe).