Here were souvenirs of peat, of bog-oak, of lace, all sorts; all sold by tidy little Irish girls with a brogue that it was hard to resist. Mr. Douglass picked up a black bog-oak cane. He seldom carried a cane, and had little idea of buying it. But the Irish girl looked at him with so cordial a smile that he felt bound to say something.
“How much is it?” he asked.
“’Tis a dollar and a half, sir,” she answered in a tone of heartfelt regret. Then confidentially, “But it is a fi-i-ine cane, that is, sir!”
He bought it, and the boys grinned. They had seen that the “blarney stone” was at the Fair, and were on their guard. Nevertheless they each bought a tiny black pig cut out of the same bog-oak, and were, as a matter of course, blarneyed in turn.
“How different the people in here!” said Mr. Douglass. “Did you notice that there was a row at the gate, and nothing but joking within?”
“Yes; it reminded me of New York at once,” said Harry; “just as Irish Day did.”
It was now time for them to leave the grounds; and although they were glad to get home and rest from sight-seeing, they felt very sentimental about taking their last look. They stood in the Court of Honor gazing silently about them, feeling as one feels in giving a parting hand-shake to a loved friend; and then they turned away, knowing that the beautiful dream they had seen and lived in was no more than a dream: that the day would come when all that beauty would be a memory, and the “Ghost City” only a legend.
But the phantom city has taught the American nation that they are a great people, who will some day make true in marble all that was imagined in that short-lived fairy-story of staff.
ONE OF THE TWO IRISH VILLAGES.