“But there are gymnasium things, and African weapons, all sorts of savage huts and costumes, Greek statues, and views, and bits of work from the prisons and reformatories, showing how boys are drilled and trained to work at trades. But, as usual, I didn’t think I could see everything, and so I looked at only a few special cases. One that I remember well showed all sorts of games and puzzles—chess, cards, checkers, halma, pachisi, Indian sticks for throwing like dice, the fifteen puzzle, ring puzzles, wire puzzles, all sorts. The chessmen were splendid. There was one Chinese set there, where the pieces stood on pedestals showing three balls carved one inside the other; and the pieces themselves were little mandarins and things, with faces, and beards, and all. There were enough games in the cases for a boy to learn a new one every day as long as he lived.”
“Well?” asked Harry, as Philip paused.
“You don’t want me to tell it all, do you?” Philip asked.
“If you will,” said Harry. “My ears are the only things about me that are not tired; and I am resting the rest of me.”
“All right,” said Philip; “I’m willing. I am so full of it, I could talk a week. But I remember now there was one place I went before the Anthropo Building, and that was to a real log cabin, with all the regular old-fashioned things in it; but never mind, I won’t go back to that, for I’ve a lot more to tell, and one thing I know you’ll like to hear about specially.
“The next queer thing was the Cliff-dwellers’ mound, a big structure, made to look like red rock,—sandstone, maybe,—in which these old Indians in the Southwest used to live. I didn’t go into it, although a lot of signs said I ought to; but I saw how the little caves were hollowed out and made into huts, with doors and windows. While I was looking up at it—and it is a high cliff, I tell you!—I saw some nuns all in black climbing over it, and that was a strange sight enough. Out in front were some gray little donkeys,—‘burros,’ used by the exploring party that found the caves. Then I went on to an old-time distillery, outside of which was a real ‘moonshiner’s’ still that had been captured by the revenue officers.
AN ALASKAN IMAGE.
“Then I came to some Alaskan houses. They were made of great rough slabs, with circular doors cut through the trunks of trees in front. There were little models of them in the Anthropo place, too. In front of them stood those carved totem-poles that we used to see in the physical geography book. I saw by the labels on the models that those poles were meant to tell the history of the man in the house behind each one, and that the more rings there were on the carved man’s high hat, the more of a fellow the owner was. There seemed to be lots about whales on them. I suppose capturing a whale was to them like being elected to Congress—maybe harder.
“But, speaking of whales, the next thing I saw was the one I want to tell you specially about. Near the shore there, in what they call the South Pond, was an old-fashioned vessel. I walked over toward it, and read the signs. They said it was a whaling-vessel, a regular old New Bedford whaler. You know about those?”