The whole central portion down-stairs was fitted up as a gymnasium, and there was a director in attendance to show visiting children how to use the apparatus. There were children jumping, climbing, and swinging, and enjoying themselves keenly. It was open at certain hours every day, and was always filled with young athletes.
THE TOP OF THE WOMAN’S BUILDING.
Feeling that they had now been through the Children’s Building, they stepped across to the adjoining exhibit, the Woman’s Building, but walked around it half-way, so as to enter at the main entrance. They found the building a larger one than they had expected, and spent more time there than they had thought necessary. Of course there were many things on which no self-respecting boys would waste time—things their sisters might understand, but which they saw nothing in. The embroideries, for instance, were to the boys only pictures; they didn’t pretend to say which nation was entitled to the gold medal for needlework. Neither did they pause long before the dressmakers’ exhibits. But, still, they found enough in every direction to delay their departure, and it was time for lunch before they were ready to leave. They liked the frescos, particularly that showing the “Lady with the Lamp” among the sick soldiers.
THE WOMAN’S BUILDING.
In the educational exhibit, they heard a little girl exclaim, “Those are mine!” pointing to some drawings; but they did not see much to interest them (in their fastidiousness) except a method of firing colored signal-rockets from guns or pistols; and when they heard a portly woman saying to her friend, “Now, as for me, I would line it with—” they began to rush past everything in the nature of dry goods. An embroidered curtain, showing a combat of dragons, detained Harry long enough for him to declare it “the most mixed up thing he ever saw, for he couldn’t untangle t’ other dragon from which dragon, and he didn’t believe the whole Board of Lady Managers could, either.”
A case of dolls showing Dutch, Quaker, and other costumes, the boys were sure girls would like; and while standing beside it, they heard a woman say to her husband: “That doll is dressed the way women dressed when you and I were young.” It was a dress such as the boys had seen in pictures of war-times—about 1863.
In one case was some needlework by Queen Victoria, but the ardent inhabitants of our great republic prevented the boys from seeing how deft royalty was with the needle.
“Anyway,” said Harry, “she never sat in unwomanly rags plying her needle and thread.”