The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair | Page 7

Ferdinand and Isabel, Sovereigns of Spain, a commission as Admiral of an exploring fleet, April 30, 1492."
Over the east entrance she read:
"Columbus sailed from Palos with three small vessels, Aug. 3, and landed on one of the Bahama Islands."
What common-place facts so simply stated! But they brought forth thoughts and emotions greater and greater of the wonderful consequences to mankind.
"Grandpa, you see how we have come here to learn of the world and its progress to this greatness."
"Do not speak to me now, child; I want to think," and Uncle bowed his head in his hands.
No one said anything for a few minutes, when Johnny startled them by yelling "Gorgeous! gorgeous!"
"Of course it's gorgeous," said Fanny; "but you needn't yell that way. You must not forget that you are not in our barnyard now."
Johnny subsided. He had expressed his opinion, and he was ready to move on.
Uncle arose and said: "I guess we are able to go to the next scene now, and I warn you all that the word gorgeous is as high as we will be allowed to go in expressing ourselves, no matter what we see. There has got to be a limit somewhere, and I judge that gorgeous is far enough."
"Is that the statyure of Mrs. Columbus?" asked Johnny.
"No, it's the Statue of the Republic."
"I declare I've been watching them things on that Statue of the Republic, and I really believe they're men instead of being pigeons."
"They are men," said Fanny. "No wonder that they look so little, for the book here says her forefinger is four feet long. Look at that figure on the top of the big building yonder. That Is Diana, the huntress. How tall do you think she is?"
"Nine feet," said Johnny, promptly.
"Life-size," said Uncle.
"Both wrong. The book says she is eighteen feet tall."
"Well, well, my girl, this looks like a dream, but it ain't, is it?"
There was a band-stand in front of them, and beyond that was a massive building, which Fanny found was Machinery hall. As they went on to it, Fanny read to them that it covered over twenty acres of ground and cost nearly a million and a half dollars. As they entered the door they saw one awful mass of moving machinery.
Uncle said he thought they had better sit down again and think awhile before venturing further, but Johnny urged them to come on so they could see something and do their thinking afterward.
They came to one of the doors of the power house, and Uncle sat down.
"I can't stand this pressure," he said, "I tell you I've got to sit down and look at this thing." At his left he could see into the power house nearly five hundred feet long and full from one end to the other of great boilers with the red fires glowing underneath.
On the right he looked across the hall where the great power wheel was flying and saw five hundred feet of whirling wheels, while before him there was an unobstructed view of machines but little short of a thousand feet.
They went over to the middle aisle and on past the larger machinery.
"Why Grandma, you are walking by me with your eyes shut. What's the matter?"
"Well you see, Fanny, it's too much to look at so many millions of things so I just shut my eyes and think. What's the difference if I do miss a few thousand sights."
"That's so, Fanny, we aint got used to looking yet. It looks like they had everything a working here but my old shaving horse. I wouldn't be surprised any minute to see that it had walked away from the woodshed and come over to show itself off in this here exposition. I believe I'll go over and offer them my old barlow knife. It's a score of years old but it'll bore a hole for a hame string all right yet."
They came to the place where they were making watches with the complex, automatic machinery that defies the eye to detect its movements, then there was the sewing machine with a man riding it like a bicycle and sewing carpet in strips a hundred feet long. There were knitting machines and clothing machines, and carving and molding machines, and type-setting machines, till the day was spent and they had seen only how much there was to see.
"It takes taste to paint pictures, and art to make sculpture, and mind to write books, and genius to carry on war, but I tell you, my girl," said Uncle, "that it takes brains to make machinery."
Passing through a south door they went on around Machinery hall. Some working men were passing by singly or in twos and threes. One had a wrench in one hand and a queer looking bottle in the other. The ludicrous