And speakin’ of statutes, jest think of the sculptured groups we passed by that eventful day, more’n I could describe in a month of Sundays.  Louis and Clark, the very men I’d read about in Gasses Journal, how I wished their eyes could see and their ears hear me.  How interested and proud they would have been to hear me tell how even as a child I loved to hear mother Smith read about their journeyin’s into the new and onexplored country, findin’ swamps and stumps and savages, where now wuz smilin’ gardens and palaces.  Then there was Robert Livingstone, and Franklin, noble high souled old creeter, I always loved him in a meetin’ house sense, drawin’ down lightnin’ and so forth—­he wuz the very Pa of electricity as you may say.

And James Monroe, and Boone, and Settin’ Bull, yes there wuz Settin’ Bull settin’ or ruther standin’ right in that great company.  And all on ’em mute and onafraid, onmindful of the presence of a Samantha and Josiah, I felt to pity ’em.

But the noblest meanin’ statute of all in my eyes wuz right in front of the main Cascade.  There stood a immense statute of Liberty, raisin’ the veil of Ignorance and protectin’ Truth and Justice.  Ignorance don’t want her eyes oncovered, she’d ’drather keep on blind as a bat.  But Liberty hain’t goin’ to mind her, she wuz bound to git the bandages off; I wanted to encourage her in it and I waved my hand towards her and smiled in lovin’ greetin’.  Josiah thought I wuz flirtin’, and asked me anxiously if I’d got sight of any man from Jonesville.  I wouldn’t dain to reply to him—­at my age! and with my reputation to carry round!  The idee!

Well, when we stood on the stun balcony over the spot where the central cascade gushes out, what a seen lay spread out before us.  You can look off two milds one way and most a mild another.  And wuz there ever in the world milds so crowded full of beauty and each beauty differin’ from the other as one star differs from another in glory.  Eight magnificent palaces are in full sight, their walls bathed by the blue waters, and beyond ’em, interspersed by green foliage, wuz a perfect wilderness of towers, minarets, domes, banners, battlements.

I hain’t goin’ to describe what I looked down on, for I can’t.  No, if I had a big book of synonyms to the words Grand and Glorious and used every one on ’em tryin’ to describe that seen I couldn’t begin to do justice to it, and so what is the use of tryin’ with the Jonesville vocabulary.

And if I can’t describe it, don’t for pity sake ask Josiah Allen to, for you might know that if I couldn’t he wouldn’t stand no chance.  But I hearn him gin a sort of gaspin’ sithe as he looked, and Blandina I believe forgot for a few minutes her passionate though chaste, overrulin’ passion.

As magnificent as the hull of St. Louis Exposition is, it naterally has one spot handsomer than the rest, a particular beauty spot as you may say.  Why every house has it.  The beauty of my parlor kinder branches out, as you may say, from my new rep rocker, a lovely work of art that cost over six dollars.  I keep it in the sightliest place, where the eye of man can fall on it at first.  And the central beauty spot of the Fair wuz centered in the place I have been talkin’ about.