So as that too wuz quite nigh by, we went to the Palace of Mines and Metals.  It wuz a beautiful buildin’, the walls covered with ornamental carvin’ and ornaments, and two tall pillars standin’ up each side of the entrance as if they wuz two Genis jealously guardin’ the Under World from intrusion.  But we got by ’em.  And what didn’t we see there?  Everything that wuz ever dug out of the earth, and the way it wuz discovered, mined and made useful to man.

Gems, precious stuns, granite, marble and all the processes for cutting and polishing.  Minerals of all kinds, natural mineral paints and fertilizers, cement, luminants and waters.  Asbestos, mica, coal, coal oil and all the machinery for refining and storing it.  Displays for natural gas, petroleum; everything relating to lighting mines; safety lamps; oils; electricity; acetyline.  Most interestin’ display in geology; all kinds of rocks; crystal; clay; ores; nickel and all the metals for making iron and steel and makin’ ’em right there before you.  Explosives used in the Under World.  Everything relating to the workin’ of salt mines; oil wells; metals, photographs; maps, illustrating how these riches of the earth wuz deposited, and all the machinery for collecting and making them useful to man.

And there wuz a place where we could see a miner’s cabin, and miners at work, blasting, draining, driving tunnels, drilling, traveling underground.  A gold mill; a New Mexican turquoise mine; a lead, zinc and copper mine, all working there before us; and a coal mine discovered there on the Exposition grounds, an underground railway connected these two mines.  And all sorts of mineral waters, queer things they be flowin’ side by side out of the same ground as different as water and wine.  And there wuz a foundry and mint for makin’ money.

Imagine a buildin’ coverin’ nine acres full of such interestin’ sights, and thirteen acres out-doors.  For you must remember that it wuz not only the riches of America’s Under World, but the wealth of England, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Japan and in fact every foreign nation.  Josiah reveled in it, and so did Blandina vicariously.  And I enjoyed it too, for I always wuz wonderin’ what wuz goin’ on under my feet, and now I had a glimpse on’t.

Well, we stayed there a long time and went from there into Manufactures Buildin’, when who should we meet but Uncle Giles Petigrew, a M.E. deacon who used to live in Zoar but who had moved to St. Louis some years before.  We used to know him well.  He wuz a old man when he left Zoar, and had lost four wives a runnin’ before he left there, and of course I didn’t know how many he’d lost since he come West, I see he wore a mournin’ weed, and mistrusted he’d lost another, and so it turned out.  It beats all what bad luck he has had.  He wuzn’t to blame for any one on ’em, ’tennyrate them that passed away at Zoar, and I spozed it wuz jest the same here.  Never pizened any of ’em, or divorced ’em or anything, it wuz jest his bad luck.