Crook-necks above the chimly hung,
     While in among ’em rusted
  The old Queen’s-arm that Gran’ther Young
     Brought hack from Concord busted.

The log-house is not by any means an abandoned feature of antiquity.  It is still a thriving American “institution” North, West and South, only not so conspicuous in the forefront of our civilization as it once was.  It turns out yet fair women and brave men, and more than that—­if it be not treason to use terms so unrepublican—­the highest product of this world, gentlemen and gentlewomen.

[Illustration:  Ohio building.]

Uncle Sam confronts the ladies from over the way, a ferocious battery of fifty-seven-ton Rodman guns and other monsters of the same family frowning defiance to their smiles and wiles.  His traditional dread of masked batteries may have something to do with this demonstration.  He need not fear, however.  His fair neighbors and nieces have their hands full with their own concerns, and leave him undisturbed in his stately bachelor’s hall to “illustrate the functions and administrative faculties of the government in time of peace and its resources as a war-power.”  To do this properly, he has found two acres of ground none too much.  The building, business-like and capable-looking, was erected in a style and with a degree of economy creditable to the officers of the board, selected from the Departments of War, Agriculture, the Treasury, Navy, Interior and Post-Office, and from the Smithsonian Institution.  Appended to it are smaller structures for the illustration of hospital and laboratory work—­a kill-and-cure association that is but one of the odd contradictions of war.

The sentiments prevalent in this era of perfect peace, harmony and balance of rights forbids the suspicion of any significance in the fact that the lordly palace of the Federal government at once overshadows and turns its back upon the humbler tenements of the States.  A line of these, drawn up in close order, shoulder to shoulder, is ranged, hard by, against the tall fence that encloses the grounds.  The Keystone State, as beseems her, heads the line by the left flank.  Then come, in due order, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Delaware.  New Jersey and Kansas stand proudly apart, officer-like, on the opposite side of the avenue; the regimental canteen, in the shape of the Southern Restaurant, jostling them rather too closely.  Somewhat in keeping with the over-prominence of the latter adjunct is the militia-like aspect of the array, wonderfully irregular as are its members in stature and style.  Pennsylvania’s pavilion, costing forty thousand dollars, or half as much as the United States building, plays the leading grenadier well; but little Delaware, not content with the obscure post of file-closer, swells at the opposite end of the line into dimensions of ninety by seventy-five feet, with a cupola that, if placed at Dover, would be visible from half her territory.