It was impetuous Lulu who broke the silence with an exclamation of delighted admiration and an eager request that they might land at once and get a nearer view of the fairy scenes that lay before them on the farther side.

The other members of their party, old and young, seemed scarcely less eager, and in a very few moments they were all pacing that grand colonnade to and fro, and gazing out delightedly now upon the blue waters of the lake and anon upon the fairy scene—­the Court of Honor—­on the inner side.  And soon they hurried their steps thitherward.

“Oh, there,” cried Lulu, “is the statue of our great republic!  Is she not magnificent?”

“She is, indeed!” replied Grandma Elsie.  “See in one hand she holds a pole bearing a liberty cap, in the other a globe, an eagle with outstretched wings resting upon it; that symbolizes protection, which she has ever been ready to extend to the oppressed of all the earth.”

“She is a large woman,” remarked Walter; “as she should be to adequately represent our great country.  Grandpa, do you know her size?”

“I saw it stated the other day,” replied Mr. Dinsmore.  “Her face is fifteen feet long, her arms thirty feet, forefingers forty-five inches, and ten inches in diameter.  Her cost was twenty-five thousand dollars; the gilding alone amounting to fourteen hundred dollars; quite an expensive dress for my lady.”

“But we don’t grudge it to her, papa,” remarked Grandma Elsie pleasantly.

“No,” he said; “nor anything else the liberty she represents has cost—­in money or in life and limb.”

“But what is her height, grandpa?” asked Rosie; “it should be very considerable to go with a face fifteen feet long.”

“Sixty-five feet, and the pedestal on which she stands is thirty feet above water.  There is a stairway inside which you can climb one of these days if you wish.”

All were gazing with great admiration and interest upon the beautiful statue, though seeing it somewhat dimly through the gathering shades of evening, when suddenly the electric lights blazed out from all sides, causing an exclamation of surprise and delight from almost everyone in our party and from others who witnessed the wonderful and inspiring sight; words failed them to express their sense of the loveliness of the scene; that mighty statue of the Republic dominating the eastern end of the lagoon, that grandly beautiful Macmonie’s Fountain at the other, its Goddess of Liberty seated aloft in her chair on the deck of her bark, erect and beautiful, with her eight maiden gondoliers plying the oars at the sides, while old Father Time steered the vessel, his scythe fastened to the tiller, Fame as a trumpet-herald stood on the prow with her trumpet in her hand, while in the gushing waters below sported the tritons with their plunging horses, the terraced fountain still lower with its clouds of spray showing all the colors of the rainbow, as did that of the smaller ones to the right and left.