But when I go to talk about the paintin’s, and statutes, and the embroideries my sect shows off in that buildin’, then agin I draw deep breaths full of praise and admiration, sunthin’ like sithes, only happier ones, to think mine eyes had been permitted to gaze on the marvels and wonders my own sect had wrought.

And then I thought of Isabelle, and I thought I would love to have her there to neighbor with; thinkses I, if it hadn’t been for her we wouldn’t have been discovered at all, as I know on, and then where would have been the Woman’s Buildin’?  I thought I would love to talk it over with her; how, though she furnished the means for a man to discover us, yet four hundred years had to wear away before men thought that wimmen wuz capable of takin’ part in any Internatinal Exposition.  I wanted Isabelle there that day—­I wanted her like a dog.

But my thoughts wuz brought back from my rapt contemplation by my companion’s voice.  He sez: 

“By Jocks!  I hadn’t no idee that wimmen had ever done so much work that is useful as well as ornamental.”  Sez he, “I had read a sight about the Lady Managers, and I had got the idee that them ladies couldn’t do much more than to set down and tend poodles, and knit tattin’.  I hadn’t no idee that they wuz a-goin’ to swing out and make such a show as this.”

[Illustration:  Josiah’s “idee” of “them ladies.”]

Them remarks of hisen wuz wrung out of him by the glory of the display, as the sweet sap is brung out of the maple trees by the all-powerful influence and glory of the spring sun, and they show more plain than song or poem of the wonders about us.

Josiah don’t love to praise wimmen—­he hates to.  But I answered him proudly, “Yes, this Magic Wonder Land o’ beauty and practical use wuz wrought by Sophia Haydon, and other noble wimmen.  They must have the credit for everything about it, and for all the work it shows off within its borders.”

Sez I, “Uncle Sam was a good-actin’ creeter for once, anyway, when he made that act of Congress about the World’s Columbian Exposition.  He made that body of men appoint a board of Lady Managers—­two ladies from each State and Territory, and eight lady managers at large, and nine at Chicago.”

That name “Lady Manager” wuz done by Uncle Sam’s over-politeness to the sect, and I don’t know as Josiah wuz to blame.  You would think by the name that them ladies wuz a-settin’ in rows of gilded chairs, a-holdin’ a rosy in their hands.

But, in fact, amongst them female managers there wuz one hard-workin’ doctor and lawyer, real-estate agents, journalists, editors, merchants, two cotton planters, teachers, artists, farmers, and a cattle queen.