Wall, you see from what I have said that there wuz a great variety of Queens a-showin’ off in that buildin’; and as for Baronnesses, and Duchesses, and Ladies, etc., etc.—why, they wuz as common there as clover in a field of timothy. You felt real familiar with ’em.
The reception-room of Mrs. Palmer, the beautiful President of the Woman’s Committee, is a fittin’ room for the presidin’ genius.
All along the walls below the ceilin’ runs a design of roses, scattered and grouped with exquisite taste. Miss Agnes Pitman, of Cincinnati, decorated that room.
In Mrs. Palmer’s office is a wonderful table donated by the wimmen of Pennsylvania.
In that table is cedar from Lebanon, oak from the yoke of Liberty Bell, oak from the good old ship Constitution, from Washington’s headquarters at Valley Forge, and wood from other noted places.
And none of the woods wuz ever put to better use than now, to hold the records of woman’s Aspirations and Success in 1893.
The ceilin’ of the New York room wuz designed by Dora Keith Wheeler, and is beautiful and effective. And the room is full of objects of beauty and use.
The gorgeous President’s chair from Mexico is a sight; and so to me wuz the chair in the Kentucky room, three hundred years old, that used to be sot in by old Elder Brewster, of Plymouth.
Good old creeter! if he could have been moved offen that rock of hisen three hundred years ago, into this White City, he would have fell out of that chair in a fit—I most know he would.
And then there wuz a silk flag made by General Sheridan’s mother when she wuz eighty years old, and a group of dolls dressed in costooms illustrating American history.
And there wuz a shirt of old Peter Stuyvesent’s and a baby dress of De Witt Clinton’s.
I never mistrusted that he wuz ever a baby till I seen that dress. I’d always thought on him as the first Governor of New York.
And speakin’ of babys—why, I wuz jest a-lookin’ at that dress when I met Miss Job Presley, of Loontown.
And I sez, almost the first thing, “Where is your baby?”
And she sez, “It is in the Babys’ Buildin’. I have got a check for her—one for her, and one for my umbrell.” And she showed ’em to me.
“Wall,” sez I, “that is a good, noble idee to rest mothers’ tired arms; but it must make you feel queer.”
And she said, as she put the checks back into her portmoney, “That it did make her feel queer as a dog.”
[Illustration: Miss Job Presley.]
Wall, there wuz a table from Pennsylvania, containin’ more than two thousand pieces of native wood; and there wuz a Scotchwoman with her good old spinnin’-wheel, and a Welsh girl a-weavin’ cloth.
And inventions of females of all kinds, from a toboggan slide, and a system of irrigation, and models of buildin’s of all kinds, to a stock car.