That wuz enough to lift up anybody’s morals, and prop ’em up strong, to see how much attention is paid to education and trainin’ right from the nursery up—­devolipin’ the mind and the body.

It wuz some as if the Manafactures part tended to the house and clothin’, and this part tended to the livin’ soul that inhabited it.

It wuz dretful interestin’ to see everything about devolipin’ the strength and muscle in gymnasiums, skatin’, rowin’, boatin’, and every other way.  Food supply and its distribution, school kitchens.  How to make buildin’s the best way for health and comfort for workin’men, school-housen, churches, and etc.  How to heat and ventilate housen, how to keep the sewers and drains all right, and how neccessary that is!  Some folkses back doors are a abomination when their front doors are full of ornament.

All kinds of instruction in infant schools, kindergartens; domestic and industrial trainin’ for girls, models for teachin’ and cookery, housework, dressmakin’, etc.; how neccessary this is to turn out girls for real life, so much better than to have ’em know Greek, but not know a potatoe from a turnip; to understand geology, but not recognize a shirt gusset from a baby’s bib!

Books, literature, examples of printin’ paper, bindin’, religion, natural sciences, fine arts, school-books, newspapers, library apparatus, publications by Goverment, etc.

And wuzn’t it a queer coincidence? that right where books wuz all round me, right while my eyes wuz sot on ’em—­

I hearn a voice I recognized.  It wuz a-givin’ utterance to the words I had heard so often—­

“Two dollars and a half for cloth—­three for sheep, and four for morocco.”

I turned, and there she wuz; there stood Arvilly Lanfear.  She wuz in front of a good, meek-lookin’ freckled woman, a-canvassin’ her.

Or, that is, she wuzn’t exactly applyin’ the canvas to her, but she wuz a-preparin’ her for it.

It seemed that she had been introduced to her, and wuz a-goin’ to call on her the next day with the book.

Sez I, advancin’ onto her, “Arvilly Lanfear, did you really git here alive and well?”

“Wall,” sez she, “I shouldn’t have got here, most likely, if I wuzn’t alive, and I never wuz so well in my life, in body and in sperits.  Hain’t it glorious here?” sez she.

“Yes,” sez I; and, sez I, “Arvilly, did you walk afoot all the way here?”

And then she went on and related her experience.

She said that she wuz five weeks on her way, and made money all the way over and above her expenses.  She walked the most of the way.

She wuz now a-boardin’ with a old acquaintance at five dollars a week, and she canvassed three days in the week, and come three days to the Fair, and more’n paid her way now.

Sez I, “Arvilly, you look better than I ever knew you to look; you look ten years younger, and I don’t know but ’leven.”