“How many does the whale carry?  What makes you think we could both git into it?”

Sez Josiah, “It carries 5000 at a time.”

I felt weak as a cat, jest as I had felt time and agin sence I had come to Chicago.

“Wall,” sez I in weak axents, and dumbfoundered, “any whale story I could hear about Chicago wouldn’t surprise me a mite.”

And I wiped my brow on my white linen handkerchief, for though the idee didn’t surprise me none, it started the sweat.

Sez Josiah, “It is 225 feet long, and has a fountain in it, and a skylight 138 feet long.”

But jest at that minute, before I could frame a reply, even if I could have found a frame queer-shaped enough to hold my curious—­curious feelin’s—­

Miss Plank knocked at the door and said she wuz ready to go—­we had made arrangements to go together that mornin’—­and Josiah tackled her about the whale; and sez she briskly—­

“Oh, yes; the whaleback Christopher Columbus!  It would be a good idee to go to the grounds in it; you can go down in it in half an hour—­it is only seven or eight milds.”

So we fell in with her idee; and bein’ ust to the place, she took the lead, and also the street cars, and we soon found ourselves on board the biggest floatin’ ship I ever laid eyes on.  And I couldn’t see as it looked much like a whale, unless it wuz that it wuz long, and kinder pinted, and turned up at both ends, some the shape of a whale.

Wall, I guess the hull five thousand folks wuz on board, and had brung their relations on both sides.  It looked like it, and we steamed along by the shore for quite a spell, the city a-layin’ in plain view for mild after mild—­or that is, in as plain view as it could be under its envelopin’ curtain of smoke.

But bimeby the smoke all cleared away, the air wuz clear and pure, and the lake lay fair and placid fur off as we could see.  It might a been the ocean, for all we could tell, for you can’t see no further than you can, anyway, and you can’t see no further than that on the Atlantic or the Pacific.

Way beyend what you can’t see might stretch thousands and thousands of milds and a new continent; or it might be a loggin’ camp, or Kalamazoo.  It don’t make no difference to your feelin’s, it has all the illimitable expanse, the vastness of the great ocean.

So it wuz with the outlook on the flashin’ blue waters on that magic mornin’.

And pretty soon the White City riz up like a city of bewilderin’ beauty and enchantment, with the sun a-lookin’ down from a blue sky, and lightin’ up the tall, white walls, and gilded domes, and towers, and minarets.  And as we floated along by Jackson Park, and could git a plain view of the perfect buildin’s—­the lagoons with fairy boats a-skimmin’ over the sparklin’ surface—­in fact, in plain view of the hull vast, bewilderin’ seen of matchless splendor—­why, I declare I felt almost as if I wuz took back clear into the Arabian Nights Entertainments, and magic seens wuz bein’ unfolded before my enraptured vision.