“We will settle on some place to go that is handy to a restaurant.”

And Miss Plank picked one where the biled corned beef wuz delicious, and the pies and coffee—­

Corned beef! oh, my heart, in such a time as this!  Beef corned in such a hour!  But I forgive ’em and pitied ’em, for it wuz my duty.

Wall, we told Josiah he should have his way that mornin’, and go where he wanted to—­and he wanted to tackle Machinery Hall; consequently we tackled it.

And how many acres big do you suppose this buildin’ wuz?  Seventeen acres and a half is the size of the floor—­

Jest half a acre more than Silenas Bobbetses farm, that he broke old Squire Bobbetses will to git, and he and his twin brother Zebulin come to hands and blows about, in front of the Jonesville post-office.

Zebulin said it wuz too much land to give to one of the children—­they wuz leven of ’em—­and the farm didn’t go round—­the others didn’t have only fifteen acres apiece.

Yes; this one buildin’ covered as much ground as Silenas Bobbet gits a good livin’ from, a-raisin’ cabbage and spinach.

And the buildin’ wuz seemin’ly all wrought of white marble, with statutes, and colonnades, and towers, and everything else for its comfort, and inside wuz every machine that wuz ever made or thought on, from a sassage-cutter and apple-parer to a steam engine in full blast.

I believe they tuned up higher and louder when I went in—­it wouldn’t be nothin’ surprisin’ if they did, some as the brass band strikes up as the hero enters.

This song wuz the loud, strong chorus of Labor, that echoes all over the world, grand chorus that is played by the full orkestry of the sons and daughters of toil.

Oh, how many notes there is in this strong, ail-pervadin’ anthem!  Genius, and Patience, and Ambition, and Enterprise, and Ardent Endeavor—­high notes, and low ones, all blent together, all tuned to the hauntin’ key.  It is a sam that shakes the hull earth with its might.

As I entered this palace, sacred to its song, how its echoes rolled through my ear pans, how them pans seemed to fairly shiver under the mighty strokes of the song, and its weird, painful accompaniment of boilers a-boilin’, rollin’ mills a-rollin’!

Water wheels, freight elevators—­cranes a-cranin’, derricks a-derrickin’, divin’ apparatus, fire-extinguishin’ apparatus—­

Machines of all sorts and kinds to manufacture all sorts of goods, and all hands to work at it—­silk, cotton, wool, linen, ingy-rubber, ropes, and paper.

Saw-mills, wind-mills, printin’-presses a-pressin’.  All sorts of tools to make all sorts of picters—­engravin’s, color printin’—­picters from the 16th century up to 1893—­they wuz relief engravin’s.

I spoze they are called so because it is such a relief to think we don’t have to look at them old picters now.

And there wuz half-tone processes, mechanical and medicinal processes, and every other process you ever hearn on, and didn’t ever hear on, right there in a procession in front of me, and all a-processin’.