Wall, after we had a lunch and rested for a spell, Josiah proposed that we should go and see the Transportation Buildin’.

Miss Plank had to leave us now to go home and see about her cookin’.  And we wended on alone.

On our way there we met Thomas J. and Maggie and Isabelle.  They wuz jest a-goin’ to Machinery Hall.  Maggie and Isabelle looked sweet as two new-blown roses, and Thomas J. smart and handsome.

We stopped and visited quite a spell, real affectionate and agreeable.

Oh, what a interestin’ couple our son and his wife are! and Isabelle is a girl of a thousand.

Krit had gone on to Dakota, on business, they said, but wuz comin’ back anon—­or mebby before.

Truly, if anybody had kep track of their pride and self-conceit, and counted how many times it fell, and fell hard, too, durin’ the World’s Fair, it would have been a lesson to ’em on the vanity of earthly things, and a good lesson in rithmetic, too.

Why, they couldn’t tell the number of times unless they could go up into millions, and I d’no but trillions.

Why, it would keep a-fallin’ and a-fallin’ the hull durin’ time you wuz there, if you kep watch on it to see; but truly you didn’t have no time to, no more’n you did your breathin’, only when it took a little deeper fall than common, and then as it lay prostrate and wounded, it drawed your attention to it.

Now, at Jonesville, the neighborin’ wimmen had envied and looked up to my transportation facilities.

Miss Gowdy and she that wuz Submit Tewksbury would often say to me—­

“Oh, if I had your way of gittin’ round—­if I could only have your way of goin’ jest where you want to and when you want to!”

Such remarks had fed my vanity and pride.

And I will own right up, like a righteous sinner, that I had ofttimes, though I had on the outside a becomin’ appearance of modesty—­

Yet on the inside I wuz all puffed up by a feelin’ of my superior advantages—­

As I would set up easy on the back seat of the democrat, and the old mair would bear me on gloriously, and admired by the neighborin’ wimmen who walked along the side of the road afoot, and anon the old mair a-leavin’ ’em fur behind.

And, like all high stations, that back seat in the democrat and that noble old mair had brung down envy onto me and mean remarks.

It come straight back to me—­Miss Lyman Tarbox told she that wuz Sally Ann Mayhew, and she that wuz Sally Ann told the minister’s wife, and she told her aunt, and her aunt told my son-in-law’s mother, and Miss Minkley told Tirzah Ann, and she told me—­it come straight—­

“That Josiah Allen’s wife looked like a fool, and acted like one, a-settin’ up a-ridin’ whenever she went anywhere, while them that wuz full as likely walked afoot!”

I took them remarks as a tribute to my greatness—­a plain acknowledgement of my superior means of locomotion and transportation.