How I wished as I looked at ’em that Stevenson and the rest of them men who lived, and worked, and suffered ahead of their time, could a been there to see the fruit of their glowin’ fancies blow out in full bloom!

But then I thought, as I looked out of a winder into the clear, blue depths of sky overhead, Like as not they are here now, their souls havin’ wrought out some finer existence, so etheral that our coarser senses couldn’t recognize ’em—­mebby they wuz right here round the old home of their thoughts, as men’s dreams will hang round the homes of their boyhood.

Who knows now?  I don’t, nor Josiah.

The New York Central exhibit shows the old Mohawk and Hudson train, a model of the first locomotive sot a-goin’ on the Hudson in 1807 with a boundin’ heart and a tremblin’ hand by Robert Fulton, and which wuz pushed off from the pier and propelled onwards by the sneerin’, mockin’, unbelievin’ laughs of the spectators as much as from the breezes that swept up from the south.

I would gin a cent freely and willin’ly if I could a seen Robert stand there side by side with that old locomotive and the fastest lightin’ express of to-day—­like seed and harvest—­with Josiah and me for a verdant and sympathizin’ background.

Oh, what a sight it would a been, if his emotions could a been laid bare, and mine, too!

It would a been a sight long to remember.

But to resoom.

The first locomotive ever seen in Chicago wuz there a-puffin’ out its own steam.  It must felt proud-sperited in all of its old jints, but it acted well and snorted with the best on ’em.  The 999, the fastest engine in the world, wuz by the side of the Clinton, the first engine ever made.  I opened the coach door and got in.  It looked jest like a common two-seated buggy of to-day, with seats on top, and water and wood to run it with kep in barrels behind the engine.

And England and Germany, not to be outdone, brung over some of their finest railroads.  Why, Wales brought over some of the actual stun ties and iron rails of the first railway in Great Britain; and as for the splendor of the coaches, they go beyend anything that wuz ever seen in the world.  Side by side with the finest passenger coaches that London sends stands the Canadian Pacific, with its dinin’ and sleepin’ cars, and you can form an idee about the richness on ’em when I tell you that the woodwork of ’em is pure mahogany.

And then the other big railroads, not to be outdone, they have their finest and most elegant cars on show—­

The Pullman and Wagner and the Empire State, with its lightnin’ speed, and post-office and newspaper cars, and freight, and express, and private cars.

There is a German exhibit of some of them likely ambulance cars used by the Red Cross Society in war time—­cars that angels bend over as the poor dyin’ ones are carried from the battle-field—­angels of Healin’ and of Pain.