And the sun’s face wuz just a-lookin’ out above it, as if to say good-bye to Chicago, and trouble, and the World’s Fair, and Josiah and me, as we sot our feet on terry firmy. (That is Latin that I have hearn Thomas J. use.  Nobody need to be afraid of it; it is harmless.  My boy wouldn’t use a dangerous word.)

But to resoom and go on.  As I ketched the last glimpse of the old familier face of the sun, that I had seen so many times a-lookin’ friendly at me through the maple trees at Jonesville, and that truly had seemed to be a neighbor, a-neighborin’ with me, time and agin—­when I see him so peaceful and good-natured a-goin’ to his nightly rest, I thought to myself—­

Oh! how I wish I could foller his example, for it duz seem to me that nowhere else, unless it wuz at the tower of Babel, wuz there ever so much noise, and of such various and conflictin’ kinds.

Instinctively I ketched holt of my pardner’s arm, and sez I, “Stay by me, Josiah Allen; if madness and ruin result from this Pandemonium, be with me to the last.”

He couldn’t hear a word I said, the noise wuz that deafnin’ and tremendious.  But he read the silent, tender language of the brown cotton glove on his arm, and he cast a look of deep affection on me, and sez he in soulfull axents—­

“Hurry up, can’t you?  Wimmen are always so slow!”

I responded in the same earnest, heartfelt way.  And anon, or perhaps a little before, Thomas J. and Krit hurried us and our satchel bags into a big roomy carriage, and we soon found ourselves a-wendin’ our way through the streets of the great Western city, the metropolis of the Settin’ Sun.

Street after street, mild after mild of high, towerin’ buildin’s did we pass.  Some on ’em I know wuz high enough for the tower of Babel—­and old Babel himself would have admitted it, I bet, if he had been there.

And as the immense size and magnitude of the city come over me like a wave, I thought to myself some in Skripter and some in common readin’.

When I thought that fifty years ago the grassy prairie lay stretched out in green repose where now wuz the hard pavements worn with the world’s commerce; when I thought that little prairie-dogs, and mush-rats, and squirells wuz a-runnin’ along ondisturbed where now stood high blocks full of a busy city’s enterprise; when I thought that little pretty, timid birds wuz a-flyin’ about where now wuz steeples and high chimblys—­why, when I thought of all this in common readin’, then the Skripter come in, and I sez to myself in deep, solemn axents—­

“Who hath brought this thing to pass?”

And then anon I went to thinkin’ in common readin’ agin, and thinks’es I—­

A little feeble woman died a few days ago—­not so very old either—­who wuz the first child born in Chicago—­and I thought—­

What a big, big day’s work wuz done under her eye-sight!  What a immense house-warmin’ she would had to had in order to warm up all the housen built under her eye!