The Gallery of Honor is the centre hall of the buildin’, and runs almost the entire length, and openin’ out of it is the display that shows that wimmen wuz really the first inventors and producers of what wuz useful as well as beautiful, and that men took up the work when money could be made from it.

Here is the work of the first and rudest people, but all made by female wimmen—­the rough, hard buds of beauty and labor; and in the Central hall, like these buds open in full bloom and beauty, is the fruit of the most advanced thought and genius.

The interior glows with soft and harmonious colors, and chaste ornamentation.

Mrs. Candace Wheeler, of New York, had charge of the decoration, which is sayin’ enough for its beauty, if you didn’t say anything else, and Illinois and the rest of the world wuz grand helpers in the work of beauty.

The Gallery of Honor, the central hall of the buildin’, runs almost the entire length.  The noble, harmonious beauty of this room strikes you as you first enter, some as it would if you come up sudden out of the woods, a-facin’ a gorgeous sunset—­or sunrisin’, I guess, would be a suitabler metafor.

The colorin’ of this room is ivory and gold, in delicate and beautiful designs.  But the pictures that cover the walls adds the bright tints neccessary to make the hull picture perfect.

The beautiful panels on the side walls are the work of American artists.  One, on the west side, by Amanda Brewster Sewall, represents an Algerian pastural seen, showing country maids tendin’ their flocks; which proves that Algerian girls are first-rate lookin’, and that dumb brutes in Algeria, though it is so fur from Jonesville, have got to be tended to, and that wimmen have got to tend to ’em a good deal of the time.

The other paintin’, on the same side, is the work of Miss Fairchild, of Boston, and it shows our old Puritan 4 Mothers hard to work, a-takin’ care of their housen and doin’ up the work.  Likely old creeters they wuz, and industrius.

Opposite, on the east side, is a panel by Mrs. Lydia Emmet Sherwood—­another group of wimmen; good-lookin’ wimmen they be, all on ’em.  And the other panel, by Miss Lydia Emmet, shows the interior of a studio, with young females a-studyin’ different arts that are useful and ornamental, and calculated to help themselves and the world along.  At the north end of this great gallery is a large panel by Mrs. MacMonnies, wife of the sculptor, representin’ Primitive Wimmen.  A-showin’, plain as nobody less gifted than she could, jest how primitive wimmen used to be.

Opposite, on the south side, is a companion piece by Miss Cassette, of Paris, called Modern Wimmen, and a-showin’ up first rate how fur wimmen have emerged from the shadders of the past.

The centre panel depicters a orchard covered with bright green grass, and graceful female wimmen a-gatherin’ apples offen the tree.