the Americans were in advance of the English; yet here in my country we do not put the Furniss on the grill, but the grill on the furnace!"
Max laughed and looked relieved, and said:
"You'll do—they'll let you off easy. A Frenchman can't stand chaff, so I sat down."
He had stood the fire of the enemy upon the field of battle, but he couldn't stand the fusillade of wit from the Americans at their dinner table.
The stranger was no other than Major Moses P. Handy, afterwards "Chief of Department of Publicity and Promotion at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago;" so when I found myself in the "Windy City" as an unattached "special" from the Old World to the New "World's Fair," I called at Rand-McNally Buildings, not to be put on the grill, but to be put in possession of some facts concerning that great "Exposition."
MAJOR HANDY.
Sometimes there is a great deal in a name. For instance, the late Major Handy at once indicated the man—handy, always ready with tongue, hands and legs. He handed me round the city, told me of its wonders, and sent me off enraptured to the "Exposition." Here I was met by one of the staff, and escorted all over the skeleton of what eventually proved to be the most wonderful "Exposition," Exhibition, World's Fair, or whatever you like to call it, that the New World had ever seen.
The gentleman in possession who met me and acted as my guide was a clean-cut featured, smooth-faced, typical American, "full of wise saws and modern instances" and—tobacco juice. He had a merry wit, and his running commentary would have been invaluable "copy" to America's pet humourist, Bill Nye.
I had a pencil in the pocket in one side of my coat, and a note-book in the pocket in the other side, but the carriage in which I was driven about rushed on so over the rough ground and "corduroy roads" and hills and chasms, that I found it a matter of utter impossibility to get the pencil and the book out together, and, therefore, the facts I give about the "Exposition" may want verification, for my worthy guide kept firing them into me with the rapidity of a Maxim or a Hotchkiss.
THE WORLD'S FAIR, CHICAGO. A "SPECIAL'S" VISIT.
"Now here is the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building. Guess the largest building ever erected—1,641,223 feet long, 17,894 feet high—" Down goes the trap on one side, plunging into some excavation, like a double-harnessed Roman chariot. However, we scrambled up again, but I had lost the important figure of the width of the building. Now I don't for a moment wish to imply that my guide was exaggerating, but this rather reminds me of a story told of an American visiting England, and his host there one day remarked to him:
"My dear fellow, we are delighted with you here—in fact, you are quite a favourite; but you will excuse me if I tell you that you possess one failing pretty general with your countrymen—you do exaggerate so!"
"Guess I kean't help it, but if you'll just kindly give me a kick under the table when I'm going too far I'll pull up sharp!"
With this agreement they went out to dinner that evening, and among other topics the conversation turned upon conservatories. Captain de Vere said that he had a conservatory 200 feet long, but that the Duke of Orchid had one nearly 1,000 feet long. The American here struck in with:
"I reckon, gentlemen, you're talking about conservatories. Now there's a friend of mine in Amurrca, a private gentleman, who has a conservatory 5,000 feet long, 3,000 feet high, and" (kick)—"oh!—2 feet wide!"
But had I heard the figures representing the width of the building, I don't suppose they would have been in the same absurd proportion as this, for not all the shin-kicking in the world would have deterred my entertaining and conversational conductor.
"You must assemble together in your mind's eye all the mighty structures already existing in the world to form any idea of the magnitude of this tremenjious edifice before you. It is sixteen times as large as St. Peter's Cathedral at Rome, Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral would nestle together in its ventilating shaft, and the whole of the armies of Europe could sit down comfortably to dinner in the central hall. The Tower of London would be lost under one of the staircases, and fifty Cleopatra's Needles stuck one on top of the other would not scratch the roof. The building cost fifty million six hundred and eighty-four thousand two hundred dollars seventy-five cents, and——" On dashed the horses in their wild career.
Down we went, I thought into the bed of Lake Michigan, but in an instant we were up again, my hat in one direction and my stick in another, and I was well shaken before being taken to the next building.
"Say, Mr. Furniss, the roads are not complete yet, but you mustn't mind these little ups and downs. Guess these horses would pull through anything—brought 'em right away from the fire-engine shed, considerable fresh!"
At this moment a train came puffing along laden with masses of ironwork for the central building. The horses shied at the smoky monster, turned a somersault (at least, so it seemed to me), and we nearly took a header into the lake again; but the charioteer managed to turn them just in time, and the fiery fire-engine steeds snorted past their iron brother, eclipsing even his noise and steam.
"ON DASHED THE HORSES IN THEIR WILD CAREER."
I now began to feel thoroughly happy, but I kept a watchful eye on those gee-gees, and as we skipped over impromptu bridges, whizzed round the corners of newly-made piles, and bumped over incomplete parapets, I quite enjoyed myself; but somehow or other I couldn't quite manage to catch all the marvellous details respecting the buildings we were passing. I was qualifying myself for the Volunteer Fire Brigade. But our steeds were reined in for a moment while my guide pointed out to me the Dairy Building.
"I reckon, sir," he said, "that dairy will be an eye-opener. It'll be sooperb, and I guess it won't be long after the opening of the show that they'll be turning out gold-edged butter!"
Off we go again, over mounds and down dykes, jumping rocks and shooting rapids, and I am certain that had our conveyance been a milk-cart, butter, gold-edged or otherwise, would have been produced pretty soon. We pull up with a jerk opposite the Agricultural Building.
"The building is 5,000 by 8,000 feet, design bold and heroic. On each corner and from the centre of the building are reared pavilions."
"Indeed!" I said. "Are they reared by incubators, or upon some special soil from the fertile tracts of the Far West?"
My guide did not evidently deem my question worthy an answer, and continued:
"Surmounted by a mammoth glass dome 460 feet high, constructed on purpose to accommodate the giant Pennsylvania pumpkin we're having raised specially for the Exposition. That pumpkin will be hollowed out, and 600 people will be able to sit down together at once in its interior."
"Now we'll go to the Transportation Building," said my indefatigable conductor to the driver.
"Bless me!" I thought; "is this a convict prison? Are we to have visitors from Sing Sing, and am I to see some of my friends from Portland and Dartmoor? Will there be a model of the Bastille, and a contingent of escaped refugees from the mines of Siberia? Or is the building an enormous concern for the transport of visitors to
