So we walked round, lockin’ arms, and not sensin’ of it, (as it were) a lookin’ on the grandeur and imposin’ doins on every side of us. Presently, or not fur from that time—for truly I could not keep a correct run of the time of day, feelin’ as I did—I told Josiah that we would take the cars and ride round the Sentinal; there was a little railroad a purpose. So we crossed a square—green as green grass could make it—and all of a sudden I felt Josiah give a shudder, and heerd his teeth chatter; he was lookin’ at that fearfully wonderful statute of Washington crossin’ the Deleware. Oh dear! what a situation George was in.
Then he hunched me again, to look at a fountain made they say to show off light and water. Three handsome female girls a holdin’ up a bowl or rather a platter, bigger than any platter I ever see, to catch the water other female wimmin’ was a pourin’ down into it; and as many as ten globe lamps, a bein’ held up by beautiful arms. I’ll bet the hull on it was forty feet high, and I don’t know but more. Josiah would have staid there some time if I had encouraged him in it; he said with a dreamy look, that them girls was first-rate lookin’, but he should think their arms would ache a holdin’ up that platter and them big lamps. But says I, “Josiah Allen you haint no time to spend a pityin’ cast-iron wimmen in such a time as this, or admirin’ of em;” so I hurried him onwards to one of the stations of the railroad, and we paid five cents apiece and they let us up into the cars, and oh, how lovely everything did look as we rode onwards, drawed by as stiddy and smart a little enjun as ever I see hitched to a car. How cool and wet the lake did look on that hot day, with its great fountain sprayin’ out the water in so many different sprays, as we passed between it and the green, level grass all flowered off with gorgeous flower beds.
Anon, (or nearly that time) the enjun stopped before the Woman’s Pavilion—a noble big buildin’ that filled me with such proud and lofty emotions as I looked at it, that I don’t know to what height I should have soared up to a gazin’ on it, and thinkin’ of the sect that built it, if one of them very sect weighin’ about three hundred and fifty, in gittin’ out of the car, hadn’t stepped on my foot and crushed it so fearfully that instinctively my emotions was brought right down to the ends of my toes. In two minutes more, or two and a-half, we went round the head of the dell, and though my foot still felt the effects of tramplin’, I didn’t sense it, as I looked down the beautiful shady paths, all a seemin’ to lead to some handsome buildin’ and then up at the Agricultural Buildin’, big enough (seeminly) for old Agriculture and all his family all over the country to settle down and live in; and then we went on a little further by a cheese and butter house, and Brewers’ Hall. And then the enjun turned round and we went back most to the Woman’s Pavilion, and then sailed off down the avenue of State Buildins, by Machinery Hall (big enough for every machine in the world, and several of the planetary system’s machines, as it were) clear the hull length of this buildin’, back to the place we started from.