e round and step over barns and knock down housen, and we
couldn't git it offen our hands any way, kill it, or give it away--how
would you feel?"

[Illustration: We couldn't git her head hardly in the stable.]

Then I took my pins out of my mouth, and sez--

"I wouldn't have bought the elephant till I had measured my barn."

Then I put my pins in my mouth agin, for I thought like as not that I
wouldn't have to use my tongue agin. I didn't lay out to, for my mouth
wuz full, and I wuz in a hurry for my comforter.

But Josiah sez, "O shaw! lots of folks buy things they hadn't no idee of
buyin' till they see somebody else wants 'em bad.

"I remember that is the way I come to buy that two-year colt; I hadn't a
idee of wantin' it till I see Old Bobbet and Deacon Sypher jest sot on
havin' it, and that whetted me right up, and I wuz jest bound to have
that colt, and did. I didn't expect to find it profitable any of the
time. I knew it would kick like the old Harry and smash things, and it
did.

"And that is jest the way with Chicago; she knew the World's Fair wuzn't
over and above profitable to have round, besides bein' dretful
bothersome, but she see New York and St. Louis a-dickerin' for it, and
then she wanted it."

"Wall," sez I, considerable dry and sharp, for I had three pins in my
mouth at the time--

"She has got it!"

"Yes," sez Josiah, "and you'll see that she will put in and work lively,
now she's got it; she'll show what she can do."

"Yes," sez I, dryer than ever, and more sharper; "before she got a stun
laid for a foundation to rest the World's Fair on, before she got a
stick laid for Christopher to plant one of his feet on, she begun to buy
up hull streets of housen to rig up for saloons, to make men drunk as
fools, to make murderers and assassins of 'em.

"I wonder what Columbus would say if he could stand there and see it go
on."

"He'd probable step in and take a drink," sez Josiah.

"Never," sez I. "The eye that could discover without actual sight, the
soul that could apprehend without comprehension--that could look fur off
into the mist of the onknown, and see a New World risin' up before his
rapt vision--such a eye and such a soul didn't depend on bad whiskey for
its stimulent. No, indeed!

"He didn't lay round in bar-rooms with a red nose, and a stagger onto
him. He wuz up and about, with his senses all straight, and the star he
follered wuzn't the light of a corner saloon.

"No, indee