er the archway:

"There be three things which make a nation great and prosperous: a
fertile soil, busy workshops, and easy conveyance for men and goods from
place to place."

"Grandpa, Bacon wrote that and he lived in the time of Shakespeare, when
Elizabeth was Queen of England."

"Yes, yes, child, it's a great prophesy of our greatness. I thought
before I came here that the soil done about all of it and what little
was not done by the soil was done by the workshop but I see that there
is just as much necessity and greatness outside of these things."

"Grandpa, let me read what is on the right side of the doorway: "Of all
inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those
inventions which abridge distance have done most for civilization." That
was Macaulay, the great essayist and historian of England. I wish I had
known he said that, for last month we debated in our literary society
the question: "Resolved. That bullets have done more for the spread of
civilization than books.""

It is rather an amusing thing to note how the exposition affects
different people. Some of the visitors are of a type which nothing
moves. They have lived all their lives in the pursuit of a placid
routine of simple duties, and, while they have come to the fair from a
sense of duty and fully intend to see all that may be seen, still they
are prone to retire on occasion to some quiet corner where they can rest
unobserved, and then their talk invariably drops into some simple,
natural channel that is in accord with the tenor of their dally lives.
Of course this is tinctured more or less with the unaccustomed sights
and sounds about them, but not greatly so; for the most part they simply
ignore their surroundings.

In strong contrast are the ones who have obviously got themselves up
expressly for the fair regardless of expense; their clothes are new, and
are chiefly noticeable for the quality which Stevenson refers to as "a
kind of mercantile brilliancy." They are nearly as much occupied in
allowing others the inestimable pleasure of gazing at them as they are
in improving their own minds. They are visitors, pure and simple, and
they are characterized by such an air of newness that even the flies
avoid them for fear of sticking to the varnish.

There is the girl with the notebook, a schoolmarm presumably, though
heaven only knows, she may be a lecturer. She usually numbers glasses
and a dark velvet bag among her accoutre