out of their yellow cloaks. At another table was
half-a-dozen gurrls with earrings as big as barrelhoops in their ears.

"'Come on back,' sez O'Connor.

"'No,' I sez, 'this is good enough for a poor man,' an' we sat down at
the next table to th' gurrls. Well, sir, from that time my mind's a
blank. I was like the feller in the story-books. I knew no more. I dunno
what happened at all, at all, with dancin' gurrls an' snake cha-armers
an' Boolgarian club swingers an' foreign men goin' around with their
legs in mattesses. All I know is this, that I was carried to a ca-ar in
a seedin' chair by two men with room enough in the seat of their pants
to dhrive a street sweeper. Did y'r never ride in a seedin' chair,
George? Then, faith, ye're not in my class. Fol-der-rol, de-rol de
raddle, fol----"

"An' what did ye do with O'Connor?"

"How do I know? The last time I remimber him he was askin' a girl in the
Turkish theayter whether she liked vanilla or rawsburry in her soda
wather, the droolin jackanapes. Ah, na-ha, the girls of Limerick
city----." The colonel resumed his thrumming.

"And is that all you see of the fair."

"Yis," said the colonel, "an' faith! if you had me hed you'd think it
was enough. An', George, to be in earnest wid ye, that I've known since
you was a little dirty boy, go to the fair, ride around in the boats,
luk at the canned tomatties an' the table-clothes, ride in the electric
cars, but beware of that Midway. It'll no do for young men at all, at
all. You'd lose your head. You would, you would. Oh, fol-de-rol, de
raddle rol."

After this amusing experience just related before them, Uncle thought it
very advisable to give Johnny "a good talkin' to about doin' nothin'
wrong in that heathen exhibition of furriners."

But Johnny could afford to finish that Saturday walking demurely around
with the rest, for the next Monday morning Louis, the train-boy, was to
be guard and guide through the mysteries of Midway Plaisance.

_CHAPTER X_

PLAISANCE SOCIETY

When Monday morning came the family were promptly at the 60th street
gate at nine o'clock. Johnny espied Louis with his eye over a knot hole
that seemed designed by providence to let the hungry outsiders have a
morsel of the Midway Plaisance scenery. Inside of the grounds Johnny
determinedly led the way at once to the great Ferris go-round. They
stood before it measuring their chances of living through such a
revolution. It did not take much