“It is interesting to reflect that the beginnings of all the marvels we shall see in this building,” said Mr. Douglass, as he walked with the two boys toward the Electricity Building, “are found in two trifling circumstances that the majority of men would have overlooked. Do you remember what led to electrical research?”

“I know,” said Philip, “that the word comes from the Greek for amber, and I suppose you mean the attraction of amber for little things was one of the two.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Douglass. “Now what was the other?”

“Frogs’ legs,” Harry answered. “I remember reading about that not long ago. Volta salted the frogs’ legs, thinking they were too fresh; and they kicked. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Douglass, laughing. “And that frog-kick was the beginning of the impulse that laid the Atlantic cable. It was no doubt a great achievement to come upon a new world, as Columbus did; but really Volta, who knew exactly what he was about, deserves nearly as much credit. So you see that by carefully noticing what takes place in his own home in the course of his every-day life, a man may become renowned quite as well as if he braves the elements in search of a new continent.”

“Do you think electricity will take the place of steam?” asked Philip.

“No,” answered Mr. Douglass; “for, judging by the past, few really useful things are ever displaced. Every housekeeper still finds a need for candles, even where not only gas but electricity is at hand. The stage-coach is still built and used, though for different purposes than at first. We shall see to-day, in the Transportation Building, how many old inventions are yet on duty.”

As they entered they heard a sharp pounding, and saw a crowd gathered—the surest sign of something interesting—near a counter. Gradually making their way to the front, they saw a sign announcing that they could have their own coins made into Fair souvenirs, and found upon the counter small scarf-pins, medals, monograms, hair-pins, and paper-knives made from silver and nickel coins. The charge was only five cents, so Philip drew forth a half-dollar that he had been intending to spend on a present for his sister, and putting five cents with it, handed the coins over to the woman at the counter.

“What would you like?” she asked.

“A hair-pin like that,” said Philip, pointing to one that had 1893 upon the top in openwork. The woman gave the half-dollar to the man at the stamping-machine, and he pushed it under the die. In a few moments Philip’s coin was transformed beyond recognition, and came out properly shaped and labeled “Columbian Exposition, 1893.” Harry satisfied himself with a nickel rolled into an oval and also stamped.

A little further on they saw a counter where handkerchiefs were embroidered with appropriate inscriptions, also to serve as “souvenirs”—a word of which the party were becoming weary, as it was bawled, shouted, and whispered in their ears from morning until night.

Many of the electrical exhibits were interesting only for their arrangement: there were, for instance, carbons arranged in geometrical patterns, and push-buttons forming letters and inscriptions.

It was not until they had reached the southern end of the building that they began to think well of the electrical exhibition. But toward this end the attractions were most striking. There was a whirling ball of electric lights, hung near the ceiling, that Harry remembered noticing on the first evening, when they had so much trouble to get in and out of this building. Not far from this ball was a column of colored-glass lamps, from the top of which lines of lamps ran zigzag over the ceiling, each ending in a hanging lantern.

This column would suddenly gleam with colored fire at the base, then further up, then to the top, the waves of light dying out below as they ascended. Reaching the top of the column, the zigzag lines flashed out in wavy lightning flashes to the hanging lanterns. Then all would become dull, until another impulse made its tour of the line.

Another beautiful exhibit was an Egyptian temple. The pillars were of roughened green glass lighted from within so as to glow like emeralds. The walls contained show-cases displaying electric fixtures.

The boys had heard praises of the electrical theater situated in this corner of the building, and it was one of the places they had made up their minds to visit. But they found a line of people ranged before it, and extending back far enough to discourage any but an electrical crank. Reluctantly they withdrew, and went instead into the Greek temple, where a telephone was in working order. A row of young girls sat upon high stools facing a bewildering array of pegs. Upon their heads the girls each wore a light frame of metal bands that held telephones to their ears. It was a striking illustration of the line about “lend me your ears”; but in these modern days the ears are hired by the week. Every now and then one of the girls would lean forward and change a peg from one place to another.

Besides the receiving instruments, a transmitter hung down just in front of the lips of each operator. In fact, every care was taken to enable these young women to hear all conversation addressed to them, and every facility given them to answer back.

Harry said he thought it was just the sort of work a girl liked—nothing to do but to be talked to all day, with full liberty to talk back from a safe distance; but Mr. Douglass said that he had heard the work was very hard and exhausting.

In the gallery they found a number of amusing or astonishing novelties. One that Philip found attractive was an electric boot-blacking machine. In front of chairs like those belonging to the regular “Have-a-shiners” of commerce, there were two brushes revolving rapidly. A man sat in the chair applying his well-developed foot to the brush, and receiving an electric shine that was nearly as good as the regular article.

Harry watched this device critically, and at length said he didn’t like it.

“Well, I do, then,” Philip answered. “Wouldn’t I like one to use every morning, though?”

“I mean that the principle isn’t right,” Harry insisted. “That inventor is making the man twist around so as to apply his foot to the brush. He ought to make an electric brush that can be held in the hand and put against the boot. Don’t you think so, Mr. Douglass?”

“Your argument seems reasonable,” said the tutor; “but it’s often wise to remember that the inventors have thought more about these problems than we have; so it is not likely they have overlooked the most evident criticisms. Still, in this case I think Harry is right.”

At another place in the gallery there was an electric door, and people were invited by placards to walk through it. It had a handle like other doors, but no one ever touched it; for no sooner did one approach than the door opened politely, closing after the person was upon the other side.

One man—“who thought he was smart,” Philip said—walked up to the door as if he meant to pass through the doorway, and then halted. The door remained open so long as the man stood before it, and closed when he turned away.

“It seems a pity to fool a door that is so polite,” Harry said. “Look,” he added; “there is a nice little girl trying it. See her laugh! It reminds her of ‘Alice in Wonderland.’”

Germany had a historical exhibit showing the earlier and cruder forms of dynamos; but the boys were not very well acquainted with dynamos. Mr. Douglass tried to explain how they worked; but after he found he had lost the trail of his ideas, he said frankly: “Well, I thought I knew the theory of dynamos and converters; but when I see the real machines here, they seem so much more complicated than the ones in the text-books that I find I don’t know the reason for many of the parts.”

The boys took more interest in the Western Union exhibit, where they saw Professor Morse’s earliest receiving instrument, and photographs of the original first message, “What hath God wrought!” The same words were affixed to the front of the pavilion, where not only the original instrument but the modern quadruplex system—a method of sending two messages each way, and all at once, on a single wire—was shown.

“I wish,” said Harry, “that I could see the game of leap-frog these quadruped signals must play to get by on the same track!”

Farther on were other German or Austrian exhibits, in one of which the boys saw a dome copied from that on some central telegraph station, and made up entirely of openwork so as to give room for hundreds of insulators. These insulators made up the curved surface of the dome, and the effect was very decorative, while the arrangement must have been a great saving of space.

What a lot of things there were besides! There was an electric cooking-apparatus where water was boiled upon a flat iron plate; there were clocks so contrived as to note the times a watchman touched a button on the front; there was Professor Gray’s telautograph, which merits some description.

Holding a pen as in writing, the sender marks down his message, draws a design, inscribes his name—in fact, uses the pen as freely as if it had “no connection with the establishment across the way.” But two cords extend out from this pen and work an electric apparatus so as to pull two other cords or wires just as the first ones are moved: if he makes a mark down, the other pen is pulled down too; whatever one pen does, the other must do. Of course, then, any drawing or writing made upon one machine is also made on the other—no matter whether it is in the next room, the next county, or the next State. That is the telautograph—the name being Greek for “far-self-writer.”

In the exhibit of the Commercial Cable Company were shown the method of writing messages in wavy lines, and bits of cable where the covering had been injured, and the injury—sometimes no larger than a tack would make—traced and located many miles from shore by means of delicate tests.

Down-stairs were great dynamos, electric cars, the Edison-light tower, which they had already seen in operation on their first evening at the Fair, and such an array of complicated measures, meters, and tests that the boys walked humbly out, feeling very small indeed as they passed the heroic statue of Benjamin Franklin in the portico. They felt that for the first time they understood how great a man was the printer’s boy who began by carrying two rolls under his arms and ended by carrying a thunderbolt under one arm and a scepter under the other.

“But even he,” said Harry, as he jingled a pocketful of expensive souvenirs, “once paid too dear for his whistle.”

The Electricity Building’s stocky twin, the Mining Exhibit, was right next door, and came next upon Philip’s neat list. But they did not intend to give a very long time to this building. They knew it to be full of minerals and mining machinery, and now felt small enough to admit there were two or three things in each display that they did not understand.

The first distinct feature was the Stumm exhibit, which, behind a most imposing gateway of wrought-iron, showed rails and pipes in sizes ranging from mammoth to midget, built into two towering obelisks, and two trophies that resembled iron fountains. They gazed upon these with vague admiration, and then set out to find the Tiffany diamond show; they “found it, indeed, but it made their hearts bleed” to see the crowd piled three or four deep against every loophole and knot-hole where a wheel or a band was visible.

The same result followed an attempt to inspect the Kimberley diamond-washing. They did see an enormous Zulu with embroidered suspenders pour a bucket of bluish mud into a great hopper, but though they lingered round in a most lamblike way, nothing else was to be observed.

Iowa showed a life-size model of a coal-miner at work in his gallery; and at one glance the boys learned how it would feel to be “down in a coal-mine, underneath the ground, where a ray of sunlight never can be found.” They also enjoyed hearing and seeing the steam-drills, and gazed curiously at a model of “Lot’s wife,”—a woman built of salt,—in the Louisiana Exhibit. Various mines had sent models showing just how their galleries were built, and the boys inspected them critically. But they did not find very much to detain them in the Mining Building. Other people, too, seemed more interested in the souvenir stands than in the profusion of ores and stone blocks. Montana’s silver statue of Justice seemed to the boys more of a curiosity than a work of art, and they had no patience with the long arrays of machinery that meant nothing to them. Those who were examining the exhibits were few, and the large crowds were watching the counters where small metal articles were plated, or were sitting in corners where they could rest themselves.

A Columbian guard noticed that Philip had his kodak, and said, “You can’t take pictures in here; it’s not allowed.”

“I haven’t taken any,” said Philip; and then, as the guard seemed good-natured, he added, “I don’t see anything much to take. Why don’t they let you take things in here?”

The guard grinned. “I’m sure I don’t know,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be any sense in it.”