Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1893 — Stories of the Fair. [ARTICLE]

Stories of the Fair.

Apropos of the ability of the Fair to please every .phe, Richard Harding Davis writes |ri Harper’s Weekly: “One young woman begged me not to miss a knight made entirely of prunes; another though the best thingshe had seen was a man who, during the illumination, walked a tightrrope, with fire-works attached to his feet and hands. A man I know spent the greater part of his time casting a flyline for a prize, and another in studying his interior anatomy in the Anthropological Building. ‘l’ll bet you don’t know how your liver works,’ he said to me; come with me and I’ll show you. It’s the most interesting exhibit in the place.’ Some of the stories of the Fair, whether true or not, are worth preserving—the one, for instance, of the girl who asked a Columbian Guard what was the meaning of the paintiDg titled ‘La Cigale,’ and which shows a young woman very thinly clad and shivering in the Vinter’s blast. The guard referred to the catalogue and said, promptly: 'La Cigale; it's a comic opera, and that’s Lillian Russell.’ Or that of the woman who approached a gentleman leanng over the embankment above the basin and asked him where she could see the lagoons. The gentleman pointed with his stick at the water, and the woman peered anxiously over the railing, but on finding nothing there but water, turned to him with a toss of her head, and said, scornfully: ‘You think you’re mighty smart, don’t you?’ ”