and I a-listenin' to 'em some of the time, and some of the time
a-talkin' on our own hook, as is the ways of wimmen.

Mr. Bolster--and I believe he knew that we wuz from York State, and did
it partly in a boastin' way--he begun most to once to prove that Chicago
wuz the only place in America at all suitable to hold the World's Fair
in.

And I gin him to understand that I thought that New York would have been
a good place for it, and it wuz a disapintment to me and to several
other men and wimmen in the State to not have it there.

But Mr. Bolster says, "Why, Chicago is the only place at all proper for
it. Why," sez he, "in a way of politeness, Chicago is the only place for
it. In what other city could the foreigners be welcomed by their own
people as they can here?" Sez he--

"In Chicago over 75 per cent of the population is foreign."

"Yes," sez Josiah, with a air as if he had made population a study from
his youth.

But he didn't know nothin' about it, no more than I did.

Sez Mr. Bolster, "Out of a population of a little over a million
200,000, we have nine hundred and 14,000 foreigners. That shows in
itself that Chicago is the only city calculated to make our foreign
friends feel perfectly at home."

"Yes," sez Josiah, "that is very true."