The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-12-13
THE BOY AND THE FENCE.
BY RoRERTus LOVE.

full that nothing can describe his feelings.
 Though he had not been inside. he was
 very much put out.
 Ii was a terrible shock l. The Boy.
 Never since that day last summer when he invited his girl to ride on the merry
 go-round and discovered at the crucial moment that his immediate wealth footed
 up only one nickel and a copper, instead
 of two nickels as he had thought and
 The Boy experiences so sudden and sor-
 rowful sinking at the heart.
 The Boy wandered around outside the
 Fair Grounds, wishing things. First Of
 all, he wished he was ceao. Very many
 boys wish they were dead at some peri 1 ords in their lives; that is they imagine i that they wish it.
 1 But The Boy was so utterly miserable 1 that he was willing to wish anything, 1 just for change. In fact, 1t was change l that he wanted more than anything else. l So he wandered around, aimle ssly at first, l and then with a sort of semi-conscious- ness that he knew what he was there for. l He walked away from the gate through
 which the other lad had entered, but he 1 did not quit the vicinity of the Fair. On ! the contrary he skirted the exterior. He
 decided that at any rate he would see how it looked from the outside
 As matter of fact, 1t looks very fine i from the outside; but then to healthy
 boy it is no more fun to see Worlds s
 Fair from the outside than to hear a
 watch tick and not take 1t apart to see
 the wheels go round. The Boy, like all
 boys who amount to anything, was curl
 ous; he had red blood in his veins; he
 was strenuous, like President Roosevelt,
 and he wanted to see things from the 1 inside.
 1 But there was a difficulty.
 The difficulty was The Fence.
 The Fence was between The Boy and
 the Worlds Fair.
 It was q tall fence, too, and made Of 1 blanks placed solidly together. It was very much the kind of fence that shuts
 out the view of a football or baseball | game, and though there might have been a crack here and there, The Boy couiu not look through a crack and see as much as he wished of the great Worlds Fair
 which is two miles long and one mile wlde and full of hills and valleys.
 The Fence is matter of six miles long
 all together, and The boy started to walk
 around The Fence. By the time he had
 walked a mile and a half he had grown
 weary. Moreover, at every step he saw l something that tantalized him. He saw 1 towering high in the air at the northeast
 corner of the grounds a group of palaces l that can not be described by any other
 word than magnificent. No picture in
 the school library or in his fathers den | at home contained pictures half so grand. l Nowhere in all the world, in fact, was there such a splendid picture as this main picture of the Worlds Fair. l The Boy saw as much of this picture
 as may be seen from the outside. He saw l the graceful towers that crown the pal
 ace of machinery, painted in royal pur- | pie and red, and the red and blue roofs
 of this and other palaces, gleaming in the 1 sunshine He saw the beautiful facades I of the palace of varied industries, the palace of manufactures and other grand exhibit structures, their ivory-gray stan l glistening. He saw the graceful cornices l of the palaces of education and social l economy the great dome of the United States government building and the lesser dome of the Missouri state building near | by, and the marvelously beautiful Ro- i man dwelling architecture of the govern | ment fisheries edifice. He saw wonder | full vista of state buildings, some com pleted and others in course oF construc- l tion, rising among the trees south and | east of the main picture of the exposi- tion He saw between the great buildings a. portion of Art hill. upon the slope Of ] which the marvelously Cascade Gardens