in the boiler-house of the big engine; and next branches out, over
another acre and more, or forty-eight thousand square feet, the domain
of shoes and leather under a roof of its own.

Including galleries and the leather, fire and water suburbs, this
structure affords more than fifteen acres of space. Over that area it
rose like an exhalation in the spring and early summer of 1875. At the
close of winter it existed only in the drawings of Messrs. Pettit &
Wilson. Under the hands of Mr. Philip Quigley it was ready to shelter
a great Fourth of July demonstration. This matches the rapidity of
growth of its neighbor before described. The Main Building, designed
by the same firm, had its foundations laid by Mr. R.J. Dobbins,
contractor, in the fall of 1874, but nothing further could be done
till the following spring. The first column was erected, an iron
Maypole, on the first day of the month of flowers, and the last on the
27th of October. Three weeks later the last girder was in place. All
had been done with the precision of machinery, no pillar varying half
an inch from its line. Machinery, indeed, rolled the quadrant-shaped
sections of each column and riveted their flanges together with
hydraulic hammers; great steam-derricks dropped each on its appointed
seat; and the main tasks of manual labor in either building were
painting, glazing, floor-laying and erecting the ground-wall of
masonry, from five to seven feet high, that fills in the outer columns
all round to a level with the heads of theorists who, holding that _la
propriété c'est le vol_, assert the propriety of theft.

Following Belmont Avenue, the Appian Way of the Centennial, to the
north-west, we penetrate a mob of edifices, fountains, restaurants,
government offices, etc., and reach the Agricultural Building--the
palace of the farmer. The hard fate of which he habitually