[Illustration: OHIO BUILDING.]

Uncle Sam confronts the ladies from over the way, a ferocious battery
of fifty-seven-ton Rodman guns and other monsters of the same family
frowning defiance to their smiles and wiles. His traditional dread of
masked batteries may have something to do with this demonstration. He
need not fear, however. His fair neighbors and nieces have their hands
full with their own concerns, and leave him undisturbed in his stately
bachelor's hall to "illustrate the functions and administrative
faculties of the government in time of peace and its resources as a
war-power." To do this properly, he has found two acres of ground none
too much. The building, business-like and capable-looking, was erected
in a style and with a degree of economy creditable to the officers
of the board, selected from the Departments of War, Agriculture, the
Treasury, Navy, Interior and Post-Office, and from the Smithsonian
Institution. Appended to it are smaller structures for the
illustration of hospital and laboratory work--a kill-and-cure
association that is but one of the odd contradictions of war.

The sentiments prevalent in this era of perfect peace, harmony and
balance of rights forbids the suspicion of any significance in
the fact that the lordly palace of the Federal government at once
overshadows and turns its back upon the humbler tenements of the
States. A line of these, drawn up in close order, shoulder to
shoulder, is ranged, hard by, against the tall fence that encloses
the grounds. The Keystone State, as beseems her, heads the line by
the left flank. Then come, in due order, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts and
Delaware. New Jersey and Kansas stand proudly apart, officer-like, on