The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair, page 109 by Charles McCellan Stevens
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f they had no wings, like Daedalus, whereby they might escape.
The girls began to get nervous, and several million of them seemed to huddle together as they discussed the situation.
"I say, let's yell!" said Mary.
"But what is the use to yell," one said, "if they have determined that we are to die here?"
[Illustration: "THEY HELD TO ONE ANOTHER, AS IF FOR LIFE OR DEATH."]
Now they were becoming really frightened. The picture of their lingering death in that frightful crowd of specters was most horrifying. Their voices were becoming tremulous and hollow, and the terra-cotta figures of wild Bedouins that sat in a niche of the far wall and was multiplied a thousand times, seemed to grin at them maliciously, as if in anticipation of seeing their agonizing struggles against death by hunger. The suspense was becoming something terrible.
"I say somebody must yell."
"Let Kate yell, she's got a strong voice that might reach the street."
Kate tried to do her duty, and she said, "Oh, Say!" in a voice that would not have wakened a rabbit from its slumber.
She tried again, "Oh, say, we want to get out!" in a voice so hollow that none of the girls recognized it as hers.
"Is ze ladies seen eet all they want?" said the polite attendant, as he seemed to come before them at one step.
"Where were you?" they all cried.
"Why, I vas by ze glass about tree feet away."
"And you were listening to all we said?"
"Oh, I do not leesen. Eet ese my beesness to go out weeth you ven you ask eet."
And then they followed him out.
"What a horrid place that was and we thought at first it was so nice," said one.
"In all our lives we can never have a dream half so frightful as that was," said a third.
"One thing sure," said Mary, "this terrible experience has bound us forever and forever together; and because of our common experience in this awful adventure we must initiate Fanny into the mys