The Cosmopolitan 1893-09: Vol 15 Iss 5
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THE COSMOPOLITAN. From every man according to his ability: to everyone according to his needs. SEPTEMBER, 1893. Copyright, 1893, By J. B. WALKER.
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INTRODUCTORY: THE WoRLD’s COLLEGE OF DEMOCRACY. By JOHN BRISBEN WALKER. SENSE of surprise, of delight, a suggestion of enchanted regions, come to one as he stands for the first time in the great court of the World’s Fair. During the first hour spent in this region of wonders three thoughts take possession of the mind, and when, a week later, one is passing for the last time down the Court of Honor toward the Exposition Ter- minal Station, those thoughts are still predominant. The first is of the vast change which this object lesson will make in the minds of the millions who visit it, broadening, opening, lighting up dark corners, bringing them in sympathy with their fellow-men, sending them back to homes, however humble, with thoughts that will beautify and gladden entire life- times, furnishing a topic for countless winter nights’ exchanges of opinions and themes of stories for gen- erations yet unborn. It is safe to estimate that our civilization and ad- vance in the liberal arts will be moved forward by a quarter of a century as the result of this marvellous Exposition. The second thought which forces itself
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518 upon the mind, and remains as an under- tone at every minute of a memorable week’s stay, is the ever present proof of the pleasure which this enchanted land brings to the millions who are visiting it. What a satisfaction to the men who have given their time and labor to building up this great work, to see upon the faces of the throngs who are moving up and down every aisle and every avenue, proofs of such pleasure, satisfaction and joy, such complete and absolute surrender to the surrounding beauty and interest, as come but seldom into the lives of even the luckiest of humanity. It was my good fortune to be present on the Fourth of July, when the number of people on the grounds exceeded three hundred and five thousand. It was most interesting to study the faces, to note the looks of appreciation, to hear the ex- clamations of admiration, to listen to comment which was intelligent even when the garb was homely. I walked through many miles of avenues on that day: ev- A WORLD'S FAIR. THE CENTRAL ARCH OF THE PERISTYLE erywhere unmistakable signs of enjoy- ment, everywhere the comment of intelli- gent appreciation, and above all, every- where the utmost good-nature. That, to my mind, was the most marvellous ex- hibition of all, that in a crowd containing more than three hundred thousand souls there was not, so far as I was able to see, and I carefully searched for it, one ill- tempered face, one drunken man. - What a change has come over our civilization in the past twenty-five years! Such a crowd, anywhere in the United States, be- fore the sixties or seventies, would have been the scene of endless personal con- flicts, of drunkenness, not of the-hun- dreds, but of tens of thousands, and women and children could not have taken part in such a gathering without the risk of personal injury. Yet here were only happy, smiling faces, women and children moving with perfect freedom, without even a thought that they were in the largest crowd of people ever brought to- gether within a single enclosure upon the
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American continent, all feeling kindly toward each other, all taking part in the general joy and universal pride that this was the creation of their countrymen. The contrasts between the stage-coach and giant locomotive, between the birch-bark letter of the Indian and the telautograph message of Gray, the canoe of the Esqui- maux and the electric railway, were not so great as that between the customs prev- alent in my boyhood and this realization of hopes for a new civilization in the midst of which I walked on this Fourth of July, 1893.* What a collection of people amidst what magnificent surroundings! No monarch in the history of the world ever had such palaces erected. No monarch could have brought together such objects of interest. Not even the wealthiest of monarchs could have expended a sum, * A word here in regard to the Columbian Guard. new idea of what a police force ma A WORLD'S FAIR. A PRODUCER. which probably two hundred millions does not represent, in such palaces and such exhibits. And these palaces are not the whim of one man for the pleasure of himself and his courtiers, but the first great creation of a government intended originally to be of the people, for the people and by the people, a government that perhaps has not yet attained that ideal, but promises in the early future to scientifically solve the problems of distribution—a consummation which will give to the common people the riches which they create, just as in this ex- hibition every bounty of nature, every magnificence of architecture, every crea- tion of art, is brought together and opened for the benefit, not of the rich, not of the great, not of genius, not of the fortunate class, not of the few but of all, including the humblest citizen. Nor A week’s intercourse with these officers gives one a be: not bulky. burly punishers by physical violence of the law's in- fractions, but public servants, placed there to aid in maintaining the law by advice and assistance, ready at all times with kindly word of information alert tothe necessities of visitors and determined to make the stay of each in their precincts as pleasant as possible. They convey the modern socialistic idea cae serving their fellow-men ; men by all with whom they come in contact. entlemen by the courtesy of their actions, recognized as gentlemen an I had frequent occasion to call upon these guardians, in hav- treated as gentle- ing photographed the various illustrations required for this number, and I found them at all times anxious to aid in what was evidently a useful purpose, and handling the crowds with a gentleness and consideration that made the stay of all persons pleasanter within the grounds. likely to be relegated to the niche adjoining that occupied by the volunteer fireman. It is evident that the burly policeman is
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LOOKING INWARD FROM THE PERISTYLE. did the wisdom which has brought to- gether these many people from every part of our vast nation intend this fairy land of democracy simply as a means of pleasure. Looking down the great basin toward the Statue of Liberty, toward the peri- style with its magnificent columns, sur- mounted by its exquisite groups, the whole seems a creation for pleasure. Turning one’s back upon the peristyle, with its glimpses of blue lake between the columns, the whole aspect changes. Read the inscriptions over the great building on the right, which covers more than forty acres of floor space: ‘‘ Liberal Arts ;’’ over the great building which stretches down the length of the basin on the left: «‘ Agriculture ;’’ the other magnificent structure on the left and beyond: ‘‘Machinery Hall;’’ the inscriptions over those two structures of beautiful proportions on the right of the great Hall of Administration: «‘Mining’’ and ‘‘ Electricity.’’ The scene takes ona new meaning. It is no longer a play- ground ; this is the great College of De- mocracy. It is a school in which the millions are entered for a course of in- struction, which embraces the following branches : 1. Political ; government by the people. 2. Ethical ; the love of our fellow-men. 3. Art; the knowledge and apprecia- tion of the beautiful. 4. Science; not alchemy and astrology, but modern science, useful, up to date, made to serve the purposes not of the few but of the many. 5. Agriculture; the noblest of man’s pursuits, with its thousand attendant branches. 6. The study of transportation, of such vast import to every human being; an object lesson going to show that transpor- tation, from the mowement of a letter or telegraph message up to the carriage of human bodies, is essentially a govern- mental function and that only when it is taken from the hands of individuals, who The Editor of THE CosMoPoLITAN desires to acknowledge the courtesy of Mr. C. D. Arnold, the offi- cial photographer of the World’s Fair, who personally superintended the taking of the photographs for this series of articles.
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S a " Q & S = N LIBERAL ARTS BUILDING.
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522 use it to create great fortunes at the ex- pense of the many, will it cease to be a menace to our freedom and become the economic factor which it should be in our development as a people. 7. Woman's place; her equality with men ; her ability and right to fill places in life on the plane occupied by the male sex. 8. The functions of government as shown in the Governmental exhibit. 9g. A school of applied mechanics and engineering. A WORLD'S FAIR. South American neighbors, and perhaps those of Europe as well. Each student takes in a smattering of the entire course, and when he has taken his degree in the general college turns his steps to the school of his own special branch, where his education becomes specific. Is he an engineer? He finds in the great trusses of the Liberal Arts building, the con- struction of the Ferris wheel, whose thir- teen-ton cars holding fitteen hundred peo- ple, move around a circumference of 785 feet, the highest car hanging 264 feet ON THE But why go on? The list does not readily resolve itself, even under these general classifications. It is endless in its subdivisions. Perhaps no better idea can be given of the vastness of the ex- hibit than by repeating the calculations, made recently by someone familiar with the subject as a whole, to the effect that two minutes spent upon each exhibit at the Fair would consume a period of thir- ty-two years. To this school students are being drawn by every train from the most remote quar- ters of the land, and it will even have its influence upon the civilization of our S LAGOON. above the ground, in the exhibits of the Transportation building or Machinery Hall, the special subjects which attract his attention. Is he an humble shoe- maker, or perhaps a manufacturer of shoes? He finds in a building devoted to the leather art the latest patterns, the latest processes of tanning, the latest machinery for manufacture, the most novel and artistic designs in the thousand and one objects to which leather is de- voted. If an artist, he has beauties which will require days of study in the great Art Palace at the north end of the Lagoon, where are endless mazes and
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labyrinths of walls covered with the work of the artists of all lands. A printer finds in Machinery Hall the most modern typesetting machinery, presses which turn out their ninety thousand per hour, folding machines of the most recent, delicate and complicated pattern. If a horticulturist, he wanders under acres of glass, examining fruits and plants brought hither at great expense from dis- tant lands, and known to him only by book illustration. Ifa farmer, he has acre upon acre of the productions of other lands to compare ; he has in the Govern- ment building an opportunity to make a scientific study of the pests which infest his crops, or the most scientific methods of fertilizing. gece A WORLD'S FAIR. 523 If an electrical engineer, he finds the most perfect works of all the great elec- trical establishments which have sprung up almost within the past ten years, and which now constitute so important a branch of our industry. But itis not the expert alone who seeks the electrical exhibit. It is the one which interests all comers, where all are open-mouthed at the marvels of invention and discovery of the past quarter of a century, where men stand trying to gaze into the future and ponder upon the marvellous uses of electricity which must be in store for us at no very distant date. One electrical engineer said to me: ‘You have here everything that was un- dreamed of twenty-five years ago. You have here the culmination of invention and science. You see here the acme of modern progress. It is worth while to note this carefully, because if we should have an- other exhibit twenty five years from now the probability is that not one of the things which seem so wonderful to you now, will then be valued. They will have passed into the realm of those which were in the beginring but have become useless. They will have been superseded by in- ventions so much more useful, so much more wonderful, that it is barely within the compass of any mind to even conceive THE FERRIS —igis WHEEL.
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524 of what the future has in store for us.’’ And so each student, after completing his curriculum in the general university, turns to the school of his own applied art or science, and having completed his edu- cation, will go back to his bench or work- shop or laboratory with new thoughts, with a broader comprehension of the pos- sibilities, with enthusiasm for what the future holds in store for him. Nor has the world ever seen such a course of lectures as has been delivered at this university under the auspices of the World’s Congress Auxiliary. They have been given on every branch of sci- ence, every branch of art, every branch of religion. Art, medicine, journalism, au- thorship, philology, all have sent to these congresses their greatest thinkers. The very brain of the world may be said to have been concentrated in the lecture halls of this University of Democracy. Leaders in all branches of thought have come together for consultation and com- parison of notes. What will not be the result to these leaders themselves? What new ideas will they not receive? What great results will not be evolved from this meeting of brains? A WORLD'S FAIR. But is it all work and no play? On the contrary, after his morning at the university has been spent in study, the student wends his way to the playground, the Plaisance. And no afternoon could be devoted more delightfully. Hither have come the nations of the earth to minister to his enjoyment: the Arab, on his splendid steed with nostrils dilated and champing at the bit, spurs, blunted lance in hand, gallops after his fellow. And we may see the sports of the desert and take part in the applause which comes up from the encampment of Arab women and children on the other side of the enclosure, when one spearman has planted his blunted lance fairly in the back of the man heis pursuing. A street in Cairo, with its donkey ride, its camel ride, its confused, shouting, noisy, good- natured crowd. Then, at close of day, the dinner may be taken in old Vienna, ata table in the open air, with band playing and lights gleaming from the ancient windows which surround the courtyard, until a man-at-arms of an age long past, in slashed breeches and hose, lantern and spear in hand, makes the rounds and re- calls the fagt that another day of enjoy- 5 : > asian a = “EULA itil ati Hh : Lot hatte. sbbik hers . ry THE AGRICULTURAL BUILDING.
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x ~ AS cy ” Q Q S = XN aaa tH TA Ee uit ay iif AN APPROACH TO THE LIBERAL ARTS BUILDING,
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ment, of instruction, of unalloyed inno- cent pleasure has come to a close. That knowledge which comes by hard- est work and hardest study is undoubtedly the most valuable, but the university of the future will recognize that the vast majority of mankind is incapable of men- tal acquisition if toil and labor are re- quired. The kindergarten idea must be the foundation of all schools for the mill- ions: to hold the attention, to cause the mind to work unwittingly. That in- struction will be the most valuable which makes the process of learning easy, which impresses the mind by object lessons, holds the attention and fills the brain with information, or starts, without the knowl- edge of the recipient, a process of thought leading to a more perfect knowledge of life and its affairs. What was the other thought with which this subject was started, this subject so absorbing, so interesting, so full of possibilities, so endless, that one might wander on forever were this not merely to serve as an introduction to the articles of those who will treat the World’s Fair from the standpoint of professional knowledge or wider ex- perience? Ah, yes! The third thought was this: Whata pity to destroy all this beauty, all this loveliness, all this costliness, all this that is so well adapted for man’s education and enjoy- ment. The great university which Chicago is establishing is rearing its first buildings just beyond the Plaisance. Why should it not embody this University of Democ- racy as part of a magnificent whole? Is it right to spend twenty millions of dol- lars upon buildings which are to disap- pear asinanight? These structures are really not of an impermanent character. They are of strong steel arches, and even the exterior can be easily repaired and kept in shape. In China I have had buildings pointed out to me as more than a hundred years old, whose outer walls were lathed and plastered. The things + THE ART GALLERIES. Sy the ee = Aun
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WORLD'S FAIR. 527 *i Res a ——.- = THE HORTICULTURAL AND ILLINOIS STATE BUILDING. that are now done in these great build- ings for exhibition purposes, could be car- ried on for profit. The city of Chicago should become the owner of these build- ings as it already owns the ground upon which they are erected. Then it could lease the leather building, for instance, to a great manufacturer, who would bind himself to make his plant so complete that it would be a school of instruction at all times to the maker and dealer. The press manufacturers of the United States could well afford to keep under one roof every model of their skill. I had occasion, less than a year ago, to make a study of this class of work, and spent many weary days tramping through printing establishments in order that I might be able to comprehend the latest improvements and get an idea of the best machinery required for the manufacture of The Cosmopolitan. I could have ac- complished this purpose at the Exposition with one-tenth of the labor then required. So the great hall of cars and locomo- tives and boats could become a place a am ~e where transportation and railway officials could be sure to find at all times the latest improvements in rolling-stock or boats. And this applies with like force to the Electrical building, and equally to almost every other class of exhibits. The Lib- eral Arts building could be turned intoa great bazar, and the exhibits be main- tained in proportions so vast that buyers would flock from all parts of the country. It is Chicago’s opportunity. The whole range of arts within easy daily reach for demonstration ; an object lesson, teach- ing the dignity of labor; an opportunity for the poorer student to earn the needed portion of his college expenses ; greatest of all, a central point, at which could be exhibited the progress of invention, the perfection of mechanical skill, the most recent advances in the whole range of art and science. It will bea pity if Chica- go, which has shown itself so full of re- sources, shall fail to seize this oppor- tunity.
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A FIRST IMPRESSION. By WALTER BESANT. N the opening of a certain Congress —one of those recently held in con- nection with the World’s Fair — there was an evening Reception. At this Func- tion, after the manner of the American and English folk, speeches were deliv- ered. There were nine of these, not counting the chairman. Eight, still not counting the chairman, though they be- gan on other subjects, presently, because it was impossible to avoid it, dropped into the subject of the World’s Fair, and spoke of it in such terms of eulogy as the Exhi- bition itself compelled and their command of language allowed. When it came to the last speaker, a modest Englishman, and therefore no orator, he too would fain have spoken of the World’s Fair, after two days’ experience, but all that he had proposed to say had been said before he arose by the preceding eight. All his ad- jectives, in fact, had been already used. Without adjectives how can a man ex- press admiration or amazement or their opposites? And his—those that he needed—had all been used already by the — ~~“) — speakers who came before him. There- fore he had to content himself with a few phrases of commonplace and then to sit down, conscious of the comparison, greatly to his own disadvantage, that would naturally be drawn between his halting hesitancy and thenational fluency; between American and English speech- making. Something of the same diffi- culty is met with again, when, after all the special correspondents and all preceding visitors have been at work upon the Fair forthree months, describing, admiring and exhausting the adjectives, one sits down to write on first impressions. What— whose—impressions, first or last, have not been already offered to the public over and over and overagain? Yet, afterall, manis individual. Each of us sees with his own eyes, and no two pair of eyes are alike. To begin with, such a paper cannot be critical. The exhibition, the whole world’s industries, the illustration and record up to the day of the whole advance of science in every department, the col- lection of all the arts now practised in the
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A WORLD'S FAIR. world of art: such a colossal enterprise can only be surveyed, subject by subject. The World’s Fair, in short, is another edition, the latest and most complete, and by far the best illustrated, of an Ecumeni- cal Encyclopeedia, published in one enor- mous volume. In this collection of his- tory, geography, science, literature, art and everything else, one can, perhaps, by careful search, discover omissions, and an expert might amuse himself, and gratify his envy, by reporting, or pretending to find, incompleteness of treatment in his own subjects. But no ordinary visitor, no single writer, can hope to produce any paper, appreciative, critical or adequate, of this Encyclopedia as a whole. The wise man, therefore, will not attempt such a thing. Where the visitor happens to be a liter- ary man, one who is in the habit of writ- ing and speaking of things offered to the public, he wanders about the courts and galleries of the Exhibition, oppressed, far more than the inarticulate person, by the vastness of the subject. To such a man the great truth that he cannot say any- thing adequate, and that he need not try, falls upon his spirit, when it is once grasped, like a cool shower upon a hot It lends a new and quite pecu- He is free from afternoon. liar charm to the Show. 529 the obligation of thinking what he should say ; he need not try to reduce impres- sions into phrases, as the school - boy turns the conditions of a problem into equations ; he need not cast about for a formula, or an epigram, or anything in- cisive, or a new adjective ; he need not be anxious to pronounce a judgment worthy of his reputation, if he has any ; he can become an ordinary visitor, silent, open- mouthed—of whom nothing is expected ; he can be carried away by the mere sem- blance and outward show of things, by the mere profession of beauty and mag- nificence. Into every other Art gallery, every other kind of Show he carries his measuring rod and his canons of art. These, in the World’s Fair, he can leave behind him, unless he means to conse- crate a considerable part of his natural span to the contents of the buildings: he will be content to enter into the spirit of the designers, and to suffer himself to fall into the restful spirit of one who re- ceives without question and is thankful. My own method, with a new poem, a new play, a new novel, a new essay, is to yield myself up altogether to the story ; I place myself in the author’s hands ; I try to find out what he wishes to tell me, and I give him every chance to hypnotize me into absolute and complete subjection A WHEEL-CHAIR STATION NEAR THE WOMAN'S BUILDING.
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53° to his will. When he has finished ; when the story is over ; when the afterglow it- self, which should last a long time, is also over: then, and not till then, let me bring to bear upon the subject such critical powers as may be mine. And, since other things press, the latter process is fre- quently deferred and finally forgotten. You would be astonished—you who want to criticise first, and to enjoy, afterwards, anything that may be left—if you could find out how much mental worry is saved by this, the inverted method, and how much more solid satisfaction one may get in this way from modern art. Yonder por- trait, for instance. It is a striking face ; there must be an interesting story written on that face, if one could read it ; it is in- structive to stand in front of it for a while, in order to read that story. Says the critic : ‘‘ The painting is thin ; the shadows are not deep enough; the drawing is feeble ; the face is flat ; the flesh is hard.’’ Very likely. Very likely, indeed, my friend. I do not greatly care if it is as you say. And, to be sure, now one has Ss THE ILLINOIS BATTLESHIP, A WORLD'S FAIR. finished reading the story, and has begun upon the critical chapter, one perceives— but let us go on to the next picture. Per- haps we shall find another episode from the Human Comedy written there; it is a pity to waste time, of which we have so little, in the discovery of faults which we cannot mend, and in telling the world what the world may, if it cares, find out for itself. For these reasons, I am not sorry to have no adjectives left. They have all been used already by descriptive and crit- ical writers. There is not a single pict- uresque word left for me to use, not a phrase left for me to invent. Yet these are to be my ‘‘ first impressions.’’ Let us fall back on the old adjectives. It is so big, to begin with. The guide- books spare one not a single fact to illus- trate this vastness: They tell us, to a cart- load, how many tons of materials have been used, how many acres of glass give light to the whole, how many acres of ground are covered. Yet figures by them- selves convey no impression of vastness.
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=a The human mind cannot grasp the mean- ing of figures when they get beyond a certain number; the native Australian, for instance, who can only understand the number of his ten fingers, uses for all numbers above and beyond the tenth, one single expression—he says ‘‘eighty- eight.”” Why eighty-eight instead of anything else? I know not. But, to me, as to the Australian child of nature, these figures of tons, acres, cart-loads, are exact- ly represented by theterm ‘eighty-eight.”’ It is big—oh, so big ! How big? ‘‘Eighty- eight.’”” What.on earth does one want more? And its cost has been an amount hitherto inconceivable. How much? O, ‘‘eighty-eight.”’ Is it possible? These statistics are most interesting. We will now lay the guide-book on the grass, for any one to pick up, and go on without it. Apart from their curious tendency to become ‘“ eighty-eight,’’ figures, when they are very large—indeed, and things in general, when they are very large— have a way of saddening him who con- templates them. Vastness of all kinds oppresses the soul with sadness. For in- stance, from the railway between Turin and the top of the pass over the Alps, one looks A TERRACE ON THE CALIFORNIA BUILDING. out upon the grandest mass of mountain —icy glaciers, ruthless precipices, snowy slopes, relentless aiguilles—that one can find in Europe. One is overawed with the mere vastness of this mass. I once observed, during the journey, a girl who turned from the contemplation of that mighty mass of mountain with eyes over- flowing. She quickly put up her hand- kerchief and blushed for shame that she should be thus moved. I longed to say to her, but could not, for the ordinary rea- sons: ‘*My child, you cry because the thing is so great; for the same reason, too, Icould cry. How this effect is pro- duced; what is the connection between vastness and this emotion ; why the lach- rymal duct is affected and the pockethand- kerchief required—I know not. If you please, we will look out once more and weep together.’’ Or there is—which must be the leading case on this subject—the Weeping Xerxes. He wept at the sight of his immense army when he held his big March Past. He said he wept to think that in a hundred years they would be all dead. The Persian monarch did not know much. He wept, in reality, be- cause the immensity of the multitude
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532 (the total number oF men who marched with him into Greece was ‘eighty -eight’’) quite over- powered him. That was the reason, and nothing else. The Bigness of the World’s Fair first strikes and be- wilders — one tries in vain to under- stand it—and then it saddens. I ob- serve that most peo- ple, like Xerxes, set down their tears to the evanescent na- ture of the show. “Three months more,’’ they say, ‘cand it will be gone like a dream. We weep. The pity of it!’? Nay, dear friends, but the Vastness of it! Then there is the Unexpectedness of it! Never was any place so Unexpected. The special correspondents and the illus- trated papers have done their best to bring A WORLD'S FAIR. the place home to us: but, you see, descrip- were fine. tion never describes. Read any descrip- tion you please, written by the most pict- uresque of living word painters: nothing that he writes can ever convey a real im- pression. Oh! you may point at once, on arrival, to the Woman’s building, or to the Manufactures build- ing; you recognize them because you saw the pictures in the Illus- trated London News. Quite faithful pictures they were, yet—yet— did you expect, at all, what you see before you? What did the de- scriptive writer and the artist between them, teach you? The form of the thing, not its sur- roundings and its set- ting; not its atmos- phere; not its color ; not year of grace ! its individuality. These things can- not be put into words or into draw- ings, and they make up the Unex- pectedness. Then again, the Poetry of the thing! Did the conception spring from one brain, like the Iliad? Were these buildings — every one, to the unprofessional eye, a miracle of beauty —thus arranged so as to produce this marvellous effect of beauty by one mas- ter brain, or by « many? For never. before, in any age, in any country, has there been so won- derful an arrange- ment of lovely buildings as at Chi- cago in the present The Hanging Gardens of Babylon—which some of us may remem- ber as belonging to a previous existence— There were some very fine things in Rome, especially when Nero was emperor and architect, but the common people saw little of his palace. There was rather a nice little show in London thirty years ago, and another, not with- out its points, in Philadelphia, seventeen A TRADE BUILDING ON THE CANAL.
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years ago. But no where, at any time, has there been presented to the world any group of buildings so entirely beautiful in themselves and in their arrangement, as this group at Chicago, which they call the World’s Fair. No one who has not seer: these build- ings believes those who unreservedly pro- claim the unexampled beauty of the group. Why? First, because, as maintained above, description cannot describe; and next, because out of America, no one be- lieves that there are any beautiful build- ings in America; and thirdly, because, to the English mind, Chicago presents itself as the most prosaic spot on the whole of this earth. Those English travellers who have writ- ten of Chicago dwell upon its vast wealth, its ceaseless activity, its enormous blocks of houses and offices, upon everything that is in Chicago except that side of it which is revealed in the World’s Fair. Yes, it is avery busy place; its wealth is boundless, but it has been able to conceive somehow, and has carried into execution somehow, A WORLD'S FATR. ARCH OVER CANAL. 533 the greatest and most poetical dream that we have ever seen. Call it no more the White City on the Lake; it is Dreamland. Apollo and the Muses with the tinkling of their lyres, drown the bells of the train and the trolley; the people dream epics; Art and Music and Poetry belong to Chi- cago; the Hub of the universe is trans- ferred from Boston to Chicago; this place must surely become, in the immediate future, the center of the nobler world— the world of Art and Letters. As for Exhibitions—things shown—I do not love them. Early in life I was prejudiced against them. It was in this way. I wish —now—that I had been born in the seventies, in which case I should at this moment bedelightfully young. Not having been consulted, so far as I remem- ber, I was born in good time for the exhib- ition of fifty-one. I was taken there as one ofasmall company of boys. The visit was designed strictly for instruction. Improve- ment was ‘rubbed in’’—as they say in ninety-three—during the whole of that long, dull, dreary day. We were told not to
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A WORLD'S FAIR. LA RABIDA. forget this and to make a note of that. I remember—it is forty-two years since that day— how wonder and delight quickly gave way to satiety, and that, in its turn to utter weariness, and that to silent apathy. What do I remember out of it all? The Koh-i-noor—because it was so small a thing to have such a fuss made about it—the statue of the Greek Slave, because one of the boys afterwards said that had it not been for an assurance that tea and cakes would begin immediately, he would have hit that Greek Slave over her unprotected head in order to begin a row—and a group of stuffed marmosets playing a game of quoits. That is all I remember about the great Exhibition of 1851. Exhibitions thus became, to my youth- ful mind, collections brought together for the instruction and improvement of youth under the pretence of amusement. I still regard exhibitions with some prejudice, and I still look around—I never fail to find them—for the family party trailing round the galleries; for the weariness of the children’s limbs, the dragging of their feet, the set mouth and the glazing eye. What I have desired all my life is an Ex- hibition without exhibits, and at Chicago that great and long-felt want is provided. There are, I believe, exhibits provided in the buildings, if you choose to goand look at them. But you need not. For the un- commercial drummer, the bagman with- out his bags, for one who is not in the least interested in machinery, processes, and the way in which things are made, there need be no exhibits at all and one can meditate undisturbed by the intrusion of exhibits, as long as he pleases, about and around and among the buildings, and the waters and the walks of the Fairy palace beside the lake. Next, there are the people at the Fair. It is part of my profession to watch peo- ple. As they pass along the street, or as they sit in the tram car, or in the railway train, it is a never ending joy to watch them. When they are silent one can read their faces, build up stories out of the sad- ness, the resignation, the impatience, or the happiness which they cannot choose but reveal all unconsciously. When they talk, which they do whenever they have companions, they reveal themselves still more. Then one listens to the most curi- ous details and the most astonishing anec- dotes. Thus one becomes aware that in our crowded cities there are indeed many
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SR eR EE RTE MEE Lt sre S cy ” Q PS S = XN AGRICULTURAL BUILDING
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A WORLD'S FAIR. AN ENTRANCE TO THE FISHERIES BUILDING. other ways of life than we know. There- fore, it goes without saying, that next to the buildings, the most interesting ex- hibit in the World’s Fair is that of the people who crowd it. At present, they are all Americans. Once or twice, here and there, one per- ceives an Englishman; one catches the English accent, thicker of speech, quicker of speech, than the American. Once or twice one hears, not without a sense of incongruity, that intonation of East Essex which has conquered London, and pro- duced the patois known as Cockney. Here and there are Germans, but they are American Germans. The great mass of people are Americans, and as might be expected, people of what in Europe they call the lower class. Perhaps this invid- ious distinction cannot be admitted in a land of equality. Let us say then, that ||| the mass of the people are, apparently, of that very large class who do not possess thehighestculture, the widest knowledge, the finest education or the largest fortunes —in a word, the Average People. It is for them that this Fair has been designed; every national work must be designed for the Average People; not for the few at the top or for the helpless lot in the gutter, Es ae Ue A free WEST FACADE OF THE LIBERAL ARTS BUILDING. Mg
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A WORLD'S FAIR. COURT OF but for the Average. ‘Therefore, I walked with the crowd, and looked on with their eyes, and tried to learn what they were learning. Even a small crowd is difficult to follow collectively; one presently has to make a selection. A pair is best, a married pair, not too young, of the average age, ap- pearance, dress and manners. Such a pair I found at the Fair, both of them, to look at, from thirty-five to forty years of age. They hadarustic look, yet not of the rusticity which we findin Great Britain. They came from the country —that was certain—but one can hardly explain why it wascertain. This pair, at the time when I lit upon them, had been walking about for a long time; the woman was almost over- come with weariness; the man had still some strength and resolution left, but the lines in his face were hardening; he had seen already more than his mind could absorb: the rest of the day, though this he knew not, would be unprofitable. «See here,’’ he said, ‘I must see this’’—he stood before I know not what exhibit in “] know not what gallery his wife murmured patiently. found a bench and sat down waiting. A sudden change fell upon her face; the deep lines vanished; the glazed eye brightened, but with a far-off gaze; she lifted her LA RABIDA. ‘If you must,”’ Then she drooping head and her lips parted. For, you see, though she was sitting all in the midst of marvels; though she was in a treasure house, she had gone clean away out of it, careless of all; in the flesh she was in it, but in the spirit she was back again in her own home, and she was put- ting out the cups and saucers, for it was near time for supper. No traveller, says the philosopher, can take away from a place more than he brought thither. This is a hard saying. What, then, will this Average couple who are so tired out by the many things they have seen, carry away fromthe Fair? As- suredly, if they were ignorant of machin- ery, of science, of arts, of the thousand inventions, ingenuities and cunning de- vices of men before they entered the place, they will go out of it in equal ignorance.
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538 To see the whirring of wheels does not teach the application of steam, nor is one taught the conquest of electricity by listening to the tubes of a phonograph. A machine will remain, to the Average Pair, a contrivance for saving labor and for doing a thing quickly. In the same way one does not learn Art by walking through a picture gallery. A picture, to the Average Pair, will remain a painted story and generally a story not worth the trouble of telling. But they will see something that they know; something done infinitely better than they ever saw it before. Agricultural implements and scientific cultivation of the soil, women’s work—needlework and all kinds of work —food stuffs, carriages, harness, house- hold furniture—all the things that belong to the daily life, and seeing these things they will compare, learn, reflect and go home all the wiser. A WORLD'S FAIR. Let us remember that many of these people be- long to that vast country west and south and northwest of Chicago which is newly Again ; they have had a vision. settled, newly populated, and without noble or venerable buildings. Americans of the east are brought up in, or near, cities which are full of great buildings, some of which are beautiful and even venerable. Our own people live among the most beautiful village churches and the most lovely old houses. Our little island is crammed with an- cient memories and places made sacred, even to the rus- tics, by mere memories. This Average western couple have no such surroundings, and no such memories. Here they see, for the first time, such buildings as they have never before imagined. These lines of columns; these many statues standing against the deep, blue sky; these domes; these carvings and towers and marvels reflected in the waters of the Lagoon —will this Pair ever forget them ? When they haveseen at night the innumerable lines of white electric light; the domes outlined with the yel- low light ; the electric fount- ain ; the illuminations; the gleaming waters—will this weary Pair from an unlovely Average village—can they— 41 ever forget the scene? Never. It will remain in their minds as the Vision of St. John—an actual sight of the New Jeru- salem ; all the splendors that the apostle describes they will henceforth understand. A new sense has been awak- ened in them. Possessed by this great gift, they will go home again. Is this all? I think not. In the achievements of science, machinery, elec- tricity; in the thousand applications of Art; in everything that has been brought before them ; they will learn re- spect for things if not for those who make them—things which they cannot make for themselves. Respect is a lesson very hard to teach to people who are ignorant
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A WORLD'S FAIR. of what things mean. How can they re- spect a great painter when they do not know a great painting? Therefore, this Average Pair will not respect this or that great man, because they cannot compare, but they will respect the great thing done. And they will see what is done by other countries, which is a very whole- some lesson for the Average Man, who is apt to think all other countries, in every- thing, far below his own. This Average Man will in future acknowledge that some good things may be doneeven in England and France and Germany. And if they are so fortunate as to be guided in the right direction the Average Pair will be led to look a little into the his- tory ofhumanity. They will, if they areso guided, learn to take a wider view of this world, to see in the advance of man the development of some purpose hitherto ob- scurely understood. There are thesavages in their place, the archzological things in their place; everything that tells of man’s slow and gradual advance, step by step. Do you think it is a bad thing for the Av- 539 erage Pair so to be lifted out of their in- sulation and made to feel themselves, how- ever imperfectly, part and parcel of the chain whose beginning can never be traced, whose end will never arrive? But I fear they will not get that guidance. To make an end of First Impressions : It is a very good thing for all of us, espe- cially for those who live in cities andeasily fall into the belief that «all the world is old, and all the leaves are brown, and all the tales are told, and all the wheels run down,’’ that the world is, on the other hand, still quite young and vigorous ; that there are places where the abounding vitality of youth is always in evidence ; that there is no past but that of child- hood, and the present is nothing but an eager race, a contest of athletes, and the future is—they know not what, save that they live in sure and certain hope and faith that it is rich and splendid and that there will be glorious battle for the foremost prize. Such a place is the Capital of the West; of such youth and strength are the actual working burgesses of that city. UNDER THE LIBERAL ARTS BUILDING.
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ae oe . HER § BE THE FOREIGN BUILDINGS. By PRICE COLLIER. | N addition to the exhibits in the differ- ent departments of the Fair, many foreign nations haveerected separate build- ings, in which they have their headquar- ters and, in most instances, also objects of national interest. They are very hap- pily situated along the lake front, ex- tending back as far as the North pond. If one were to choose the most costly building, or the most quaint, or the most attractive, or the most bizarre, for a first description, it were easy to make a selec- tion. France, however, in her own words, ‘‘En acceptant, la premiére entre toutes les nations étrangéres, de participer a l’ex- position universelle 4 Chicago,’’ deserves, perhaps, first mention. The main build- ing, with two pavilions connected by a semi-circular colonnade, and the inclosure thus formed is a lovely garden, brought to its present beauty by the skill of the assistant municipal landscape gardener from Paris. ‘The pavilion at the north end contains an exhibit from the munic- ipality of Paris. Here one may see mod- els of everything used in the fire depart- ment, police and street-cleaning depart- ments, the public and the technical schools —the exhibits, in fact, being an object lesson in the study of the care of Paris. In the south pavilion is a large room which is an exact copy of the salon d’ Hér- cule at Versailles, where Louis xvI. re- ceived our ambassador, Benjamin Frank- lin. Tapestries and furniture of exqui- site texture and form, and rare paintings, and many relics of the patriot Lafayette, are here. Indeed, this room is an expres- sion of sentiment, and a very fitly chosen one. The only bitof bad color in the room is, alas! a chair-cushion embroidered for Lafayette by Martha Washington.
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A WORLD'S FAIR. Next door is the Ceylon pavilion. This is built throughout of native woods and was put up in Ceylon, brought here in pieces, and put together again by native workmen. The architecture is represent- ative of the ancient temples in Kandy and the main object of its being here is to represent the enormous tea industry of the island, which exported twenty million pounds of tea in 1892 alone. A beautiful pillar of carved ebony and satinwood, in the middle of the building, contains a stairway leading to a daintily-furnished tea-room above. Below are exhibits of ebony and other woods, basket work, tea, coffee, minerals, and samples of practically all the products of the island. The delicacy and intricacy of the hand-carving through- out the building almost makes the eyes impatient, and one sees how time and la- bor are of no account there, and how, verily, fifty years of Europe are better than a cycle of Cathay. The Germans may be proud of the build- ing next in line, probably the largest and most costly of all. The massive walls are richly decorated and the roof is covered with glistening glazed tiles, and the style is technically that of the early German re- naissance. ‘The chief exhibits inside this 541 German house are the publishers’ collec- tive exhibit, and examples of church dec- orative art, the latter arranged becomingly in a chapel adapted to the purpose. The construction of this building alone cost the German government something over a quarter of a million of dollars, and there is no evidence here in this splendid example of middle-age Teutonic architec- ture of the internecine monetary discus- sions now rife in the Vaterland. South of this and also facing on the lake front, stands the rather somber-look- ing building of Spain. It is an exact re- production of a three-fourth’s section of the silk exchange at Valencia. The sec- tion here represented shows the column- hall and tower, wherein bankrupt: mer- chants were confined. Inside the build- ing are the offices of the Spanish com- mission and many interesting relics of Columbus, including some of his letters, and a sword which belonged to his vi- vacious and lovely patroness, Isabella. At the extreme south end of this line of foreign buildings, and still facing on the lake front, are the Canadian and English buildings. The Canadian building is a plain, unornamented structure, designed by the Department of Public Works in etl INDIA,
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NEW SOUTH WALES. Ottawa. The main building is two stories high with three entrances and around the whole of the house runs a broad veranda. In the building the interior walls, floors and ceilings are of highly polished native woods. Strange to say, the English building, officially named the Victoria house, has for near neighbors the two detestations of the provincial Britisher, viz.: a huge soda-water pavilion and a colossal clam- bake pavilion. Thehouse itself is said to A WORLD'S FAIR. be, at any rate by the «: bobby ”’ at the entrance, ‘‘ haf the time of Enery Heighth.” Itis a half-timber build- ing, with facings of red brick and oval windows. Inside the building arethe offices of the British commission, a large reception-room and library, a post-office exhibit showing the development of the postal system in Great Britain, and some few pieces of fine pottery. The crowd who pass through the build- ing, between cords, become animated only when they see the large oil painting of the ‘‘Queen’s Garden Party,’’ which introduces them to royalties in profusion—and in frock-coats —and to such celebrities as Henry Irv- ing, Ellen Terry, Gladstone and others, at whom they point rejoicingly with fing- ers and umbrellas, in the vain desire to feel at home and welcome, amid such a labyrinth of red-tape. Leaving the lake front now, the other foreign buildings are grouped together be- hind the line of houses just described. e* FRANCE.
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The most imposing are those of Brazil, Sweden, the East India building, and that of Venezuela. If one will consent to take his luncheon at the Polish café—and probably no one having reached the age of gastronomic consent would willingly do so without some special inducement— he may sit upon the upper balcony of that hostelry and get a capital panoramic view of the foreign buildings. At the extreme right end of the line he can see England’s house, and near it the Australia house of her colony New South Wales ; the Hayti government building, with its broad piaz- zas and central dome; the back of the Spanish building ; the towers and turrets of the German building ; and just under his right elbow is the East India build- ing, of yellow staff, with decorations in the heavy, luscious colors of the East, with yards and yards of delicate tracery, and inside all idols, ivory, tapestry and tea. Just in front of him he may look A WORLD'S FAIR. 543 right through the handsome entrance into the Swedish building, and farther to the left there are the buildings of Brazil, Tur- key, Venezuela, and, way to the north and west and just out of sight, on an island, the dainty house of Japan, where dolls might take tea together, but into which no man belonging to the civiliza- tion of double-soled boots would think of going. The lacquer work and the cun- ningly-devised joinery work of the Japan building must be seen to be appreciated. One is somewhat surprised to find that bankrupt Turkey contrives to be so charmingly en evidence, surrounded as she is by the pavilions of her creditors. The building is entirely of native woods, carved by hand, and represents thousands of hours of painful chiselling. The ur- bane and beturbaned Turk, who, in a half hour’s chat, claimed that his re- ligion was quite as good, and showed con- clusively, by material proofs, that his “ al” HL iliac lite, wiht il — —_! A 12 + j , I ilaas pay ! ee ul ENGLAND.
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544 cigarettes and coffee were much better than ours, told us that here were concen- trated all of Turkey’s exhibit. There is a wild profusion of inlaid work, minerals, rugs, ores, dried fruits, mineral waters, wines, tobacco and silks and brilliant- colored stuffs galore. The building rep- resents a Turkish kiosk, or summer chéa- teau, and is almost the most remarkable of the smaller foreign buildings. Directly north of this Turkish kiosk is the splendid, great, white building of Brazil. The plan is in the form of a Greek cross, and a central dome rises to a height of nearly 150 feet. There are al- legorical figures, representing the repub- | lic of Brazil, in bas-reliefs on the facades. Among many other remarkable achieve- ments of the guide-book, with which the visitors are all armed, the most daring is the construction of the Venezuela build- ing ‘‘out of white marble, in the Greco- Roman style of architecture.’’ The build- ing is of staff, pure and simple—staff be- ing, by the way, a composition of plaster, cement and hemp—but so cunningly col- ored as to resemble marble. The exhibit includes paintings by Cristoval Rojas, Herrera, Torro, and one or two other na- CANADA, A WORLD'S FAIR. NORWAY. tive painters, and many samples of min- erals, marbles, woods, coffee, cocoa, drugs, fibers, and other products; and here again, as in thecase of Turkey, the wholeof theex- hibit from Venezu- ela is under the roof of this building. The Swedish building, which suffers no indiges- tion, apparently, from its nearness to the Polish café, has a floor area of more than 10,000 feet and was manufactured in Sweden, tempo- rarily put together there, taken to pieces and brought here. It is built of wood and different kinds of brick from the different brick- kilns of Sweden, and imposes, rather thanisimposing, by virtue of its amor- phous outlines. Un- derneath its roof is a collection of sporting goods,
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furniture, embroideries, ores, steel, mod- els wearing the native costume, and a handsome painting of the capitol of Sweden. The Swedish peasant girl pluck- ing the petals of a daisy, to see ‘s'il m’aime, un peu, beaucoup, passionément ou pas du tout,’’ who stands in a niche in the wall, gives a friendly air of kinship with all the world and makes one feel at home. Sweden is represented in this building also by a well-arranged exhibit of gymnastic apparatus, and of the world wide known Sloyd-school methods. The building of Norway, not far away, is a small, oddly-built affair, all gables and corners, with queer-looking orna- ments sticking out from the gable-ends, which look like the prows of vessels. It is of Norway pine throughout, and stands in grave contrast to its more pretentious reighbor Sweden. Russia has no building, nor are Holland, Austria, Italy and China rep- resented. Costa Rica, at the taj GERMANY. A WORLD'S FATR, 545 east end of the North pond, has a plain, modest-looking structure of the Doric type, with wide porticos and a profusion of pillars, but, like the modest woman who goes inconspicuously clad in the street and only blazes forth, all white and jewels, in her own drawing-room, so Costa Rica, in an unsurpassed exhibit of tropical birdsand flowers indoors, fairly flames with color. Each of these buildings has its charm, and one may spend more than one day in rambling about this pleasant part of the Fair grounds, enlarging one’s horizon at almost every step. There is something more than architecture, there is a moral and ethnical significance in the friendly propinquity of these foreign buildings. They come to know one another better and we get to know them, and « com- prendre c’est pardonner.’’ Much national as well as personal enmity is based on provinciality and misunderstanding. We discover that many of our virtues are equalled and surpassed by countries that we know little of, and this discovery makes us more modest and at the same time serves as an incentive to progress.
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546 A WORLD'S FAIR. IN FRONT OF THE LIBERAL ARTS BUILDING.
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NOTES ON INDUSTRIAL ART IN THE MANUFACTURES BUILDING. By GEORGE FREDERICK KUNZ “T° HE building devoted to the Depart- ments of Manufactures and Liberal Arts, at the Columbian exposition, has an unheard-of amplitude of dimensions, its central hall being 1276 feet long, 387 feet side, and 210 feet in height above the floor. While it was still empty, the most vorcible reminder of its magnificent pro- ortions was an apparent absence of per- Spective—an impossibility of realizing the space travelled over by the eye when looking from the one end totheother. It was plain to the most casual observation that an exhibition booth of ordinary di- mensions would be reduced to insignifi- cance under so spacious a canopy. With the notable exception of Great Britain, the European nations to which space was allotted in the central hall, have fixed the height of their pavilions with special ref- erence to the altitude of the roof and the vast expanse of the floor. Karl Hoffacher, the architect of the German court, at- tacked the problem with a certain forceful deliberateness which has produced a very striking result. The structure is of the style of the German renaissance, and its front on the central circle is flanked by two square towers, having supporting Ionic pillars, and a decorated plinth up- holding golden eagles. The ascending series of towers, domes and arches have a grandiose effect, and from the fountains at the base to Reinhold Begas superb ««Germania’’ group in hammered copper, which surmounts the highest pedestal, every detail bears the stamp of artistic breadth and decision. The great wrought-iron gates, by Arm- briister, of Frankfort-on-the-Main, which mark the main entrance to the German pavilion, are the finest and most impres- sive specimens of this kind of work of which our country has seen. France has reared a less lofty pavilion than Germany, but all through it, has preserved a quiet, tasteful dignity which commands admiration. The French in- stallation in this department is an object lesson in the artistic method of industrial Nothing can give a better idea of the vastness of the Liberal Arts building than the photograph which heads this page, taken from the gallery at the in large letters on the side of a main gallery. which the electric arc lights depend fifty feet below. the lines being supports from the truss a people on the floor appear as mere spots. top of the central elevator. The circular framework in the picture is the es from The word “ Austria” is painted bove. The
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548 presentation, as well as in the true theory of exposition organization. None but representative firms in their special lines were admitted as exhibitors, and the selection was made by committees of the various arts and industries whose products are shown here. The government architects originated the general plan of the court, prescribed the details of its external decoration, designed the central hall, devoted to the products of the national fac- tories of Gobelins, Sevres and Bauvais, and the room in which the bronzes are displayed. For the rest, the committee of each class of manufactures—furniture, textiles, ceramics, etc.—had its own arch- itect and decorator, and the installation, from the form of the show-cases to the ornamentation of the panels, has a care- fully studied congruity, heightened, if possible, by a sérict attention on the part of the exhibitor to the artistic grouping of his wares. ARCH IN AUSTRIAN SECTION, A WORLD'S FAIR. Among the other nation- al pavilions the most characteristic are those of Russia, Den- mark, Nor- way and Ja- pan. The Russian, which is the work of Pe- trovo Ropet- te, shows an effective and massive combination of Byzantine style with Slavic meth- od and de- tail, and will, we hope, become the property of some American museum. Germany, France and Great Britain have each 100,000 square feet of exposi- tion space, and they occupy three great squares, grouped around the central circle of the building, in the middle of which is the clock-tower erected by the Construc- tion department of the exposition. On the fourth square are the exhibits of the United States, but these occupy the whole northeastern section of the building, cov- ering in all some 300,000 square feet. No attempt was made to treat this as a whole —to arrange it in a series of trade courts —as was urged by the intelligent and far- seeing chief of the department, Mr. James Allison. The rule was that each exhibitor should be left to provide for his own booth, the design of which should be ap- proved by the Construction department, A FRIEZE.
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A WORLD'S FATR. A RECEPTION-ROOM—FRENCH SECTION, and as much harmony of plan and group- ing secured as the extremely varied char- acter of the exhibits would permit. But the fact forced itself on the attention of those in authority that, facing the pavilion of Germany on one side and that of France on the other, the scattered booths of Amer- ican exhibitors would look shabby by con- trast. A similar conclusion impressed it- self, after the opening of the Fair, on the minds of the exhibitors of the united textile industries, and Mr. Henry Ives Cobb was summoned to do for their som- ber and unadorned assemblage of show- cases what should have been done at the beginning. Three New York firms accepted the task of making for the United States section a front pavilion that would maintain the dignity and reputation of the country. The result is a very successful piece of work, which may fairly challenge com- parison with that of any of the foreign constructors. It is a product of the archi- tectural skill of Mr. John Du Fais, of New York city. The design is conceived in a more severe and classical style than would be deemed fitting for an ephemeral exhibition booth, intended solely for the purpose of displaying its contents. The order chosen is Doric, but Doric treated in a more airy and playful manner than if it were designed for execution in an enduring material. It is fancifully en- riched with pale color and a profusion of gold. The column rising from the center of the facade attains, with its crown- ing ball and eagle—which is by the hand of the now well-known sculptor, Philip Martini—a height of one hundred feet, and is strictly classical in its proportions. At the point where art and manufact- ures meet, there is no more interesting class of products than those in bronze. Of these the United States show but few examples, the best being the busts by Rhind in the Gorham Manufacturing Company’s exhibit. The impression which Russia made with her bronzes in 1876 has been repeated here, but in the interim the works of the chief Russian artists in bronze have become familiar to the American public. Thetwoexhibitors of Russian bronzes at the exposition are
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55° N. Stange and C. F. Woerffel, both of St. Petersburg. The former of these is the sole possessor of the right to reproduce the works of Eugene Lanceray, whose death in 1885 closed a picturesque and brilliant artistic career. Lanceray’s last work, an ‘‘Arab Fantasy,’’ a spirited equestrian piece done by the artist when fresh from the study of the types of the desert, is on exhibition here, as are also many of his earlier and better known productions. The chief contributors to the Woerffel collection are Lieberich, Ober, Posen, Laveretsky, Popoff, Grat- scheff and Bach. Prince Potemkin, the favorite of Catherine ., has the reputa- tion of having given the first artistic im- pulse to Russian bronze founding. Inthe early part of the century Russia’s achieve- ments in this line were more remarkable than they arein our time, asthe monument- al works of the horses on the Anitchikoff bridge, the doors of St. Isaac’s cathedral and the statues of Peter the Great and Alexander 1. sufficiently attest. The most characteristic features of the Rus- sian bronzes of today are their realistic modeling and finish, and the almost uni- formly national stamp of their subjects. In this they show a marked difference A WORLD'S FAIR. from the productions of the French school represented here in the exhibits of LeBlanc Barbedienne, Thiébaut Fréres, Susses Fréres and half a dozen others. Among the most notable pieces in the Barbedienne collection are Barye’s «La Force and L,’Ordre’’ and «‘ Theseus fight- ing the Centaur.’’ Other works worthy of attention are the «« Plaint of Orpheus,”’’ by Howard Verlet, and «The Tiller’’ (A la Terre), by Boucher. The lovers of artistic tours de force will be interested in examining the reproduction of a fa- mous bronze from the Museum of Madrid, representing Charles v. standing over the prostrate figure of conquered heterodoxy. The armor of the emperor is adjustable, and when taken off shows a strongly molded figure harmonizing perfectly with the whole composition. In the same col- lection is a great cabinet of ebony and bronze equally remarkable for workman- ship and design. Among the Susse bronzes the most ambitious is a repro- duction on a scale of one-third of the monument to General Chanzy erected at Le Mans. An‘ Orpheus and Eurydice,”’ by August Paris, an «‘ Algerian Girl,’’ by Barrias, a very delightful conception of ‘‘Mignon,’’ by Mengin, and a delicate mt NEAR THE CENTER OF THE BUILDING.
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A WORLD'S LOOKING DOWN ON THE EXHIBITS. and spirited study by Moreau called ‘‘After School,’’ are among the other notable pieces. Interesting examples of the Cire-Perdue or ‘‘ Lost Wax”’ process of bronze found- ing may be studied in the Thiébaut ex- hibit. The process, which consists of casting, in one pouring and in a single piece, from a model in wax which is fused and expelled as the molten metal takes its place in the surrounding mold, is said to have been first employed by Rhzecus of Samos, 700 years B.c., but its revival dates from the age of Columbus— the Italian renaissance. The much-ex- hibited Doré vase (La Vigne) occupies the place of honor among the Thiébaut exhibits. In the Belgian court there is a «‘ Leoni- das at Thermopyle,’’ by Georges Geefs, the artistic force of which is not enhanced by the statement that it is a product of the « Cire-Perdue”’ process. There is less question about the fitness of employing the wax model for the other great Belgian bronze, a huge twelve-fronted vase, the chief feature of whose lavish decoration is a girdling mass of peacock’s feathers FATR. bent upwards. This shows an unusual perfection of casting and bears the stamp of Japanese art interpreted and applied by an European sculptor and medalist, Ringel D’illzac. The two chief exhibitors of Italian bronzes are Nelli of Rome, and Pendiani of Milan. The most remarkable works shown by the former are reproductions of classic art from the statues in the Vatican gallery, like the two gladiators—Damusse- no and Creucante—which stand at the en- trance to the Italian pavilion. The works from Milan are more varied and popular. As a concession to a commercial taste, Pandiani has several examples in silvered bronze, which may have a certain fitness for a group like «‘ Les Demoiselles de la Cour,’’ but which, like all that tends to change the true patinage of the bronze, is a derogation of its dignity. The «Amour dans la Cave’’ of Guzzardi is a good ex- ample of the prevailing Italian style of art in bronze, which derives its inspiration chiefly from pictures of attested popu- larity, and reproduces some of the least
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552 A WORLD'S FATR. serious of incidents in the most enduring of materials. Not so with the Japanese, who, with all their devotion to things that sell, have not made any essential changes in their bronzes to suit the re- quirements of western taste. An exhib- itor from Tokio shows two vases, four hundred years old, which are less recog- nizably oriental in treatment than the contemporary products beside them. One may object to the lavish elaboration of detail in the make upof a titanic demigod, standing on the prostrate demons of the nether world, but there can be no dispute about it being pure Japanese. ‘The finest bronzes, as well as lacquer, which Japan sends here, are in the Art building. In jewelry, the United States challenges comparison with the world. The foreign exhibits are not equal, either in quantity or in quality, to those made at the Paris itors being content, apparently, with stereotyped commercial forms. There is a fancifully set case of Baroque pearls which are specially interesting, but they do little more than duplicate those of Dinglinger made two centuries ago. The English jewelry exhibit is notably weak, and what there is of it suggests a still more slavish adhesion to accepted designs than those of Germany, The best East India work is not represented at all, and Italy, with all its profusion, can hardly have been said to have maintained its past great reputation. It is to be regretted that Siam withdrew a superb collection of antique enamel and jewelled gold work for lack of a guarantee of absolute safety. In the few exhibits of pure jewelry made by France, that of Vever, one of its greatest jewelers, is preéminent. His case contains many fine gems, and some THE RUSSIAN SECTION. exposition of 1889. Three or four of the leading jewelers of France are missing here; and Russia, Denmark and Norway, with the exception of the transparent enamels which were only in the experi- mental stage, show nothing that is novel. The jewelry of Germany is strikingly deficient in originality, the Hanau exhib- large floral pieces in diamonds treated with unusual taste and success. There is also a jewel casket, which is an exquisite specimen of enameled work, and an illum- inated missal whose cover is a marvel of rich and beautiful enameling. A night lamp, in gold and silver, is also a fine example of the use of enamel, and some
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A WORLD'S FAIR. Rae bail - Sa . sett wel IS See ail sys ll tania GSAS. ee a a ENTRANCE TO THE ITALIAN SECTION, rock crystal whist-counters, incised from below with Louis Quinze designs, repre- sent unique and characteristic types of manipulation. In all that suggests progress, either in workmanship or design, in the products of the silversmith, the great American exhibitors show a superiority as clearly marked as in jewelry. England, the home of silverware, sends here a few small cases of articles of antique design, reinforced only by a combined exhibit of the Manufacturing Goldsmiths’ and Sil- versmiths’ Company, which has patrioti- cally undertaken to occupy the place left vacant by artificers of greater note. This firm shows a Columbian shield, on which are represented various scenes illustrative of the discovery of America. It is a piece of work more obviously painstaking than artistic. A similar criticism will apply to the caskets in the same pavilion, which are, however, interesting examples of the art of damascening as practised in Eng- land. Germany shows nothing but re- productions of the sixteenth and seven- teenth century and other periods of the past of silverware, but among the Imperial Government exhibits there are a number of presentation pieces of the greatest his- torical value. The liberality with which the most distinguished men of the empire and the representatives of other countries, now no longer living, have lent these priceless articles for exhibition here, is merely part of the generous and magnani- mous policy which Germany has dis- played in her whole connection with the Fair. Russia, Norway and Denmark show a great deal of silver, most of it having a purely commercial stamp. Nowhere has the souvenir rage run riot so manifestly as in the silver exhibits at the Fair. From the Russian and Scandinavian ex- amples in this line it is apparent that
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A WORLD'S FAIR. AN EXHIBIT OF BRONZES. while such a stimulus as this may have promoted production, it yields nothing in art above the level of the commonplace. The Russians are represented by two of their leading firms. Both have some fine examples of the peculiar Byzantine type of decoration. In the Moscow case there are samples of presentation silverware, like the magnificent platter belonging to the Czarewitch, a bow] of the Preobra-Jensky Life Guard, and a model of a Greek gal- ley, which reveal a noticeable originality and felicity of treatment. In the Turk- ish pavilion, there is a vase and a tea-set made of a combination of silver with a green, transparent enamel, which are among the most beautiful examples of such work at the exposition. But the triumphs of the art of the silversmith are to be found in the Ameri- can exhibits. Among the most novel and charming features of the Gorham exhibit are a number of examples of translucent enamels worked on silver fret-work. The gem of the collection is a cup of fine blues, which will stand comparison with the best work of the Russian originals of this kind of art. There are also some fine pitchers and vases, made by blowing colored glass into pieces of silver worked into open engraved designs, and the treatment here of Rookwood pottery by enveloping it in silver and afterwards, by cutting, making a rich combination be- tween the exposed surface of the pottery and the metal, is a novel and interesting achievement. In the Tiffany pavilion the silverwork embraces the blending with enamels of all kinds, both transparent and opaque, but more especially the latter, of several colors or tints in a single field. There are also superb examples of the inlaying of lapis- lazuli, sapphires, rubies, rhodonite, jade, smithsonite, moonstone, niello and other gems, copper, shodo and other quaint and
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A WORLD'S FAIR. curious metals. The great magnolia enameled vase, the American flower set in Souchow chasing, the Viking bowls in etched iron and damascene work, are original and decided advances in the silversmith’s art. The flower set represents work forty times the value of the silver. The superb Russian exhibit of the Imperial Lapi- dary works at Peterhof, Ekaterinburg and Barnauhl claims attention here. It consists of two very re- markable pieces of a rich green jade, one in the form of a Roman vase, about thirteen inches in diameter and ten inches high, the other an oblong vessel, fifteen inches by eight, scroll-like in form, in the style of Louis Quinze. Both dishes are of such thinness and translucency that their color seems to be continually changing. They are ac- companied by a very striking coupe of rhodonite, a cup of milky quartz, with transparent spots, and a small bowl, with movable handle, made out of one piece of milky quartz. The central feature of the 1) \\\ exhibit is to be found in three magnificent cabinets of a hard stone mosaic, which, with the dishes grouped around them, constitute prob- ably the most remarkable foreign contribution sent to the exposition. The central cabinet and the one to the right show on their panels richly-colored tropical scenes. The one has a blue fond of lapis-lazuli, the leaves being of green Kalkanski jasper, and the plumage of the trop- ical birds being formed by various colors of amethyst, lapis-lazuli and other gems. The other is remarkable in having a white fond, and shows a pelican with a fish in its beak, set ina rich bit of forest scenery. In the front of the arched entrance to the French court stand two green and two blue vases, the production of the national porcelain factories of Sévres. The blues have the well-known and incompar- IN THE JAPANESE SECTION. able depth of color which
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556 the pate tendre foreign imitators have vainly tried to produce. The greens are the latest achievement of Sévres arti- ficers and are the pride of the collection, albeit the casual observer probably takes them for granted, with the same indiffer- ence that he does other triumphs of manufacturing art in this building. The Sévres factory sent here about two thou- sand different pieces, all of which, with the exception of certain pieces which could not be replaced and which are to be returned to the museum, were offered for sale. It is creditable to the discernment A WORLD'S FATR. The combination and shading one into another of its yellows, bronzes, greens and blues furnish a suggestive study in the use of color. The exhibit of the royal Berlin porcelain factory dominates the German court as much as the pavilion in which itis contained. Inthe construc- tion of the pavilion itself there is a lib- eral use of hard porcelain. ‘The Sara- cenic columns, called ‘«Old Berlin,” in front of it, are of this material, as are the remarkable panels of the seasons, on which are depicted certain charming fig- ures. The portrait of the emperor is OF INTEREST TO CHILDREN. of the American purchaser that all but a very few were sold before the middle of July. The great Limoges factories are well represented here, in white and deco- rated porcelain, and from Yvry-Port, near Paris, there is a very striking exhibit of enameled terracotta. The reproduction, on a scale of one-fourth, of the famous ‘Frieze of the Archers,’’ brought from Suza, Persia, by M. and Mme. Dieulafoy and deposited in the Louvre, is a work calculated to take the eye of the artist, no less than that of the archzologist. shown on the largest piece ever made of hard porcelain. Among other deco- rations of the pavilion are, underglaze, panels about eight feet square, showing a symphony of Spring and of Summer, by Paul Meyerheim. A fine white chim- ney-piece, rococo in style, is a notable feature of the exhibit, and the contents of a bath-room on one side and a din- ing-room on the other bring out very strongly the extent and variety of the product of this great factory, whose rapid advance is largely due to the ad-
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A WORLD'S FA?R. ministrative energy and taste of Rich- ard Horstman and the artistic skill of Professor Kips. The royal Saxon porce- lain factory at Meissen has an exhibit less ample in extent, but not less interesting and characteristic. Most of the pieces have been made specially for the exposi- tion, and some of them, notably the com- ponents of a dinner service in royal blue and gilt, with Greek border and a large floral decoration filling the center of the plates, are the first of their kind ever turned out from the factory. Only less novel are two magnificent royal blue vases, about three and a half feet high, with platinum decoration and bearing rep- resentations of the four seasons, from original paintings in the Munich gallery, by Cornelius the elder. These, with two pale blue vases, bearing an exquisite pate- sur-pate decoration, are evidences of how magnificent a patron of art was the late King Ludwig, for whom the originals were made. Flourishing without state aid or any munificent degree of royal patronage, the English potteries make a very fine ex- hibit here. It is, perhaps, the one depart- ment of artistic manufacture in which England demonstrates that she has noth- Le | } a3 oer reer es Sane . r B | pei x CF Te ~ ii ; Da. | - PALL Wiis Me 557 ing to fear from the competition of the world, and the one in which can be clearly recognized the influence of the art culture of which the South Kensington museum has been the center. Magnificent as is this group of exhibits, it was rivaled in Paris in 1889. The well-established and distinctive excellences of the re- nowned English factories are well illus- trated, and there are some new depart- ures, hitherto unknown to Americans, with which the Fair has made us famil- iar. One of these is shown in the works of Sir Edmund Elton, whose ware, de- signed by himself and made from clay on his own estate, presents deep, harmo- nious metallic blendings of red, green and yellow, in underglazes. The exhibit of the Royal Porcelain Manufactory of Copenhagen shows some remarkable evidences of progress, no less in artistic conception than in the pro- cesses of preparation. ‘The coloring is of the simplest, but the combination of the shadowy blues and greens on the white ground is done with surpassing delicacy and grace. Of blue and white ware there are some excellent examples in the courts both of Belgium and Holland. The large vase with cupids and mask handles, by i 1 at My: ‘ "ty vs MANN) at cit Ni} AY. ENTRANCE TO THE GERMAN SECTION.
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A WORLD'S FATR.
Bach Fréres of Belgium, is one of the finest pieces of this kind to be seen here. The Delft exhibit has a great profusion of tiles, panels and other articles of a highly decorative character, in the same colors. Among American potteries, Rookwood, so successful in Paris in 1889, has a fine exhibit which amply sustains the claim made on behalf of this institution, that the conditions under which it was founded and has been conducted have developed an American pottery which possesses marked originality. The Trenton pot- ters show many fine pieces, but this is not a representative exhibit. Japan exhibits an immense quantity of enamels of all grades, many of a merely commercial standard, and others debased by misdirected subservience to French art. The Namihawa vases are notably fine, showing on a delicately- colored field, fleurs-de-lys, winged drag- ons, a phoenix, and other decorations. The eight feet high cloisonné chrys- anthemum vases, at the south entrance to the Japanese court, are among the largest pieces of enamel work ever produced. In most of the foreign courts, particu- larly in the Austrian, there is a lavish
A PORCELAIN EXHIBIT display of glass artistically treated. meyer of Vienna, exhibits some remark- able examples of intaglio engraved glass, as well as of glass decorated with gold
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Lob-
kt ig t ipy- t — . f H <= eee Ss Hy ge i = m yi AN EXHIBIT FROM BELGIUM.
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applied in very high relief in Louis Quinze, rococo and other forms. The entire Austrian section, but notably the glass exhibits, show the influence of an exceptionally advanced system of indus- trial education under which well equipped art schools are maintained in towns of only 10,000 inhabitants. In the German court, Fischer of Berlin, shows some deli- cate glass forms very artistically en- graved. In the French, Leveillé and Daum Fréres expose engraved and rich- ly colored original pieces of glass simu- lating jade, rock crystal, amethyst and hard stones, as well as antique Chinese glass. In glass mosaic combined with gold the great portraits by Troloff of St. , Petersburg, : | — of Vladimir the Great, and St. Cyril A WORLD'S FATR. 559 are among the richest examples of this kind of work to be seen here. In cut glass the exhibits of the Libbey Glass Company and of L. Straus & Sons fully sustain the reputation which the United States have gained in this field. Lack of space renders it impossible to do justice to some superb exhibits of wrought-iron work Of the inlaying of gold on iron the two superb, gigantic, Damascened vases sent by Felipi Sanchez of Spain, are most magnificent exam- ples. One cannot either make even casual notice of the great furniture ex- hibits. In the absence of makers like Herter Brothers, Cottier and others, the American display in this group leaves a good deal to be desired, but a charm- ing reproduction by Herts of a Louis Quinze boudoir in cream and gold does much to relieve the common-place char- acter of the American exhibit. In fur- niture and interior decorations the French are notably first, but mention should be made of the very artistic in- stallation made by Professor Seidl of Munich, under which are comprised the reproduction of interiors from one of the royal palaces of Bavaria. Of the same order is the re- duced facsimile of the din- ing-room inHatfield House and the interesting exhibit made by our own Sypher in the gallery, not the least of the contributions made here to the education of popular taste in the highest forms of the combination of beauty with utility. GAN Hib iS agg CRE os ee A | j a FACADE, FRENCH SECTION.
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AN OUTSIDER’S VIEW OF THE WOMAN’S EXHIBIT. By ELLEN M. HENROTIN. OT until the close of the Columbian exposition and the statistics have been compiled and the juries announce their awards, can a complete report be written of the woman’s exhibit at the Columbian exposition, for woman’s work ‘at the exposition is exhibited side by side with that of man, so that in the main buildings it is impossible to distinguish without an exhaustive study of the cata- logue, to which sex the honors are due, unless some special feature like the boat of Grace Darling in the Transportation building challenges our attention. When the board of lady managers was organized in 1890, it was thought best not to make the Woman’s building an exhibit building, but as the installation pro- gressed, and the work of women devel- oped and crystallized there was found to be a general desire that the really fine ex- hibits which were to be installed in the Woman’s building should not be shut out from award. The director-general recommended that the Woman's building be declared an exhibit building, and it has been so declared. In all respects the exhibits of women are upon the same basis as all other ex- hibits in the Columbian exposition. Great results are expected from the presence of women on the board of judges in the department of Liberal Arts, as in liberal arts is included the exhibition re- lating to education, philanthropy, reforms and relative subjects. This exhibit comes from the whole world, and if examined with the painstaking care which women bring to every subject, the specific points of excellence in these various exhibits will be brought to light, and the women judges will, no doubt, have the sustained enthusiasm to earnestly urge the adoption of new methods. The tale has been so often told of the inception of the Woman’s building, and of Miss Sophia Hayden’s being awarded the first prize and appointed the architect,
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A WORLD'S FATR. that it is superfluous to further enlarge on that theme. The decorations of the build- ing are a part of the woman's exhibit, as they were executed by women, and the entire decoration and installation of ex- hibits was placed in charge of Mrs. Can- dace Wheeler, who through the long, bit- terly cold months of March and April was carried away by enthusiasm for her task and was always cheerful and hopeful. The court of the Woman’s building has a frieze at each end, painted by American women, Mrs. Mary MacMonnies and Miss Cassatt. Both decorations are too high to be effective, and the space is too small in which they are placed; the subject of one panel is ‘The Primitive Woman,”’ and of the other «« The Modern Woman.”’ Mrs. MacMonnies work is reverent in tone and dignified in treatment. This frieze is not divided by sharp lines as is that of Miss Cassatt, and, if hung where it could be seen to better advantage, would be the most successful example of mural decora- tion in the building. Miss Cas- satt’s panel is ‘‘cynical,’’ and is the one note of discord in the har- mony of color. On each side of the main entrances are panels painted by Emma Sherwood and Rosina Emmett Sherwood. The mural painting, in the east vestibule, is by Anna Lea Merritt, of England, and, while the friezes in the main hall are too high for the delicate handling of the many figures, the panels in the en- trance are too heroic in treatment, and hung too low to be seen to advantage. Anne Whitney’s statue of Lief Ericson is a masterwork of art, deserving to be placed where the nobility of its proportions may be seen. It is at present, unfortu- nately, hidden from view by a pillar behind it, and the fountain in the center of the rotunda in front of it. To continue with the art exhibit. The library designed and executed by Dora Wheeler Keith is the most beautiful room in the building. The Cincinnati parlor, the work of Miss Agnes Pitman, is extreme- ly cool and pleasing. In this room can be found a most interesting ex- hibit, showing the evolution of the eETR4ei, it CISTI LSHCEST $5 TOC WW 7 , 561 - Rookwood pottery—which was discovered by a woman—and which may be said to be the only national pottery. Of the pictures which hang in the main hall, one of the best is «‘Jean and Jacques,”’ by Marie Bashkirtseff; and also a pastelle by Miss Cassatt is good. Viewing the entire collection of paint- ings as a whole, they seem comparatively inferior to the other exhibits, lacking warmth, color and depth of tone. Woman has not as yet (if the collection in the Woman’s building is a faithful represen- tation of her work) mastered the art of painting. The exquisite etchings and drawings by women emphasize what is lacking in the paintings, which is not woman's inability to master technique, but her in- ability to use color. The most valuable exhibits are those of the applied arts, in which tapestry, china, stained glass, mechanical drawings and
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562 A WORLD'S FAIR. The stained glass win- dows in the assembly room —especially the two back of the platform, designed and executed by Elizabeth Parsons and Edith Brown, of Boston—emphasize the skill of women in stained glass. In the Applied Arts sec- tion the gold china attracts a great deal of attention, being the result of many experiments on the part of a young woman who has been offered large sums of money to reveal her secret. She keeps it, however, and continues to produce the beautiful china herself. In the Cincinnati room, in the section of the Associated Artists of New York, and in the Chicago and Massachusetts cases, as well as in the ex- hibit made by the Associated League of Mineral Painters, there is a very beauti- ful display of decorated china. The Scientific department shows re- searches on the lines of botany, geology, mineralogy and zoology. One most notable collection of minerals and fossils has been made by Mrs. A. D. Davidson, of Omaha, Neb. Perhaps no display illustrates more fully the advance of women in new fields than does the scientific exhibit. The ethnological room contains many cases filled with articles of wearing ap- parel and implements for home and farm use, also relics which Mrs. French Shel- don collected during her extensive ex- plorations in Africa. In the invention room are many interesting devices, though none of the most valuable and scientific inventions are shown in this room, and it seems a pity that when the patent books of the United States show such hundreds and hundreds of women’s names, that more might not have been represented. The Nursing section, in which wonder- ful appliances are exhibited, is of great interest. Through the influence of these exhibits sanitary conditions and future methods of caring for the sick will un- doubtedly be greatly improved. There is also a model kitchen in the Woman's building, where daily lessons in the art of cooking are given. The organization room is the headquarters for all the women’s clubs and organi- zations in America. The space allotted to each is beautifully decorated, and a custodian is in charge for each organization, to an- swer questions and greet the members. In the assembly room lectures are given twice a day, of general interest. The Children’s buiiding would take a long article for itself. Its educational value as an object lesson is immense in all that per- tains to the care and educa- tion of children. Among the nations which have made special exhibits of women’s work are the following : British. This exhibit is small but very interesting, containing articles which were made and sent to the Columbian exposi- tion by their Royal Highnesses the Prin- cesses Christian, Beatrice, Louise, the Duchess of Teck, Princess of Teck, and Her Majesty the Queen. The queen’s water-colors hanging in the east gallery receive the most atten- tion. The Baroness Burdett-Coutts’ phil- anthropic work is most extensively dis- played by photographs, pamphlets and medals in the assembly room, the walls of which on the south and west side are thickly hung with photographs of the world’s most noted women. Mrs. Bedford Fenwick is installed the Nursing section, which is extremely well done and one of the most valuable exhib- its in the Woman’s building. Siamese. Here the principal exhibit is needlework, that being the work of the women of that country. The embroider- ies are of fine execution and design, one piece representing the passing of the king before one of the temples. Norway. This exhibit principally con- sists of industrial needlework, crochet- ing, some specimens of weaving, etc. Table covers and rugs form a consider- able portion of the exhibit. Dolls are dressed as brides from the different parts of Norway. A case of hair flowers made
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< Ms Q ” Q ) S SS
GENERAL VIEW FROM THE LAKE.
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A WORLD'S FAIR. wall side of the exhibit, is the needle- work of one of the schools, in a repro- duction of the silk curtains and plush lambrequin belonging to the president of the republic. Some vases of un- usual size, in Sévres underglazing, by French artists, are exceedingly pretty. A history of French women’s dresses, commencing with the primitive epoch, is clearly and effectively shown, some of the costumes having been scrupulously copied from portraits of the famous queens of France, from tapestry and from paintings in the Louvre. The dolls are not the ordinary children's dolls, but have evidently been made for this exhibition, as they show the pro- portions of a woman’s figure, and the full record of French fashions may here be seen. Much needlework in infants’ clothes is shown, from the dainty cradle, down- lined and silk-covered, to the short dress of the toddler. Every lace thing that can be thought of is exhibited in this department; to try to enumerate them would be but endless repetition, and one scarcely knows what to select. Gloves are also shown as manufactured by women. Ribbon flowers are exhibited of so high an order as to quite surpass the ordinary art. So high a value is put upon this work that none but the girls and women who make it can buy the ribbons. fifty years ago shows that little if anything new has been learned since that time. Sweden. In this department is a series of models illustrating Miss Hulda Lundin’s sys- tem of teaching needlework in school. Here, also, is shown some fine lace-work and hand- some wood-carving. Mexico. The specialty of Mexican women seems to be fine drawn work and embroidery; the rest of their work is crude in coloring and material, but the lace effect produced in their crochet is marvellous ; for instance, a lace- edged handkerchief crocheted out of pineap- ple fiber is exceedingly delicate. They excel in wood-carving, much of which, in fine white wood, is so delicate as to be called an etching. Mexican costumes are here shown, probably festival dresses of the middie and lower classes. French. The first thing in this section which attracts attention, beginning at the . - ¥ ° J a : - rs . : ; ; ° : ’ « ; : ; >
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A WORLD'S FAIR. MRS. POTTER PALMER'S OFFICE. To so high a degree of perfection is needlework carried in France, that famous paintings are reproduced in silks with excellent effect. The young ladies of the College of the Legion of Honor have a specimen of their work in guipure cur- tains and silk-embroidered lambrequin. /talian. ‘This exhibit consists entirely of lace. Besides the finished laces, there are sections of it in different stages of making, and dressed figures of péasant women, with their pillows and bobbins, showing the process of making. Here is shown the queen's collection of laces, valued at one hundred thousand dollars. Japan. Here is a Japanese woman's boudoir. It is exceedingly interesting as showing the surroundings of a Japanese woman in her home. Her wardrobe is conveniently hung on a rack in the room, the dress hanging on the upper bar of the rack, and the sash on the lower. Adjoin- ing the boudoir is a study or reception- room. Here is the customary mat in the center of the room, on which are placed musical instruments and little low read- ing tables. Also a brazier for fire. Spain. Priestly vestments are here embroidered with gold and jewels. A rep- resentation of the cathedral where the king attends divine worship is shown in fine thread embroidery, which is most de!- icate. Medallions of the Queen Regent, the deceased king, and the little king are exhibited, reproducing the features most faithfully. Pillow-lace work is here in process of making, with the bobbins hanging to the pillow as if the worker had just left it. Most wonderful medallions, embroid- ered of finest thread, are made by the Spanish women, showing the features as distinctly as if cut in marble. Cevlon. There are embroidery and laces here, though the principal exhibit in this booth is tea, a sample cup of which can be had for five cents. Austria. The lace in this department is a rather meager collection, but of beau- tifuldesign. Kid gloves of beautiful qual- ity are elaborately decorated with paint- ing, small flowers, chiefly lilies of the val- ley and forget-me-nots. Fans are also elaborately decorated with hand-painted designs. Fine gold thread embroidery is exhibited. A screen painted by Her Im- perial Highness the Archduchess Maria Theresa is shown ; the frame is of simply
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carved antique oak, the center panel is of flowers, painted, and the side panels of palms. Belgium. ‘This exhibit is principally of the peas- ant woman's lace-work which attracts special at- tention for the dainty designs. Germany. The bent iron-work done bythe wo- men of Germany, one of whom sits at a table and manufactures it before the eyes of the wondering vis itor, is exhibited in hanging-lamps, can- dle holders, ink-stands, ete. Over in one corner of the German exhibit is a beau- tifully mounted lyre, unstrung, the center filled with swinging leaves containing photographs of Germany’s noted women musicians. Next is a case filled with dolls dressed in the uniforms of the various orders or organizations of the different provinces of Germany. Leather-work in great variety is shown in tables and screens. A mod- ern kindergarten house and working ap- paratus is exhibited in detail. To compare the exhibits of woman’s work with that of previous expositions is to realize that a revolution has been ef- fected, not alone in woman’s position, but in modern civilization. Had sucha change taken place in the social and economic conditions of one race of peo- ple, the whole civilized world would have heralded it with acclamation, but as it affects the peaceful half of the popula- tion of the civilized world it awakens hardly a ripple of excitement. Several salient points present them- selves to the consideration in connection with the material exhibits. First, that woman is now a great factor in the economic condition of all countries; for in continental Europe she is the hewer of wood and drawer of water, in order that men may be soldiers to keep em- perors and kings on tottering thrones ; in England and America the stretch of commercialism has pushed her out of the home into a competitive civilization. Her work this far is secondary. When her labors in the home as wife and mother are considered, joined to her exertions in the labor market, it will be seen that wo- man, lovely woman ! has few leisure moments to cultivate her charms. Her wages are gradually working up to a living basis—she is constantly entering new fields of employment and making them her own—in a word, her condition is slowly improving. When the statistics are compiled which will demonstrate the part she is taking in all countries in preventive, educational and reformatory work they will be of immense value. No exhibit could have been more timely or carried on with greater wisdom than has this; it shows to woman at the most opportune time in her career the weak points in her position, while the advance she has made along all lines of work and thought, encourage her to renewed efforts and greater bravery in claiming her right to the pecuniary reward of conscientious labor.
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FOREIGN FOLK AT Se alloc MIDWAY PLAISANCE WEST FROM TOP OF FERRIS WHEEL, THE FAIR. By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. "T“HE Midway Plaisance is classified in the catalogues under the head of ethnology. Scientific appellations al- ways havea chilling sound. They are to nature what the scalpel of the surgeon is to the fair show of the human body. Botany is a sequel of murder and a chron- icle of the dead. The application of dead languages to the living forms of this real phantasmagory that exists around us— scientific nomenclature, in other words,— is one of the lingering remnants of the curse of Babel, and would, if it could, make us think of nature as not less dead than itself. Luckily, we are not to be so constrained; and so long as children and country people continue to be born, we shall call things by natural names, and always feel a disposition to smile at the jaw-breaking absurdities of the multifa- rious ’ologist. The lover, as reported by the poet, is always ready to give to his mistress the world for her plaything. Itisacharming conceit, and every lover has invented it for himself. Yet I do not know that it has been ever shown to be practically achievable before the present summer, But this summer, fortunate lover, you may do it, and it need cost you neither the treasures of Croesus nor the toil of a lifetime. Fifty cents will bring the greater and essential part of it to her feet —or her feet to it; and for ten or twenty
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568 A WORLD'S FAIR. that I am forgetting the scenery—the mountains, seas and valleys of delight; but no! For a matter of twenty-five cents you may take her to the top of the Swiss alps, or down to the awful bottom of the giant crater of the sea of fire at Honolulu, or to other similar world wonders of landscape, while all along your route are samples of the ar- chitecture, inhabitants, manners and customs, home-life and characteristic products of the wild and civilized races of the world. Upon the whole, it is the most magnificent and satisfactory plaything ever yet devised for the de- lectation of mortal woman or nian. It extends west by north a mile or more at right angles to the main west- ern boundary line of the park, begin- ing at the rear of the Woman’s build- ing. It has a width of some three hun- dred feet. The fun begins as soon as you enter, and continues with increase all along the line. I have only one criticism to make, and that is, that it should have been made circular, as the world of which it is the epitome is spherical. But probably even Chicago times that sum (the precise amount has not as yet been finally determined) you can endow her absolutely with the entire thing. Schopenhauer gave to his scheme of creation the title of «‘ The World as Will and Idea;”’ and I give to what the cata- logue calls «‘ Department M. — Ethnology. Isolated Ex- hibits — Midway Plaisance. Group 176,”’ this, I say, I call the «‘ World as Plaything.’ Here are the. elements out of which the human part of the planet has been devel- oped; it is all within the compass of a day’s stroll; and everything that is te- dious, ugly, cruel and evil is leftout. There is nothing which your lady-love would find unsuited to her play- thing, and yet there is no- thing omitted which, were she and you actually to make the tour of this great rolling sphere of earth, either of you would much care to see. You may think l 4 Y
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A WORLD'S FA/?R. has its physical limits. When you have been through it, you have not the ad- vantage of finding yourself where you started from; but on the other hand, you have to go through it again, and it is a journey which, if you have a human in your body, and any reasonable you are only too ready to make, not once only, but again and again. The Midway Plaisance could not take the place of the Fair; but the Fair would not be half as delightful as it is without the Plaisance. There is more of the human here than elsewhere; and the study of mankind is not only, as Pope says, the proper study of man, but it is likewise incomparably the most entertaining. From the moment you first came within hail of the city of pork and the Fair, you have been catching glimpses of that semi- miraculous wheel which uprears its pre- posterous immensity about half way down the Plaisance. It is not so tall as the Eiffel tower, but it is all but half as tall as the Washington monument, and by the time you have been round its stupen- dous circumference, in company with up- wards of two thousand of your fellow- soul legs, creatures, you are ready to believe that it is all but as big as the earth. It is impossible for the non-me- chanical mind to understand how such a Brobdingnag contrives to keep itself erect ; it has no visible means of support — none that ap- pear adequate. The spokes look like cob- webs ; they are after the fash- ion of those on the newest make of bicy- cles; and yet the vast tires, weighing thousands of tons, sweep round their in- comprehensible orbit, as easily as if the attraction of gravitation were one of those moss-covered prejudices which the march of progress has enabled us to outgrow. When you get into your bucket, you are
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bound on such a journey as nobody ever undertook before, and you will remember it, awake and asleep, as long as you live. I wonder if any one of the millions who come within reach of this fearful fascin- ation, will resist it! I don’t believe any one will, no matter how much they may fancy otherwise beforehand. For my part, I intend to spend an entire day in the wheel, some time, which, at the rate of three revolutions per hour, will cost me some ten dollars. It will be worth every mill of it. From the height of this perimeter, you may contem- plate the whole extent of the Plaisance, and make up your mind at leisure where you will go next. As a matter of fact, you have probably visited a number of places already. Roughly speaking, you have before you the civ- ilized, the half-civilized and the savage worlds to choose from—or rather, to take one after the other. To my mind, the half-civilized world is the most delectable; then the savage, and finally the civil- ized. And on the principle of the best last, I counsel all A WORLD'S FAIR. those who think as I do to begin with the latter. There is a beauty-show at the very start —thirty or forty belles from as many different parts of the earth, dressed out in their several appro- priate costumes, and ranged in pens round a big room, like cattle in a show. Whether this be civilized or uncivilized, I won’t undertake to say ; but I fear that so far as beauty is concerned, unless you are easily satis- fied, you will be much disappointed. At least, you will be surprised. What I like best about it is the kilted High- lander outside, who lures the passing public with the sweet piercingness of his bagpipes. He is a handsome chap, and quite intelligent enough to know it. You cannot spare your eyesight at any step of the journey down this en- chanted avenue. For not only are there unfamiliar spectacles in the way of buildings on either hand, but the strange people themselves have escaped from their proper abiding places, arid are out walk- ing and looking, almost as much interest- ed in you as you arein them. There are Mussulmans of all tribes, and Cingalese, and wild Arabs in their bour- nouses and swathed heads, and Javanese in skirts and jackets, and stately Soudan- ese, with their black hair braided in strings, and dirty white togas bellying in the breeze; and Algerians and Persians and unspeakable bashi-bazouks, and the more familiar figures of Chinese and Japanese, and perhaps a savage Dahomeyan or two, and Numidians and Nubians from the tropical interior. Ever and anon, as you pass, you will see an interested, craning group ringed round some object of fascination in the center, and if you peep over their heads or between their shoulders, you will al- ways find a swarthy, smiling face and a queer costume in the midst, with whom the local American is striving to hold converse. Cigars or cigarettes are given or ex-
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A WORLD'S FATR. changed, there is a dropping fire of hu- morous remarks, and then the group breaks up, and the swarthy ones continue on their way. The ends of the earth are meeting, and finding one another good fellows. Chicago is not a predominately Irish town, like some that might be named in this country; but the two Irish villages are always full enough of visitors. In one of them, besides studying the opera- tions of lace-making, bog-oak carving, and dairy work, as carried on by native Irishmen and women in cottages which look exactly like those one sees in the ould sod, you may visit a very fair repro- duction of Blarney castle, and try the virtues of a piece of the genuine Blarney stone. The other is mainly devoted to making you think that you are looking at real Irish castles, market crosses, halls, gardens and cottages; and in place of the rival Blarney stone on the other side of the way, is a practical copy of the Wish- ing Seat of the Giant’s Causeway—though whether they have contrived to import the magic of the original into the repro- duction Iam not preparedtosay. There’s nothing good or ill but thinking makes it so. As for Germany, she has left a broad mark in the Plaisance as well as in the Fair proper. Her ‘village’’ is quite as ex- tensive as many real villages I have seen in the Vaterland, and has in it reminders of most of the things, music and beer in- cluded, which that entire amiable and formidable country contains. The ‘ me- dizeval stronghold’’ which blocks your way at the beginning with its towers and battlements, moats and drawbridge, turns out to be a harmless museum inside, fur- nished not only with ancient and modern apparatus of war and hunting, but with a waxen emperor and other German heroes. Within the spacious enclosure round about the castle walls are houses of many types and clusters of booths with workmen in them. Meanwhile, one or other of the two bands are thundering in your ears, and the nimble kellner is at his old tricks with mugs and change. You are in the midst of double distilled Germany, and there is no more to be said about it. In this country, and especially in this town, there cannot be anything very novel to
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A us in it; but it is cram-full of people all the time, and you ought to hear them cheer the Wacht am Rhein and other pieces of patriotism. Like the rest of us, Germans are more patriotic abroad than at home. Austria gets herself up to look like an older Germany. Her Altmarkt is really picturesque; it is a continuous square of antique city houses and shops, environing a band-stand and a beer garden. As you WORLD'S FAIR. sit at your table in the evening, the lathe and plaster buildings, as they echo back the sallies of music, assume the veritable aspect of rich antiquity that you remem- ber in your youthful days at Vienna. If they would only engage a group of stu- dents with slit noses and cheeks to stroll through the platz, and pick a quarrel with somebody, the illusion would be complete. Let us have done with Europe, and try a cycle of Cathay. Beyond the great wheel, as to spatial distance, and who can tell how many thousand years away from us as to appearance, modes of life and traditions, is the Dahomey village. The great open square is surrounded by native huts, in which, besides the native furniture that you might see in Dahomey itself, are some good Chicago cooking stoves, which cause you to hang in space, as it were, between the remote and the near. If it be near meal time, you will see some Dahomey cooking; the cooks have the appearance given in school ge- ographies to cannibals, but I have failed to discover signs of any other food in their tiny kitchens than such as the reader and I might with propriety partake of. When they are not cooking, they sit in silence and make things out of metal, fiber and wood, which, being made, have a strange and outlandish aspect. Now and then you come upon a mother squat- ting in a corner, suckling her baby, which sits upright astride her knee. There are no beauties among the Dahomeyans,
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A WORLD'S FAIR. according to our notions of that attribute. But the attraction here is the dance. A platform has been made in the center of the arena, about thirty yards square, with a wooden roof or awning over it. It is protected from the incursions of the public by a railing ; but after looking at the dance awhile, you are not likely toneed a railing to help keep you out of reach. The dancers get excited present- ly, and their spears and hatchets are very sharp. The orchestra, members of which occasionally are moved to abandon their mu- sical instruments for a turn with lance and tomahawk, is massed at one end of the platform ; at the other is a treble or quadruple row of dancers. In the midst of the musicians, on a sort of chair, with a crown on his head which is made either of iron, leather or copper, I don’t know which, sits an elderly and particularly mild-looking savage, as king. In the space between the two part- ies, and in and out among them, with an indifferent, abstracted air, as one who bears a charmed life, and can regulate these wild frights at his will, saunters the medicine man, in a short projecting petti- coat of fiber, and an indescribable tackle of chains and wallets, all supported upon the thinnest possible pair of legs. When the music strikes up—and what a weird and ear-splitting racket that music is, made by hammering on wooden drums and iron bells, accompanied by a sort of hoarse, wrangling noise, with rapid pul- sations, representing Dahomeyan singing — four brawny persons appear, and stand between the army and the orchestra, facing the former with gestures of defiance. Everybody except the medicine-man is singing at the top of his or her voice, for a third part of the warriors are of the gentler sex, and have become recently known to contemporary history under the title of Amazons. The dance consists of a rhythmical hopping and jumping, accompanied by a peculiar shaking of the shoulders, and a brandishing of weapons. Thecostume is simple in its elements, though it has a rather complex appearance. There is a strip of cloth about seven feet long, with a breadth of two feet, and a hole through the middle of it forthe head. Itis striped green and yellow. Being put on, it is confined at the loins by a white sash. This, of course, leaves the costume open at both sides ; and it is the same for both men and Amazons. In profile, the wear- ers are practically naked. ‘Their legs are bare ; though, in deference I presume to 573
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our prejudices, they wear short drawers reaching to the knee. Their feet and heads are also uncovered ; and what re- mains of their gear consists of necklaces, iron anklets and armlets, pouches and suspended objects of all sorts. They hop and whirl about with surprising vigor and persistence, and with evident enjoy- ment to themselves; and between the pauses of the dance, they gather round the orchestra, and all hands converse with alarming vi- vacity, as if still thirsting for one anothers’ blood. Anon, the tum- tum sounds once more, and the mimic warfare recommences, either party advancing and re- treating alternately, and both, apparently, remaining victors in the end. As the Javanese village is not open to the public at this writing, I am unable to say more about it than that it looks very pretty through the wicker-work fence which surrounds it, through the gate of which a crowd of specta- tors is ever gazing. Huts, which appear to be a kind of basket adapted to purposes of hab- itation in a land which knows not winter, are ranged round a large space con- taining larger and more pre- tentious structures; all are thatched with dry palm leaves, and amongst them stroll about the diminutive figures of the Java natives. They are no bigger than so many boys and girls. The full- grown women are ad- mirably shaped, and not uncomely in face ; but they are of the size of a ten-year- old American child. In the background of the enclosure is a cage with a big ourang- outang climbing about in it, and performing prodigies of gymnastics with an effort- less, abstracted air. The Turkish village—to take the first step upward from the unsophisticated children of nature—is not fenced in, though it will cost you a quarter to go up stairs in the restaurant and see the girls dance, or to enter the theater where a representation of home-life and adventure in Mahom- medan countries is given. There is an open street, with booths along one side of it; and a covered bazaar, loaded with the spoils of the Sublime Porte. In the upper end of the street is a mosque, with real priests and religious rites, and a minaret, from the lofty balcony
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WORLD'S FATR. 575 of which, at the hours of sunset, noon and sunrise, a real Muezzin exhorts the faithful to remember Allah, and to give him glory. And the American populace gathers beneath and speculates whether he is advertising the dance-house or sell- ing pop-corn, or crying for somebody to put up a ladder and bring him down. In another building is an Arabian tent, and a facsim- ile of a house in Damascus. The tent is pitched in the court in front of the house, and in it sit cross-legged Arabs, male and female, who play on odd instruments and chant monotonously, while others of them boil coffee or make thin wafer cakes, and bake the same on a heated hemisphere of iron. There are no Arabian steeds, and as for the camels, they are in the Cairo street. The Damascus room —for there is but one room in the house —is oblong and high, with windows just beneath the cornice. In the center is a fountain, and on either side a floor slightly raised and thickly berugged, with di- vans, and festooned walls, and hanging lamps, and or- naments of dark woods in- laid with ivory. A beautiful, luxurious, peaceful place it is ; and a very well-be- haved and explicit little Turk explains everything to you in clear but quaint- ly intoned English. In such a house lived people in one of the oldest historical pe- riods; and it is hard to see in what re- spect we have sur- passed them in the essentials of comfort and beauty since. You have never spent ten cents to better purpose than when youexchanged it for a ticket admitting you to the Cairo street. This assertion is founded not upon my own opinion alone, but upon the testimony of the crowds who throng it every day ; it is perhaps the most pop- ular rallying-ground at the Fair. The gate being passed, you are in a street square, with a café open to the street on
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WORLD'S FAIR. are very small and thecamels very large, so that whichever the rider selects, he or she is sure to be the object of attention to the laughing, cheering, surging, good- humored American crowd that presses together everywhere, and follows them on their course down the narrow thor- oughfare, or dodges to escape the too pre- cipitous onset of their career. That fat man has just been almost upset by a donkey no bigger than a Newfoundland dog; and a camel has knocked askew the bonnet of the deaf old lady who was looking at the Nubian soothsayer on the steps of the fountain. Are we not in Egypt indeed? What signifies the mere ground beneath our feet? Here are the architecture, the merchandise, the manners and the populace of Egypt; its atmosphere is in our nostrils, its lan- guage in our ears. What is it that con- stitutes a country? ‘Coelum non ani- the right, in which we shall do well to mam mutant qui trans mare current.” sitdown. A friend of mine who knows And we, without changing our sky, have his Cairo as well as I do my New York, nevertheless come to another land, and tells me that this scene is more like Cairo surely to one of the loveliest and most than Cairo itself. One could almost di- charming in the world. And we may vine that, without a guarantee. In fact, pass through a score of others besides only the walls and the fashion of them this in traversing the little length of this are artificial ; they are built on the exact world plaything, the Midway Plaisance. model of the reality, and the doors and wooden - grated windows are veritable Cairorelics, brought bodily from that de- licious city. The colors are sunny and warm, with harmonious blendings of pale yellow and pink and purple ; there are projecting balconies and airy loggias and mysterious archways; and every- where are tiny shops, overflowing with thingsyouwanttobuy. Theshop-keep- ers want you to buy them, too; and you must either leave your purse at home, or be rich and reckless, else you may have to leave Chicago on foot. But you inevitably turn from the shops and houses tothecrowd in thestreet. Right beneath us, as wesit, is the donkey and camel-stand—that is, the donkeys stand and the camels lie down, in the peculiar fashion possible for camels only. Their drivers, living pieces of human Egypt, in long caftans, fez and turban, brown- skinned and black-eyed, and with naked feet, lounge about, or lean upon their beasts, and let no possible customer es- cape them. And customers are plenty, men, women andchildren. The donkeys
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ELECTRICITY By MORAT IPPED with golden domes, touched with the pomp of Asia, in the midst of the White City, beside the gleaming waters of Lake Michigan, look- ing upon the rippling Lagoon and the dazzling fountains of the ideal Venice that in the heart of America is the radi- ant shell of the Columbian World’s Fair, one of the exhalations of that wonderful frozen dream, whose exquisite hues and airs and lines are a picture in which genius has been prodigal, and where are gathered the glories and mysteries of hu- man achievement, rises the Electrical building, stored with the most marvellous of the marvels of the age. The potentialities and splendors of elec- tricity were never before so exhibited as under this picturesque roof. It is not the building alone, stored as it is with won- ders, that is the chief exhibition of the pervading and shining power that is marching from conquest to conquest, and AT THE FAIR. HALSTEAD. ever finding amazing new worlds to con- quer, for whether it is the crown of fire that glitters over the offices of adminis- tration ; the basin, on whose blue waters the gondolas seem so at home, turned into a pool rich with colors as a sunset sky; the magnificent search-lights that sweep the horizon with shafts of flame that are revealing revelations ; the lofty jets on either side of the MacMonnies fountains, converted to leaping rainbows, glowing, fantastical, mystical ; the swift and silent launches, wafted without sail or oars or steam, burdened with people, through scenes of enchantment surpassing those by the waves of the Adriatic when the doges were wedded to the sea ; the in- tramural railway-cars that fly over elevat- ed roads without visible means of locomo- tion, and give the myriads of spectators incomparable rapid transit from the Span- ish convent to the Krupp exhibit of artil- lery, and then to the clambake and bat- 37
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578 tleship; or the haunted corners where one talks to friends a thousand miles away and enjoys the familiar charm of their voices and the magnetism of their pres- ence—the same mighty, subtle, delicate, formidable agency and mastery permeates the atmosphere that compasses the uni- verse, and all this is but one breath of the all-embracing vital air, one sparkle of the surf that is the boundary of oceans, the great deeps beyond, unfathomed, but one may believe not unsearchable, not past finding out, but holding their treasures for the swift unfolding of the slow cen- turies. The Fair, considered as an electrical exposition only, would be well worthy the attention of the world. Look from a distance at night, upon the broad spaces it fills, and the majestic sweep of the searching lights, and it is as if the earth and sky were transformed by the im- measurable wands of colossal magicians ; and the superb dome of the structure, that is the central jewel of the display, is glowing as if bound with wreaths of stars. It is electricity! When the whole casket is illuminated, the cornices of the palaces of the White City are defined with celestial fire. The waters that are at play leap and flash with it. There are borders of lamps around the Lagoon. The spectacle is more resplendent than the capitals of Europe ever saw when ablaze with festivals to celebrate triumphant peace or victorious war. It is all an electrical exhibit. You would see the fronts of the structures that are of the white flowering of the art that creates, adorns and captivates at once with grace and magnitude; and the elec- tric launch glides for you through the canals and basins, while the matchless panorama seems to drift by the winged boat, an enchanted country, studded with fairy citadels. The energy that drives is stored electricity. You would ride over the grounds, where the sumptu- ous offerings of the nations are gathered, looking down upon the surprising accu- mulations, sweeping around the enormous buildings burdened with the embarrass- ment of riches, and you ride in chariots moved by hidden fire to do your bidding ; and the City by the lake where the shadows of the past are materialized, and the mellow, balmy winds of glorious A WORLD'S FATR. climes breathe over the solemn temples that are the bloom of architecture and the homes of hope—the castles of Spain, the romance of Arabia realized. It is elec- tricity that whirls the chariot wheels—the thunderbolts are harnessed at last. It is the same sorcery that day and night tell the wondrous story by telegraph and telephone to the ends of the earth, and will yet signal the stars in their courses, that carries orders and rings alarms; that bids the nations of the earth good evening and good morning. There is a map showing the electrical features at Jackson park, and the simple recital of the items shows their strange variety, and in how startling a degree they are comprehen- sive. The whole electrical service at the ex- position comprises these systems: arc lighting, incandescent lighting, electric power, telephone service, police signal service, fire alarm service, telegraph ser- vice, electric transportation! There are many minor matters with new applica- tions of electricity. In 1889, in Paris, far the greatest of preceding expositions and the only one with which it is worth while to compare the Columbian Fair, there was used for electric lighting 3000 horse- power. There is devoted in Chicago to electric light and power in the main plant alone 17,000 horse-power, 14,000 for light and 3000 for the transmission of power. ‘There is 100o horse-power in ad- dition in isolated plants and 5000 horse- power for the plant of the intramural railway company. The aggregate is 23,- ooo horse-power. The Paris exposition electric lighting was furnished by 1150 arc a..J 10,000 incandescent lamps—about 1,000,000 candle-power. The Chicago electrical illumination at the Fair is pro- vided by 90,000 incandescent lights of 16 candle-power, and over 5000 are lamps —a total of 11,400,000 candle - power. These figures are from original estimates that have been largely exceeded. The reserved forces brought up the grand to- tal capacity of the electric plant to 5000 arcs of 2000 candle-power each, and 120,000 incandescent lights of 16 candle-power, the total amounting to about eight times all the plants at Paris. The greatest electrical feature we cannot, however, compare with anything in Paris, because it is new; this is the almost exclusive
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& > ey * Q z - = N
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580 use of electricity for the transmission of power. There is an immense array of motors. The electric power was used ex- tensively in construction. The tem- porary power plant, in the language of Mr. R. H. Pierce, ‘ran day and night seven days in the week, operating motors in the daytime which furnished power for the saw-mills, hoists, pumps and paint- ing machines, and at night grinding out light, so that the construction could be carried on day and night where neces- sary, and the engineers and draughts- men could lay out work for other days and nights. Electricity helped to pre- pare the material, to hoist the heavy beams and trusses, to paint the build- ings, and at the same time to prolong the labors of the overworked engineer and mechanic and light the rough or muddy pathway of the Columbian Guard.”’ The power was therefore creative as well as illustrative, and ready in rough work as well as brilliant in decoration and serviceable as a force. About one- third of the are lamps are used in the grounds, the rest in the buildings, and Mr. Pierce says: ‘‘The crowning glory of the arc lighting is the lighting of the central nave in Manufactures building. This is undoubtedly the most unique and beautiful piece of are lighting ever at- tempted. This space, which is about 1300 feet long and 368 feet wide, with a height of 202 feet in the clear, is lighted by five great coronas. These coronas are suspended r4o feet from the floor. The central corona is 75 feet in diameter and carries 102 lights ; the other four, which are equally distributed along the main longitudinal axis, are 60 feet in diameter and carry 78 lights each, making a total of 414 two thousand candle-power lights. The lamps are hung in two concentric circles."’ The splendor of the coronal illumination is remarkable. It is literally the light that never was before on sea or shore. The Columbian intramural electric rail- way isa work that is intensely suggestive of a great hereafter. It gives ready access to the prominent buildings of the Fair, and is the great resource of the public in quickly and easily overcoming the difficul- ties of transit arising unavoidably from the unparalleled extent of the grounds. Without this special service of electricity A WORLD'S FATR. the fatigue and loss of time in moving from one attraction to another would be excessively increased. The length of the road is six and one-quarter miles and the round trip takes three-quarters of an hour. Fifteen trains of four open cars, seating one hundred passengers to the car, are run, and at certain points a speed of thirty miles an hour is permitted. The first car of each train is provided with four motors, developing 133 horse-power each, at twenty-five miles an hour. The power plant has a capacity of 3700 kilo- watts. There is an ability to handle 16,000 passengers in an hour, and in a part of the mechanism there is an appar- ent intelligence that seems something superhuman. The track is equipped with a block signal system and electrici- ty is used to release the block setting the signals of safety, and there is ‘a device which throws off the current and sets the brakes on the train in case the motor- man runs past a danger signal,’’ and we are even told ‘a signal out of order acts likewise,’’ and notifies the motor- man. Mr. C. H. Macloskie explains: «The current is carried from the power station to the trains through a conductor consist- ing of a T rail, supported on insulating blocks just outside of the tracks. Four sliding shoes, two on each side of the car, make the connection with the conductor, the current returning through the wheels to the rail, and thence through the steel girders of the superstructure to the power station. To make the necessary connec- tions between girders, large plates of cop- per have been riveted to the steel with cop- per rivets.”’ With such an exhibition as this, it is not surprising that revolutions in railroad systems are believed to be imminent ; that all the splendid apparatus for transporta- tion in the gigantic locomotives are rea- sonably certain, in a generation, perhaps in a few years, to be superseded, and the machinery that is the pride of artisans thrown aside, as the stage-coaches have been. Transcontinental electrical rail- ways may be considered foreshadowed. The trolley tells the story, and it will be no more strange to see the locomotives gone to the scrap-iron store, than the street railway horse relegated to the farms.
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WORLD'S FATR. The adaptability of electricity to the service of man has a daily development, and it gains incessantly new territories of usefulness. It was necessary to place lighted buoys for seven miles along the shores of Lake Michigan, from the Chi- cago river to the grounds of the exposi- tion, to indicate the shoals, and there are thirteen spar buoys. Of the way the work was done, this account from the Western Electrician is of the greatest interest and the largest suggestiveness: ‘* Each buoy carries an incandescent lampof roo candle- power in a wrought-iron cage or lantern at the upper end of the spar, the lower end of which is fastened to a heavy cast- iron anchor. The current for each of these lamps is supplied from a small West- inghouse converter, of special design, placed in the upper end of the spar. These converters are connected in series, the cur- rent for the entire series being obtained from a special Westinghouse converter of 1400 volts. This large converter is placed at the outer end of the main pier at Jack- son park, where all necessary switches, fuses, regulating devices and Wurts non- arcing metal lighting arrestors are also placed. Forthis work a single wire Bishop gutta-percha submarine cable is laid from the pier to the first buoy ; from there to the second, and soon. From the last buoy at the city the cable returns by the most di- rect route to the pier at Jackson park.”’ That this system of warning lights will be adopted for harbors on the sea-coast and the navigable rivers is certain. From the height of each advantage gained is seen a wider area of opportunity. The fleet of electric launches, fifty in number, each thirty-five feet ten inches long, with a beam of six feet and a draft of twenty-eight inches, and seating thirty persons, testifies the motive power of stored electricity on the water. The speed of the boats is six miles an hour. They easily make eight miles in that time. They run on the average forty miles a day. The batteries are grouped in two or three divisions. In each launch there are seventy-eight cells, and Mr. C. H. Barney states: ‘* When a launch returns to its dock at the charging station, from its forty miles run, the work of charging is begun in less than one minute by an inde- pendent switch-board connected to feeders from large dynamog in Machinery hall.” Without burdensome weight the stored
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582 electricity is used for a voyage of twelve hours, and there is no trouble in hand- ling. This promises almost as much for the navigation of the rivers and the sea, as the trolley lines for the land. Providing electrical machinery has be- come a steady and huge business. There are as many features of mechanism adver- tised for the production or utilization of electricity, as for the provision and appli- cation of steam power, and the faculty of invention is stimulated in the highest intelligences of the period, to carry for- ward the discoveries of the further secrets of the prodigious power that envelopes the spinning earth. There is nothing so delicate or so gigan- tic that the touch of electricity is not found equal to the task of manipulation. The inventions of Edison, that range from working with four currents on one wire to catching on a cylinder the music of an orchestra or the performance of an opera, are assembled at Chicago, revived and improved since they were the glories of the exposition of 1889 in Paris; and he has added other miracles to his reper- toire of immortal accomplishments, and A WORLD'S FAIR. ascends from one astounding altitude to others still higher, until conjecture is confounded by his soaring steps. The Bell telephone exhibition begins with the rudimentary instruments, in which the first thoughts that were on the way to the impending discovery are rudely recorded, and each little disc and filament is history to be read in living light forever; and there are the transmitters and recorders for the commanders of ships and of armies, and those that span for human speech the abyss of space across the con- tinent. There are a thousand details, im- possible of recitation, and the imagination falters in the footsteps of achievement. These things tell for the ennobling educa- tion of humanity—the diffusion of know]- edge, the broadening of the sympathies of communities—the better mingling of the country and the town, the elevation of the labors, the expansion of the ambition, the illumination of mind and matter—all one broad, bright, generous, glorious advance- ment, awakening the dull, inspiring the despondent, cheering the broken, arming the weak for the greatest cause, that of the common good.
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ATR, 4 R Y Q ~) & a“ a > = al . a Tei bares i age vs or td nn: | ee ee MACHINERY HALL AND ADMINISTRATION BUILDING
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. e. ° . : \ AE FE. lain lah lol dak bel) R to SE FE TRANSPORTATION, OLD AND NEW. By JOHN BRISBEN WALKER, T the left of the superb arch which gives entrance on the lagoon to the Hall of Transportation is a relief which shows an ox-cart, its cumbrous wheels dragging slowly along through the heavy sand, and on its seats the most uncom- fortable of travellers, who look upon the journey as an ordeal—a forcible picture of the discomforts of travel in ages gone by. On the opposite side of the arch, in strongest contrast, is a luxurious section of a palace car, its occupants reading or looking out through the plate-glass win- dows, an attentive porter serving their luncheon—in a word, travel made a pleas- ure and a delight. Higher up on the archway are two in- scriptions, one from Macaulay: «Of all inventions, the alphabet and the print- ing-press alone excepted, those inven- tions which abridge distance have done the most for civilization,’’ and one from Lord Bacon: « There are three things which make a nation great and prosper- ous, a fertile soil, busy workshops and easy conveyance for men and goods from place to place.’ Standing in the mas- sive doorway beneath these inscriptions, between these pictures of past and pres- ent, one catches a glimpse of the devel- opment of transportation from the ox- cart to the palace car in ten thousand exhibits. He is impressed with the idea that just at the present time this question of transportation is probably the most important of all others to the people of the United States. Neither Bacon nor Macaulay thought that methods would so soon be invented which would sur- pass the wildest dreams of their days and generations, which would be replete with possibilities for human happiness. but which, under the peculiar system of the times, would be used to enslave com- merce and almost threaten the existence of free government. They saw only seeds of invention from which would spring great plants of beauty and riches, but containing within the kernel of the fully ripened fruit a worm which, if not de-
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A WORLD'S FATR. stroyed, will consume plant and flower. What a wide world the word transporta- tion has been made to cover under one roof. A great section of the hull of one of the modern steamships rises up sixty or seventy feet into the air, significant in the strength and perfection of engineering, in the splendor of its furnishings, and in the skill shown in the construction of its parts, of every modern art. Everything has been brought into play for the com- fort and safety of the ocean traveller, every device, from the most complicated of triple expansion powers down to the tiny electric are. A little beyond this stands the ex- hibit of another kind of transportation, the transportation of energy through a mighty forge hammer from one of the great steel works, which have sprung up in re- sponse to the needs of naval construction. Near by, a specimen of the work which it forges, a giant shaft, made to carry the power from the ship’s great engines to the mammoth propeller. Oh, the strength of it! The mightiness of it! And yet, the littleness of it all! The story is told by this piece of crépe on the mainmast 585 of this beautiful model of the greatest of modern battleships, this model which has in place its turrets and armor seem- ingly so impenetrable, its huge guns, be- tween decks, lighted up with tiny electric lamps, filled with tiny figures of its com- plement of six hundred sailors ; the Ex- position gallery overlooking it is crowded with spectators; they wear solemn faces and speak in low tones. ‘‘How was it possible?’’ is the question they ask of each other. The model at which they are Icoking is that of the Victoria, sent here as the pride of the British navy, the perfection of mechanical skill, the great- est work of the greatest naval artisans of the world, a floating fort, which seemed almost beyond the reach of in- jury, vet by an experiment—which sud- denly has placed the powers of the ram infinitely beyond all other modern de- structive powers—sent to the bottom of the sea within a short quarter of an hour. What a curious transposition of intentions. This model, sent to con- vince the world of England’s naval pow- er, now that the original lies bottom EARLY LOCOMOTIVE AND TRAIN.
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A WORLD'S FAIR. *; to - 12, - SECTION OF A GREAT OCEAN STEAMSHIP. upward beneath the waters of the Medi- terranean, serves as an object lesson be- fore which the officers of all navies come to ponder and determine that the devel- opment of naval construction has been brought to a reductio ad absurdum. Under the head of «‘ Transportation’’ we find in one corner an exhibit of rapid- firing guns, and in unhappy juxtaposi- tion, the complement of this—a magnifi- cent vehicle for the transportation of bodies, gorgeously carved in ebony, splen- didly panelled,. funereally draped with waving plumes. Near by, an exhibit for the transportation of pleasure, a Rus- sian sleigh, supported on dolphins which are exquisite productions of ceramic art, in appearance too beautiful and too frag- ile to trust beyond the drawing - room. Still another exhibit combines_ both pleasure and usefulness; these are long galleries devoted to the highway-pervad- ing bicycle, the workingman’s pleasure vehicle, the most recent step in the prog- ress towards putting the poor man upon an equality with the rich man. And, by the way, it is worth while re- flecting, as a train on the most modern of electric roads rumbles by, that there is a steady advance in this levelling of dis- tinctions between the poor and rich. Long before his death, Mr. Jay Gould had seen the day when he could no longer ride in his carriage from his home on Fifth avenue to his office on lower Broadway. Invention, utilized by his hand, had lev- elled the distinction in carriage between himself and the poorest laborer of New York. He could not afford to spend an hour in rattling over the rough paving- stones of Broadway, when with a min- ute’s walk to an elevated station he would be able to save two-thirds of the time, to him so precious. And, while on this subject, I must allow myself to be diverted by another thought.
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A WORLD'S FAIR. The electric railway which traverses the length of the Exposition grounds, is one of the greatest delights of the entire Expo- sition. Without smoke or cinders, without the discomfort of closed windows in hot weather, it swiftly glides over a well-con- structed roadbed, the breeze fanning the passenger into comfort in the warmest weather, and the ride one of absolute pleasure. It will be incomprehensible if Mr. George Gould, after visiting the Ex- position, and seeing the perfect and al- most noiseless working of this elevated road, shall not immediately discard the use of engines upon the elevated roads in New York, no matter how many mill- ions may be tied up in them. It is such a question of comfort to the commu- nity that its consideration should not be delayed. Two-thirds of the nuisance of the elevated road would be removed for those living along its route. A rideinan open car from Harlem to the Battery would be preferable to a carriage ride in Central park, and the cars, which now travel without passengers for many hours of the evening, would be filled as completely as are the top seats of the Fifth avenue 587 omnibuses on a very hot summer night. Another interesting exhibit of trans- porting power, though not so distinctly in evidence as the elevated railway, is an operating model of an electric car, with a cone-shaped electric motor at either end, resting between wheels which are ten feet in diameter and steadied by pairs of horizontal wheels pressing against third or fourth rails for the sake of security. This car is intended to cover distance at the rate of from one hundred to one hun- dred and fifty miles per hour, It may be merely a dream of the inventor at the present, but unless some superior method takes its place, it will be an actuality within a very few years. Inasmuch as the postal service is growing more exacting in its de- mands for rapid transportation, a bill will probably be introduced into the next congress, providing for the construc- tion of an electric service between New York and Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pittsburg, Washington and Philadelphia, providing for the construction of an elec- tric railway, to be used exclusively by the postal service, upon which the mails may A MODEL RAILWAY POST-OFFICE.
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A WORLD'S FAIR. eee — ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE MILES AN HOUR. be sent through at the rate of at least one hundred miles an hour. Should it pass, the execution of the plan will be an object lesson in the governmental control of public highways. Should it not pass, then inquiries will be made in the course of time as to its fate. The people always wake up and ask these questions in the course of time. Side by side on the beautiful canals and lagoons, which give access to every por- tion of the Exposition grounds, are two classes of boats, which represent almost ASIA ARABIA JAVA 196s the oldest and the newest form of trans- portation. Here the Venetian gondolier, standing in the high stern of his craft, a boatman trained by the centuries, pictur- esque in costume, withthe graciousness of a hundred generations of public service. But as he moves his oar in long, graceful sweeps through the water, there glides past him the most modern of convey- ances, noiseless, without apparent power, with no evidence of steam, no evidence of any human agency, swift, graceful, cleav- ing the water in lines that are scientifi- BorTnn | CALA 079 RUSSIA SERVIA *\AURAMA) UMBRIA /08/ 1064 —| par EVOLUTION OF STEAMSHIP DIMENSIONS BETWEEN 1540 AND 1593.
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A WORLD'S FAIR. cally calculated for least resistance. It is the boat par excellence of the coming race. Whence comes its motion? It is obtained at night, when it has been put in the dock. <A copper wire is attached to the boat, through which, during the hours of darkness, energy has been transfused in the space around its seats and beneath its deck, as subtly as hypodermically in- jected morphine spreads through the vic- tim’s veins. Storage batteries have taken up the energy which has come from this living wire, and with the daylight it is ready for man's use. Seventy miles of transport at fifteen miles per hour is put away in these invisible interstices. When day comes the engineer, sitting in the bow, puts one hand on a lever, which 589 est periods of railroading. They stand side by side with the most magnificent engines of modern building, which tower with their seven-foot driving-wheels above the originals like giants. Here are the lo- comotive of Stephenson, the locomotives used on the Baltimore & Ohio in the early days, with their driving shafts not much larger than one of the bolts used in the modern locomotive ; the passenger cars, which were nothing but stage-coaches built on iron wheels, and which, by the way, might be a very pleasant form of car in these days of electrical locomotion. Step by step you trace the whole history of the locomotive and railroad train from their inception through all their rapid development up to the present hour, MODEL OF H. M. BATTLESHIP VICTORIA, a child might operate, so simple is its working, and another on a little pilot- wheel, the invisible propeller turns rapid- ly upon its axis and the boat is in mo- tion, forging ahead, slowly backing, turn- ing to the right and left, with a very minimum expenditure of human energy. From the point of interest rather than usefulness, the objects which attract the greatest crowd in the Transportation building are the locomotives of the earli- And when the mind has fully grasped the meaning of this development, the thought suddenly comes that this is the last exhibition that will ever be made, in all human probability, of the locomotive as a mode of propulsion for passenger traffic. At this exhibition we see the most imperfect locomotive in its almost tea-kettle form, and we also see the most perfect locomotive that will ever be built: the beginning and the end of
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59° steam railway traffic. Next year, or the year after, or at most in eight or ten years, steam power applied directly to pas- senger trains will be a thing of the past. And, while in this mood of prophesy, why not hazard the conjecture that this exhibition will also be the last at which the public highways, so logically belong- ing to the state, will be found in the control of individuals, using them for private aggrandizement? The railroad, upon which the happiness and prosper- ity of so many depend, which is such a factor in the public safety and comfort and in the production of wealth, will, before this country sees another exhibi- tion, pass where the control rightfully be- longs. It isa governmental function just as truly as is the function of taking charge of, preparing and distributing mail. We may not have, at the present time, a civil service equal to such requirements, but that is because our civil service has A WORLD'S FATR. been of no great matter to the public in one way or the other. Such functions of the government as have been exercised by the civil service have been compar- atively unimportant. But if we have a necessity for a thoroughly organized and well-appointed civil service, we will find the way to organize and appoint that ser- vice. If I were a holder of a great railroad property today, I would be more anxious that the government should purchase that property than the people could possibly be to have me sell it. It is an hour of change. Noone can exactly predict what the future contains, and railroad properties, . which are now very valuable, which cross zigzag in many directions, which have rolling- stock worth many millions, may become almost useless under the demands of new engineering, under the conditions of a new invention, under the possibilities of a new science .
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A WORLD’S FAIR. a” a
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A ¥ 2 i al MINES By F. J. V. SKIFF, CHIEF F all the architectural panoramas that on many sides surprise and delight the visitor to the exposition, none excels the prospect from the Upper La- goons. The great Palace of Mines, with its companion structures surrounding the Court of Honor, rises at the distant southern end of the Lagoon, its white massive outlines being thrown into high relief amid an environment of natural and artificial splendor. As we trace the details of its architecture, there is brought to mind the long historical evolution that has occasioned this building and its exhibit. KEALY eek CONVER,, 4M 88/2 (ROR WUEAS AND METALLURGY. DEPARTMENT OF MINES AND MINING Imagination carries us back to the dawn of the metal industries—the bronze age— and to the patriarchal times with their abundant metals playing such an import- ant part in the commercial and _ belliger- ent life of the Orient. Jew, Venetian, Roman and Spaniard, impelled by an insatiate desire for wealth and possessions, were in- spired and urged on to discover and widen the world’s boundaries. Cornish tin brought the culture of Rome to Great Britain and gold to re- deem the Holy Sepulchre leads Columbus tosearch for the western conti- nent. Today are the
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A WORLD'S FAIR. onward tides of population and prosperity directed by a deposit of coal or a vein of metal, whole armaments of nations ren- dered useless by the discovery of a new and more impenetrable alloy. We seem to gaze at the long line of ex- hibitions that shine like bright points, marking off the world’s progress until in the dim perspective of Charlemagne’s time is shadowed forth the smiths and miners of the Hartz mountains, bringing down samples of their pure and wrought metals to display at the yearly festival of Frankfort-on-the-Main—the first re- corded mining exhibit. One by one, fairs, festivals, commercial exhibitions and in- ternational expositions arise in quick suc- cession — Frankfort, St. Denis, Maison d'Orsay, Dublin, London, Vienna, Paris, —in each, mining and metallurgy per- forming a continually growing and im- portant part, proportionate to the rapid development of the industries themselves. From the one solitary class which com- prehended their exhibit at the first great exhibition, the classification has expan- ded until the Columbian Exposition has devoted to a generic enumeration in these lines no less than twenty-eight groups and one hundred and twenty-eight classes, be- sides conferring on them the title of a de- partment. These reflections conduce to an appreci- ation of the antiquity of the theme and the fundamental character of these indus- tries as factors in the economies of na- tions. The judgment that has magnified and honored this mineral and metallic wealth with an elaborate classification and magnificent architectural covering, appears amply justified. Within the building itself, the first feat- ure to attract attention is the openness of the interior construction. The discerning genius of the architect perceived at once that the first requirements of an expo- sition building for exhibit purposes was simply unencumbered space. He adopted the suggestion of the Niagara bridge. With one-half million pounds of steel, he built up a series of cantilever trusses and overlaid them with frame and glass, cov- ering five acres of practically unobstruct- ed floor. This is the first example of the application of this system to roof con- struction. The heavy steel supports gracefully throw out their branches and 593 meet at the apex nearly one hundred feet from the floor. From the broad gallery that extends entirely around the building and next to the wall, is to be had the most attractive and satisfactory bird's-eye view of the varied display. The scene if anything repeats and matches in symmetry and decoration, the dramatic presentation of architecture and landscape without. Here is spread out a fairy city within a city— a creation of delicate and handsome in- stallations, laid off in regular avenues and boulevards, and set off with towering pyramids and trophies, shields, banners and streamers. From above the great assemblage of mineral materials, heaps of ores, bullion stacks, marble and coal arches, and ornamental pavilions that appear in such profusion below, here and there a monolith, or spire, of metal or mineral rises, thus relieving any possible monotony of level. The many individual displays contrib- uting to make up this scene are so amal- gamated—the separate members are so unified that they seem to fuse into one great collective exhibit. Yet an order and system of installation is throughout clearly visible. The plan is simple, and, carefully observed, will be of great service to the visitor, affording him a better com- prehension of the display in its entirety as well as in detail. Over beyond the main central avenue of the building — Bullion Boulevard— float the flags of Germany, Great Britain, France, Spain, Japan and divers foreign nations, occu- pying the entire western portion of the floor. A line of pavilions in ever-varying styles of architecture is draw up in festal array along the east side of the same avenue, and at intervals are discernable the inscriptions or coats of arms of our own states and territories. From beneath the east gallery comes the whirl and clatter of operating machines and we glimpse whizzing wheels or the steady movement of running belts and chains. Looking about us in the gallery agrouping of materials as materials is noticeable. The minerals, the rocks, the metals, salts, abrasives, stone, oil and coal, are here ranged in separate colonies, as distinct as are the substances themselves. The two main facts of installation, then, are the massing of exhibits according to geog- 38
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594 raphy, as exemplified in the state and foreign sections; and their collection along lines of essential similarity as il- lustrated by the machinery and gallery groupings. In order to prevent confusion in the presence of such an aggregation of objects offered for inspection, the visitor will do well to keep in mind the particular prin- ciples controlling such an exhibit. Theex- position of today is no longer, as were the fairs, a mere market for the exchange of commodities. The railroad and the tele- graph have brought the buyer and seller into such intimate communication that the purely advertising function of the earlier exhibitions is retired. Entertain- ment, recreation, invention, education, progress—these are the aims of the great modern exposition, and by superiority in these directions its success is insured. Let us now turn and examine how far and in what way the exhibit under study responds to these demands. We have already seen how pleasing an impression is produced by a first glance over the ensemble of the exhibit. In an exposition like the Columbian, so lavish with beauty of form and arrangement, the first thought of both management and exhibitor was, naturally, mode of ex- pression. In this case, materials were abundant, but the artistic arrangement dif- ficult. Yet, on that artistic presentation in large measure depended the popularity and success of the exhibit. The general plan, as laid out, contemplated the free use of the architect’s skill and the taste of the decorator. The enthusiasm of the hour, added to motives of national and state pride and of commercial rivalry, led exhibitors to employ the most original as well as the handsomest designs. Our foreign guests, versed in exposition practise, have not been slow to improve the opportunity, relying chiefly upon the munificence and enterprise of private ex- hibitors. Germany, for instance, arrests attention from all sides by the magnificent and imposing iron and steel trophy ex- hibit of Baron Stumm, a display made upon the personal solicitation of the em- peror and at an outlay of nearly $200,000. Pyramids and branching columnsof struct- ural iron and steel are built up toa height of nearly a hundred feet and assume fig- ures as bewildering in ramification as they A WORLD'S FAIR. are graceful in outline. An entrance arch is surmounted with bronze allegorical figures, while within the space statuary groups of metal workers and metal-work- ing appliances form an ornamental] foun- tain. Lofty obelisks of polished beam and rail sections stand at the corners, and a rear wall is the background upon which is worked out, in mosaics of burnished blast furnace slags, plans of the works and names of the products. Great Britain and her colonies occupy a central position on the floor and present the particular metals of those countries in attractive and artistic forms, New South Wales outshining the other colonies in this respect. Pyramids of copper ingots encircled with hoops of burnished copper, stacks of tin ingots adorned with metal streamers and rosettes, a silvered shaft with a base of silver ores and topped with a stooping Atlas bearing the world, are gracefully arranged along the principal front, arches of coal being thrown across the rear section of the court. Spain, Brazil, Japan, France, and others, adopt fitting symbols and characteristic methods by which to show forth their mineral treasures and at the same time to heighten the animation and gayety of the scene. In all this entertaining exuberance of ornamentation and design the great min- eral-producing states of the United States have a prominent share. Their array of architectural fronts forms, on the east side of Bullion Boulevard, a facade as unique and interesting as that of a street in Paris or Cairo. Classic pediments and col- ummns, parapets, arches, and turreted bat- tlements, make a beautiful and interesting spectacle, each separate pavilion forming a fitting temporary habitation for the of- ferings of the states. Nor is all this mere empty and meaningless form, for every marble slab, clay brick, and tesselated pavement is material selected out of a great abundance, to represent the charac- teristic minerals of the state exhibiting. In this way a monotonous repetition of mineral riches, either as heaps of ores or in carefully arranged cabinets and cases, is avoided and we are continually sur- prised and delighted with the ever chang- ing pictures of mineral and metal wealth, fashioned and embodied in the most beautiful and graceful shapes.
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A WORLD'S FAIR. The series commences at the north with Pennsylvania, the great coal producer, and ends at the south with Colorado, the great silver producer. The intervening exhibits are, as a rule, those of the states that can assert supremacy in a particular line of production, such, for instance, as Michigan, the queen copper state; Mis- souri and Wisconsin, the ranking lead and zine producers ; California, the gold country ; and Montana, leading in the output of associated metals—copper, sil- ver and gold. Where all have done superbly well, it is somewhat difficult to choose any single one for particular approbation. Ohio has executed one of the most striking exam- ples of mineral architecture. An entrance arch, with the inscription ‘‘Ohio’’ in fancy tiles, as well as the bays on either side, with their copings and columns, are constructed of a variety of Ohio building and ornamental stones, enameled brick, and mosaic tile. These different mate- rials represent the contributions and ex- hibits of many individuals, corporations and counties. Kentucky, her neighbor, receives vis- itors through a castellated entrance of can- nel coal. The conchoidal fracture of the facing gives it a glistening appearance, which, with the murky colof of the mate- rial, makes this turreted front one of the most conspicuous objects in the building. The columnated arches of California are faced with polished marbles of white, green and gray, pure, flecked and mot- tled, and are surmounted with two gilded bears, symbols of the state. Michigan's exhibit is reached through a massive en- trance of red Lake Superior sandstone, decorated with a border of little Brownie miners and capped with a statuary group representing the coat of arms of the state. A parapet of the same material marks the boundaries and harmonizes well with the shiny colors of copper to be seen on all sides within the court. Wisconsin has set a monolith at each corner of her space —huge needles of sandstone quarried in single pieces—and adorns the interior with a glittering crystal and mineral fountain. Each stone in the arch of Minnesota bears, worked in gilded letter- ing, the name of the quarry or the forma- tion from which derived. Did space allow, a description would be 595 in order of the elaborate details of the pavilions of other states, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, Missouri, South Dakota, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, North Carolina, Wyoming, Washington, New Mexico or of Utah. Suffice it to say that in all, the fine arts have brought out in varied lights the surprising adaptabil- ity of common minerals to the highest artistic ends, and in a way that gratifies the senses of the beholder. The exposition manager, both local and general, must of necessity be something of a showman. Although his work is laid out along scientific lines and the tastes of diverse classes are to be consid- ered, he has the responsibility of a world to entertain. And he can only expect to reach the great majority by means of his ‘« special attractions,’’ by exhibits that will hold the interest of the multitude. In the exposition itinerary, such exhibits are like the art galleries and museums of a European tour, the objects of special pilgrimages. They form retaining points in the mind of the hurried visitor and from them he gains his impressions and makes his estimates of the entire display. Reference may be made to many. The diamond-washing and cutting ex- hibit is probably the principal center of at- traction in the Mining building. Through the glass windows enclosing the Cape Colony space, the interested spectator can watch the blue diamond - bearing earth crushed and pulverized and the pebbles washed out and sorted with the actual machines employed at the great Kimberley diggings of South Africa, where twenty years ago the Boer settler farmed in peace. The machines are operated by native Zu- lus, imported for the purpose. Togged out in their holiday attire with beads and feathers, and leaning on club or spear, they give a vivid impression of social life as it exists in and near the diamond dig- gings. The rough diamonds are handed over to the lapidarist in another room, who passes them through several differ- ent stages of grinding and polishing, deftly, but gradually, gives a touch here and there, and holds them up a perfect gem sparkling in the sunlight. Upon the main central court, Great Britain has a collection of rare metals and the salts of rare metals valued at $85,000, one block of pure palladium alone repre-
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596 senting $35,000. An ingot of pure plat- inum first exhibited at the International exhibition of 1862, is valued at $28,000, and is not exceedingly large either. Plat- inum, iridium, osmium, ruthenium, crys- talline silicon and boron, together with a model of the first platinum vessel used in the concentration of sulphuric acid and an entire gold-plated platinum plant for the same manufacture go to make upa display of great costliness. The most notable display in precious metals is the renowned Montana statue, ‘« Justice,’’ cast in solid silver, worth $61, 800, and resting on a plinth of solid gold representing $230,000. Several valuable gold collections are to be seen in different portions of the building. In the New South Wales court, mounted on plush, are a series of nuggets and alluvial golds valued at $35,000. A big mass of gold, called the ‘‘ Maitland Bar Nugget,’’ con- tains over three hundred and thirteen ounces and is appraised at $6000. Col- orado’s chief attraction is the gold display arranged in cases about the marble col- umn in the center of the court. Twenty thousand dollars in the finest specimens of crystallized golds, the rarest and most beautiful forms of flake, leaf, and wire gold found during the last year in the Breckenridge region, are here on exhi- bition. The largest and most complete exhibit of nickel ever made is to be found in the Ontario space. Upon a base of heavy masses of pyrrhotite and other nickel ores rest the cone-shaped concentrate, or nickel matte, surmounted in turn by a huge ingot of nickel containing several thou- sand dollars worth of the pure metal. One of the most interesting and valu- able collections of gems and semi- precious stones is that made by Mr. George F. Kunz, the author of the au- thoritative work Gems and Precious Stones. His brilliant exhibit contains amazon stones, noble opals, amethysts in geodes, hydrophanes or mad-stones, sec- tionized and polished jades and agates, quartz, a tiger's-eye ball four inches in di- ameter, a collection of cones, flakes and chips of obsidian illustrating the ancient method of making spear and arrow points, and a great variety of gems, antiques and curios, together with a set of illustrated works of ancient writers on gems. A WORLD'S FAIR. The diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, opals, amethysts, garnets and topaz of New South Wales, and the sapphires, ori- ental emeralds, garnets, quartz of differ ent colors, sagenites, beryls, spinels and other gems both cut and uncut of North Carolina are among the other large and fascinating displays. Much in public favor are the cases in the Wisconsin sec- tion filled with lustrous round and pear- drop pearls from the streams of the Badger state. The colors are the richest shades of white, pink, lavender and blue and some of the little satiny beads are held at as high as $5000. The great copper mining companies of Arizona have in that territory’s space an assortment of variegated ores of copper, that vie in color with the transformations of the kaleidoscope. Surrounding the massive piece of azurite streaked with green malachite that forms the central trophy are pictures and symphonies in blue, green and silvered plush and satin mineral surfaces. Polished sections of agatized wood and a thousand and one showy specimens make this exhibit as typical and beautiful a mineral display as can be found in the building. The min- eral-covered miner's cabin of New Mexico with the accompanying life-sized figures of prospector'‘and burro, takes one back to the slopes of the mountain and vividly calls to mind the natural grandeur of the landscapes that form a setting for these interesting types of mountain mining life. The entire north gallery has been sumptuously furnished by the Standard Oil company, which here has probably the most complete and extensive presen- tation of the petroleum industry ever made. In elaborate cases and cabinets are to be seen glass jars of uniform size filled with different grades of crude and refined petroleums, from the heavy black to the pure white; the series embracing every quality known to the industry. An interesting collection of all the bi-products, such as candles, gums and waxes, salves and ointments, form an interesting feature of the display; also models of pipe lines and refineries illustrating the drilling, transportation and refining of oil. An operating model of the greatest coke es- tablishment in the world, that in the Con- nelsville region, is shown by the H. C. Frick Coke company. It exhibits in de-
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A WORLD'S FAIR. tail the different steps in the manufac- ture of this material so necessary to mod- ern metallurgy. Many other special at- tractions could well be cited; the evapora- tion of salt as carried on in the Ohio sec- tion; Oregon’s exhibit in miniature of hydraulic mining; the preparation of Chilian nitrates; and panoramas of famous mineral springs. These with what have been already enumerated, form a list of attractive features that the most casual observer desires to see and that well repay visitation. But the mining exhibit has a higher mission than simply to draw up the states and nations in dress parade and furnish a novel entertainment for the multitude. To carry out the modern exposition idea it must also aim to educate, to impart and disseminate knowledge. It calls upon science, art and industry for suggestions, ideas and facts that shall bring about a better understanding of the inorganic side of nature’s domain. State pride and com- mercial rivalry have adopted ornamenta- tion simply as a species of advertisement to tell the capitalist where to invest and the emigrant where to settle; to inform the miner as to what can be cheaply and easily produced, and to enable the manu- facturer to discover new materials for new In this way the great facts of eco- nomic importance in the mineral world are brought out with the greatest distinctness. Samples and specimens tell but half the tale. They become exhibits, and only gain their principal value to the practical commercial man when they carry detailed information as to geological and geo- graphical locality, cost of production, fa- cilities for transportion, and adaptability to special manufacture. The motive leading the foreign coun- tries to participate at the exposition was in the first place, of course, the commer- cial one. Each one had necessarily to maintain its rank in the industrial world, and the exposition afforded a battlefield upon which, at the time set, was to be fought out and settled future commercial supremacy. With such a stimulus it is natural that the desire to set forth pro- ducts and commercial advantages in the completest manner should be paramount. Nor was this battle beneath the dignity of emperors and presidents, for the ex- hibits of Germany, Austria, France, Mex- uses. 597 ico, Spain and Japan represent the active supervision of foreign governments and the personal enterprise of potentates. In the state pavilions the concentration of the representative minerals of thou- sands of square miles into an area of com- paratively a few square feet cannot help but form in the minds of both the public and the professional miner, a better com- prehension of the mineral productiveness and commercial activity of each state ex- hibiting. The West has a story to tell of the opening up of new fields of wealth and hopes to secure the financial aid of interested investors. The « New’’ South exposes maps and information proving her boundless but undeveloped mineral belts, and is eager to turn the tide in her direction. The stable East brings the mineral and metal products it confidently intends to introduce into wider and more profitable markets. In the group exhibits the commercial enterprise of competing firms has organ- ized valuable instructive features. The application of the mechanic's skill to the mineral extractive industries, as epito- mized in the mining machinery section, furnishes a serviceable object lesson in mine engineering. The new coal cutting and drilling machines, the improved auto- matic hoists and patent breakers explain how fuel is cheapened and how the exten- sion of iron producing regions is made possible. Improved stamp mills, roast- ing furnaces, and other apparatus for the mechanical, chemical or electrolytic re- duction of the metals illustrate the metal- lurgical factors that revive languishing regions. In other groups the advertisement is secured by enlargement upon the histor- ical and evolutionary sides, or by exhibit- ing the successive stages in the processes of extraction and manufacture. The orig- inal converter first used, by Kelly the in- ventor, for the manufacture of Bessemer steel is the introduction to a display of iron and steel ; the first kit of tools used in drilling for oil, brings to notice a large well supply exhibit. The singular but important use of asbestos as an incom- bustible fabric is called to public attention by operating machines that take the crude rock fiber through the processes of sepa- ration, carding, spinning and weaving, and produce a theater curtain. An as-
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598 phalt firm endeavors to enlarge its busi- ness by showing in map and model, the natural sources of supply, mode of man- ufacture, and usage in the construction of roofs, conduits and boulevards. The Mining building is indeed a hall of science, scientific methods and scientific appointments being everywhere apparent. The entire display is an exemplar of ap- plied geology, mineralogy, lithology, of chemistry, physics, metallurgy and engi- neering. It is the great Columbian school of minerals, mining and metallurgy. The scholar finds it a technical museum, re- plete with the choicest illustrative speci- mens. In fact, the maps, reliefs, dia- grams, models, systematic rock and min- eral collections and statistics here pre- sented probably exceed in both quantity and variety the equipment of the largest scientific schools and colleges. In the collection and arrangement of the state displays the different geological surveys had a leading part. The survey of Pennsylvania, Missouri, New Jersey and North Carolina, by map, chart and relief model, outline superficially and in depth the limits of vast deposits of lead, zinc, coal, iron or precious minerals as the case may be, and illustrate strati- graphical evolution by sets of specimens. New York has built up at her entrance a geological monument, showing to scale with actual specimens, the successive strata underlying the state, from the low- est archzean to the most recent formation. Colorado’s geological history is told by separate maps of different periods each age having its corresponding record of rock series. The United States Geological Survey, at the north entrance, has erected a pyramid of minerals and metals show- ing in succession from coal to gems the average amount produced in the United States every second. The length of the American section itself constitutes a lesson in national ge- ology. At one end the iron and coal of the Appalachian chain is exhibited by Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York; at the other the great mineral states of the Rockies show the metals extracted from the mountainous backbone of the continent; while intermediate are arranged the salts, clays and stone of the states of the great interior basin. The result isa quick contrast between the products of A WORLD'S FAIR. igneous action and those of sedimentation Germany occupies a large space with a united exhibit of its royal mining bureaus and technical academies, and presents graphically and by model, the modern methods of coal and metal mining schemes of metallurgical reduction, as well as the magnificent detail work of he: geological surveys. This superb techni- cal exhibit reveals the intimate and im- portant relation sustained by the scientific and engineering professions to the min- eral industries in the German empire and also affords a good idea of the advanced state of technical science in that country. The geology of France, New South Wales, Spain, Brazil and Mexico is inter- preted by means of characteristic fossil and rock collections and by extensive wall maps. The Dominion of Canada has brought a large part of its Ottawa museum in order to demonstrate the structure and mineral possibilities of the great territory under its jurisdiction. The Imperial geo- logical survey of Japan surprises the occi- dental scientist with the completeness of its geological maps. The different recon- naissances, published bothin Japaneseand English and framed in bamboo, show the scientific proficiency of this progressive people. Geographic distribution, however, occa- sions too wide dispersion of certain min- erals and mineral materials and dissipates or obscures the scientific knowledge and information yielded by a united or collect- ive exhibit. The department itself there- fore has collected and grouped in the gal- lery a series of case and cabinet national displays accompanied by general data of widespread interest and value. In this way have been formed a technical miner- alogical collection, a series of the salts and mineral waters of the United States, and a cube exhibit of building and orna- mental stone from the principal quarries. A large plate glass map shown in con- junction with the technical display of the ccals of the United States determines by numbered cross reference the exact source of each coal specimen. The four hundred and fifty samples represent every field and carry careful analyses by the de- partment chemist. The departmental as- say laboratory in addition to this work carries on regular determinations of ores and is in itself an interesting exhibit.
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A WORLD'S FAIR. An extensive metallurgical display ex- hibits the ores, the extraction samples, and the products of each metal used in the arts. Of particular interest to the visitor are the aluminum processes and specimens, the metallurgy of nickel, and the electrolytic refining of copper., Many processes are here shown for the first time, such as the desilverization of base bullion, the tempering of copper (hitherto reckoned one of the lost arts) the complete series of gold and silver alloys and electroplating with iridium. The history of mining and metallurgy is the theme of a long line of transparen- cies suspended before the gallery windows. These plates are reproduced from the works of ancient writers on these subjects and, beginning with the divining rod of the ancient prospector, illustrate the pe- culiar mining and metallurgical applian- ces and methods of primitive times. A library of from five to six thousand volumes on mining, metallurgy, miner- alogy, geology, and allied arts and sci- ences, together with a reading-room where 599 technical periodicals and journals are on file, cover the literature of the industries. We have now passed in review the mul- tifarious exhibit of the Mining building. The higher requirements of the modern exposition as unfolded in this exhibit has in some degree been investigated. Its harmony with the refined artistic stand- ards of the whole exposition, its overtures to entertainment and recreation, and its function as an educator in the science and technology of the industries on exhibi- tion, are unmistakably marked. To what degree it will stimulate research and inven- tion, or what may be its permanent influ- ence upon progress and civilization, can- not at this early time be predicted. It stands as the materialization and conclu- sion of the congressional enactment that provided for the exhibition of the ‘ prod- ucts of the soil, mine and sea,’’ and let us hope that the effectiveness and dignity with which the Columbian mining and metallurgical display has discharged this responsibility may make it a prototype for many future international expositions.
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CHICAGO’S ENTERTAINMENT OF DISTINGUISHED VISITORS. By HoBarT C. CHATFIELD-TAYLOR. ITH the dedication ceremonies of the World’s Columbian exposi- tion in last October young Chicago made her début in the society of the world. Previous to that time she had been looked upon as a vigorous—though somewhat uncouth —exponent of western energy, whose efforts were characterized by the boisterousness of untrammelled youth rather than by the repose and grace of well-bred maturity. In October she ap- peared to the world as its hostess, and by her dignified performance of the ardu- ous duties the occasion demanded she won the admiration of her guests and demonstrated her almost inherent knowl- edge of social amenities. Society, in its expansive sense, is such a generous term that, when a city becomes the hostess of the world, there must, of necessity, be many contre temps which would not characterize an exclusive May- fair drawing-room ; but in the entertain- ment of Chicago’s guests in last October there was a lack of ostentation, and a dig- nity which were truly gratifying to every Chicagoan. There were no social feuds among the entertainers, no struggles for supremacy ; and each Chicagoan to whom a duty was allotted went to work with a will which ensured its successful per- formance. Fortunately for Chicago, the city is too young to maintain an exclusive aristoc- racy, holding aloof from its neighbors, and viewing their efforts with the disdainful mistrust the world calls snobbishness. There are, of course, sets and cliques in Chicago society; there are, of course, men of the world, and men of the West only ; but these cliques and sets are owing rather to the gregariousness of man’s nature and the principle of natural selec- tion than toany apparent attempt to create class distinctions. The best proof of this lies in the fact that in any public enter- tainment the people of all sets work side by side for the credit of the city, desirous only of enhancing the reputation of their beloved Chicago. I say beloved, because Chicagoans do love their city. It is not an heritage that has come to them from a vague and distant past. It is their own creation ; it is the result of their own ef- forts ; it is part of themselves, and if, at times, they permit the exuberance of their satisfaction to bubble forth, the world should smile good-naturedly and pardon them, as it does boisterous college boys after a well-won race. In the entertainment of its guests, Chicago was imbued with true western hospitality and a desire to show herself a citizen of the world. Like a newly-created ambassador presenting his credentials at a foreign court, she was for the first time appearing before the world as a metrop- olis, representing a new civilization. Her guests, the representatives of all the na- tions of the world, were her critics. For the first time in the city’s history, the vice-president of the United States, the cabinet, the diplomatic corps, and com- missioners of foreign countries, the su- preme court, senate, house of represent- atives, and the governors of over thirty states, gathered in Chicago, to accept her hospitality and, ia the case of most of them, to form their first impression of their hostess. What those impressions were, except when favorable, cannot be said, for the guests whose opinions might be valuable refrained from public crit- icism and confined their expressions to compliments most generously bestowed. It is the hope, however, of all Chicagoans that they carried back to their respective countries and homes at least a favorable impression of the young western dé- butante, who had just made her bow in the society of the world. During May and June the city was called upon to entertain the nation's guests: the Infantes Eulalia and An- tonio of Spain and the Duke of Ve- ragua. The distinguished descendant of America’s discoverer remained in the city long enough to cast aside the con- strained cloak of officialism and mingle with the people. His familiar face was to be seen in every drawing-room. He met his friends on a footing of democratic equality, and after the official ceremonies in connection with the opening of the ex-
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A WORLD'S FAIR. position, he came and went like a citizen of the city, respected and liked, but re- ceiving no more attention than would be accorded to a most distinguished citizen of our own country. In the case of the Infanta Eulalia it was different. She was royalty, and the glamor surrounding that name seems to have affected, in a great measure, people and press alike. Fortunately, the ridicu- lous subservience with which she was sometimes treated, was not confined to Chicago, and it may be that the western metropolis was too timid to assert its own democratic spirit. Unfortunately, this royal princess was abused and even slan- dered because she was courageous enough to assert her independence. She showed a marked distaste for ceremonies, and while visiting the exposition she preferred a wheel chair to a coach and four, and her own suite to ceremonial committees and Columbian guards. For this she was criticised, when Americans should have been the first to applaud her democratic desire to avoid senseless adoration and gaping crowds. During the past year, in addition to the guests of the nation and the exposition, hundreds of distinguished men and wom- en of different nationalities have been at- tracted to Chicago, and their presence has produced an attractive cosmopolitanism which cannot be completely obliterated even when the magic White City is but a memory. This meeting and mingling with intelligent men and women of the world cannot fail to benefit the society of a city, heretofore provincial, and its effect will be felt long after French, German and Spanish have ceased to be spoken in western drawing-rooms. This year the eyes of the world are upon Chicago. The city is a metropolis in every sense of the word, and the pres- ence in the streets of Cossacks, Bedouins and Javanese attract little more attention than does the average German immigrant. This liberalizing of a great inland city ; this contact with the world must produce a lasting benefit, and likewise its society heretofore retiring, exclusive perhaps, and certainly puritanical, must become liberal, elastic and comprehensive. The day when society can be governed by church ascendency is passed. The time when society must reflect the best cult- 601 ure, refinement and artistic taste of the community, and by so doing become sparkling, vivacious and attractive to cosmopolites, is just beginning. There is room for the artistic development of Chicago, and that is what the Columbian exposition is doing. The city needs more studios, and publishing houses, more con- servatories and universities —or rather greater, for we have them in embryo al- ready. Chicago is a commercial metropo- lis. It must become an intellectual me- tropolis as well. The Columbian exposition, through its superb educational facilities and the ex- ample of the «distinguished guests’? it has gathered together, has given the impe- tus to intellectual development. If every dollar invested in the exposition is irre- trievably gone, if ten years are required by the citizens of Chicago to recuperate their financial losses, time and money will yet have been well spent. The artistic taste has been created. There is enough energy and perseverance in. the city to overcome far greater obstacles than temporary financial embarrassment. The sense which appreciates the beautiful has been cultivated, and never again can Chi- cagoans judge a man entirely by his abil- ity to accumulate wealth. Heretofore Chicago has formed a civili- zation somewhat apart from the world. Its reputation certainly has not been zs- thetic. Its society, naturally sensitive to criticism it considered in a great measure undeserved, and geographically removed from the social centers of the East, has lived apart from the rest of the world. It has grown and thrived and imbibed the spirit of Americanism. During recent years it has begun to acquire successfully the subtle polish the world requires from those who aspire to social distinction, but so far this western society has been com- paratively free from the extravagancies and vices which are too apt to follow in the train of the highest civilization. Chicagoans have been too busily en- gaged in building their city and their for- tunes to find time for dissipation, but now all that must change. The city and the fortunes have been built. Chicago has taken its rank among the great cities of the world ; the people of the world have entered her drawing-rooms and found her society energetic, progressive, and, in
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602 most cases, well-bred. Fortunes have been created to be spent. Will they be spent wisely or ill? That is a question Chicagoans must decide for themselves. That life in the western metropolis will never return to the simplicity of a decade ago, is an assured fact. But behind the splendid trappings of metropolitanism a foe is always lurking. ‘That foe is idle- ness and its attendant demon is dissipa- tion. Yet Chicagoans welcome the advent of the luxury which wealth renders possible ; it is the natural accompaniment of refined civilization, and, wisely chosen, it cannot fail to prove beneficial to the community ; but let them avoid the mistakes of older civilizations, and, by creating an intel- LULLABY. lectual social standard, drive the dissi- pated dawdler to more congenial climes. There are in the best society of Chicago today—and I say it boldly in the face of probable challenges from persons ignorant of the facts—fewer scandals and fewer divorces, in proportion to its size, than in that of any city of over a million inhab- itants in the civilized world. Now that Chicago has become a metropolis; now that its society has been brought in con- tact with that of the world at large, and its people, having money, are pre- pared to spend it—let the same moral standard be maintained. By that means alone the western metropolis may surpass its rivals, and stand as the highest type of the world’s civilization. rough the clover and the dew sme to mether and to You. In the barnyard be will stay Just to put” his scythe saway, ows aneck Sheep wait Ser him, tee Dearer than his flocks are yeu. ¥ rms that labour all day long re fer lovin Mois that very strong. ar the heat o§ du pes 7Know so many pretty tunes Fire-flies and fire- stots Tw: nkle through t iles of eadow leeptor Fath Ps f if, pasture bars
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THE GOVERNMENT EXHIBIT. By F. T. BicKFORD, SECRETARY BOARD OF MANAGEMENT GOVERNMENT EXHIBIT. ‘T°HE Governmental exhibit at Chi- cago is the largest, most costly and most comprehensive single exhibit ever prepared for any exposition at home or abroad. It is an exposition in itself. Its immediate cost, including that of its buildings will have been $1,350,000, while the intrinsic value of materials, drawn from the departments, arsenals and insti- tutions of the Government is probably twice as much more. The law creating the board indicated ten natural great divisions of the work, comprising the eight executive depart- ments, the Smithsonian institution and National museum (under one head) and the United States Fish commission ; and a bare enumeration of the articles exhib- ited, without descriptive matter or com- ment, would fill a volume twice the size of this magazine. The contribution of the Department of Agriculture is almost entirely a creation of the board. This department has no store of historical or spectacular material to draw upon, and inasmuch as it does not farm an acre of ground on its own account, the abnormal growths and ‘fancy ’’ products, animal and vegetable, which form the staple attractions to agri- cultural fairs, were inadmissible as illus- trative of governmental functions. Nevertheless, this department, the voungest in the executive brotherhood, is recognized as among the most important in an exposition sense, being the only one of which special mention was made in the law providing for American partic- ipation in the last and greatest of the French expositions. This is a depart- ment of processes and experiment, and its annual output is found in the libraries of the country, comprising its reports and bulletins upon the multifarious subjects, which interest, or are supposed to in- terest the American farmer. Its exhibit is a material illustration of the processes and experimentation pursued by the emi- nent scientists at the head of its several sub-branches. Enlarged models of familiar things ; charts of distribution ; scientifically class- ified specimens of products designed to bring to the attention of the farmer the more unfamiliar secrets of agricultural science, and thereby excite a deeper and more profitable interest in the publications sent out from Washington in his interest, comprise the weight of its contribution. The diseases of domestic animals, their or- igin, nature and effects ; the blights and rusts and afflictions to which the vegetable and fruit families are heirs, with the best remedies and methods of their applica- tion ; the beneficial or detrimental effects of transplantation, of changes of soil, climate, altitude; the study in compar- ison, of like products of different regions of the country ; the havoc of insect pests with the methods of their discourage- ment ; and the illustration in the pres- ence of the visitor of the more interesting and instructive processes of investiga- tion are among its attractions. The United States Fish commission, the least of the ten branches in an exec- utive sense—a mere unattached bureau of the Government—is among the most prolific in the adaptability of its functions to exposition purposes. It has won high honors in all the great events at home or abroad in which it has taken part, and its methods have by these media become known to and copied by the kindred in- stitutions of civilization. Probably the most popular single feature of the expo- sition is the aquarium—a procession of fresh water beauties and deep sea horrors —more striking, varied and unfamiliar than the illusive fictions of insanity’s dream. This commission illustrates by an interesting series of models the devel- opment of the sea-going fishing marine, from its germ—the ancient tub, whose sine qué non was room and inertia, to the thing of lightness and beauty, which ri- vals the racing yacht in speed, and makes the Cape Cod fleet the finest of like cre- ated things. The Department of the Interior em- braces several mammoth bureaus, having no more intimate relationship to each other than is imposed by their subordina- tion to a single head. Its exhibit as a whole, therefore, lacks homogenity, while the fact that the functions of some of its
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604 branches do not readily materialize in ‘‘articles’’ robs it of completeness. The Pension office makes no appearance at the Fair; and while the Census office, the General Land office, the Bureau of Edu- cation, and the Indian bureau contribute interesting features, these afford no ade- quate idea of their importance respectively in the economy of the general Govern- ment. But the United States Patent office and the Geological Survey are re- garded as among the most prolific of the ‘‘show’’ branches of the Government ; and had the available means and space been quadrupled the expenditure might still have been prudent and praiseworthy. The Patent office began its work of prep- aration early, by the creation of a board of expert examiners, who set for them- selves the task of proving to mankind the leading influence exerted by the American patent system, upon the material progress and prosperity of the country, and the world. The display embraces nearly three thousand models—gems of the model makers’ and metal workers’ art, which illustrate, serially, the march of invention in fifty-four selected classes. These begin with the germinal device, in comparison with which are shown the types of suc- cessive improvements, leading up to the perfected article of modern commerce. The series range numerically from that illustrating improvements in bridges, con- sisting of only nine models, up to that comprising the two hundred and eighty- three models, showing the progress in marine propulsion—screw propellers, pad- dle-wheels, and their like. In a spectac- ular sense they embrace everything from the hand-made output of the proverbially poor inventor, to the «‘sextuple’’ print- ing-press of polished steel and brass, less than three feet in maximum dimension, yet capable of turning out tiny imitations of the metropolitan dailies, legibly printed and ready-folded for the mail. The ob- servant visitor cannot fail to share the regrets of the experts that the laws for- merly requiring that working models shall form a part of the «‘records’’ in respect to patent devices are no longer in force. It is impossible to conceive a more instructive and profitable display than that under consideration. The field of the Geological Survey is as A WORLD'S FATR. wide as the continent. The task of its agents was found to be one of selection from the mass of available material rather than of invention and creation. In the display of ‘‘contour’’ or relief maps the casual student of geology may gather, at a glance, proof of the fundamental facts of terrestrial creation which are among the fruits of research extending over mill- ions of square miles, and embracing years of time. The kindred or contributing sciences of mineralogy, metallurgy and paleon- tology are illustrated by classified collec- tions and restorations, while the office methods of the organization are made more intelligible by the display of photo- graphs, charts, transparencies, and by the instrumental exhibits. The purely com- mercial feature of geological research is left for exploitation by the private exhib- itor in another branch of the great Fair ; but an arrangement of the specimens pre- sented here is made to illustrate the com- parative mineral wealth of sections. The Bureau of Education has commend- ably exploited a somewhat unpromising field. The Government supports no scheols for the youth of its miscellaneous public ; and though the national bureau gathers and disseminates all material facts with regard to educational matters, the institutions of the country are all- sufficient exhibitors in their own behalf. The central feature of the display is a model town library of five thousand volumes, incidental to which are illus- trated the most approved methods of library administration, and devices of library equipment. The publications of the bureau, and its machinery of collec- tion and dissemination of intelligence are adequately represented in the display. The area is a rendezvous of the educators who visit the Fair. The Census office contributes but one conspicuous feature, consisting of a set of the curious machines, electrical and me- chanical, which were first used during the taking of the last census for tabulating the returns. Crowds surround the tables during all exposition hours, watching the deft fingers of the lady experts detailed from Washington to operate them. From Alaska there has been gathered a collective display of great popular and commercial interest, illustrative of the
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A WORLD'S FATR. mineral, animal and forestry resources of that region, as well as the ethnic and in- dustrial attributes of its aboriginal peo- ples. The National Parks contribute a sin- gle object—a section of one of the mon- archs of the forest, twenty-six feet in diameter and thirty feet in length. This variety has been accorded the pivotal place of honor—the center of the rotunda in the main Government building. It is somewhat dwarfed by the lofty dome, whose spangled apex hangs two hundred and fifty feet above ; but its popularity is evidenced by the fact that extra guards, military and civil, must be drafted on all féte days to manage the crushing throngs which seek entry to its interior. The two fighting branches of the Gov- ernment were more fortunate than the majority of their fellows. Pomp and panoply were with them professional, and display was a fixed habit ; while their ar- senals, armories and work-shops were un- failing store-houses of available exhibit material. There was promise, at the outset, of rivalry, by reason of the fact that so many functions of the one are counterparts of those of the other. But the audacity of meteoric genius paved the way for the avoidance of duplication, and contributed to the «harmonious arrangement”’ pre- scribed by law. «Let us show,’ said genius, ‘to the prairie-born citizen what a modern battle-ship is like. He pays his proportion of the taxes, and should have a chance to see how they are expended.”’ Through scoffings and discouragements, pertinacity bore down opposition, and the “crank’’ notions of the early stages be- came a thing of brick and cement, of iron and paint, of sponsons, turrets and towers—in short, to all intents and pur- poses, a modern battle-ship, of full size, rigging and equipment. It is an exhibit, pure and simple, and, viewed from with- out, simulates in every feature an im- mense iron-clad, moored to her wharf in the lake. The main deck, however, lacks the obstructions common to actual vessels of war, and space is thereon found for a comprehensive museum of naval material. A detail of officers, marines and blue-jack- ets carry on, so far as may be, the life of a ship of war in commission. The enterprise of the naval branch of 605 the Board of Management left aclear field for the War department which has filled it literally to overflowing. In addition to a varied exhibit of ordnance, the opera- tions of gun and ammunition making are carried on in the presence of the visi- tor. From the Engineer department the more striking and important of the public works undertaken for the improve- ment of the interior waterways and har- bors of the country, are illustrated by cu- rious and costly models. The Quartermas- ter's department contributes specimens of all the stores, articles of equipment and supply in use, and displays by the means of lay-figures, mounted and foot, the uni- forms of the American army, from the colonial period to the present day. The Signal Service has developed a combina- tion of panoramic and realistic art com- memorative of the release of Greely and his companion prisoners in the north; and the Army Medical department, in an aux- iliary building furnishes a fully equipped modern post hospital, incidental to which the inventions, studies and developments of surgery and medicine form a collection of rare value to the medical profession. The Smithsonian institution and Na- tional museum were embarrassed by no other limitations than those of money and space. Whatever might be studied or exhibited was, to their management, a « function.’’ With the over-crowded halls of the National museum in Washington to draw upon, with all created things to be illustrated, it paused only long enough to learn what its sister branches proposed to do, and then selected for its field what was left. Trained by years of practice, profiting by an experience embracing all preceding expositions, it selected speedily, modestly and well. Its twenty odd thou- sand square feet of space are filled with the handiwork of the taxidermist and modeller, illustrative of that which is rarest in natural history and ethnology, while gems, instruments, curios and works of mechanical art help to teach, in their arrangement, casing and display, all that is most valuable in the modern museum management. The Post-office department, following and improving upon its own precedents at Philadelphia, New Orleans and Cin- cinnati, exhibits a model working post- office, so arranged that all the internal
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606 workings may be studied by the visitor; and serving at the same time the postal necessities of the Fair. The leading features of the display made by the Treasury department are from the offices of the coast survey, the marine hospital service, the light-house board and the mint. The first named— the eldest of the scientific institutions of the Government—exhibits a wealth of in- strumental equipment, for the determina- tion of all the problems in geodesy and hydrography, and publishes specimen charts in the presence of the visitor. The exhibit of the Mint comprises a press in operation, from which souvenir medals, not unlike double eagles in size and appearance, are struck off—twenty to the minute. Its numismatic collection embraces more than seven thousand coins dating from the Greek and Roman republics to the present day. The Marine Hospital service has con- tributed the equipment complete of a model hospital ward; models and appara- tus of the National maritime quarantine and articles illustrative of the methods of the inter-state quarantine. The varied processes of disinfection, of bacteriological research, and of the collection of informa- tion with regard tothehealth ofourown and foreign peoples, may be studied exhaust- ively from the material andrecords at hand. The Light-House establishment makes a brilliant exhibit of illuminating appa- ratus, embracing the mamn.oth hyper- radiant, within which a dozen persons may stand in comfort, and which will ul- timately be placed on the outer diamond shoals off Cape Hatteras. The exhibit of the Department of State is largely documentary. Itis designed to illustrate the processes of negotiation of whatever nature with foreign powers ; of correspondence between the national and state executives ; of the issuance of proc- lamations by the president, and the pub- lication of the laws of Congress, and of the collection and publication of intelli- gence relating to foreign trade and com- merce. Under the last-named function an extensive collection of pictures and mate- rial has been made illustrative of the life and commercial needs, taste, and habits of the Latin-American peoples, with whom this nation is seeking to establish more in- timate relations. A WORLD'S FAIR. The contribution of the Department of Justice is also chiefly of a documentary nature, illustrating the beginning, growth and present conditions of various features of our judicial system, colonial, state and national. It is enriched for the interest of the lay visitor by many mementos and paintings of the leading jurists of American history, and by fac-similes of rare historic documents. The Government exhibit comprises aux- iliary features of great value and interest, among which are a fully equipped life-sav- ing station, manned by a picked crew; a light-house of iron, nearly a hundred feet in height, built for, and soon to be placed at Waackaack station in the Lower Bay of New York harbor; a weather service station in which are carried on all the op- erations of that branch of the public ser- vice, from the taking of periodic observa- tions to the printing and distribution of weather maps; an Indian school, with teachers and pupils drafted from the schools and maintained at Government expense ; a model military camp of two companies of United States infantry, and a model marine camp of one company of United States marines. The Board of Management of the Gov- ernment exhibit has undertaken nothing for the mere purpose of display. It has limited itself religiously to the illustra- tion of Governmental functions, and of these it has selected only those which do not come into active competition with the private exhibitor. It has not attempted in respect to any department, bureau or division of the Government, to show all that was possible, or to illustrate all their functions, holding that the branch which dealt more largely with facts, theories or principles, could reach the people with sufficient readiness through the publica- tions authorized by Congress; while the branches dealing more largely with un- publishable ¢Azngs—«Articles and materi- als’’—to quote the terms of the law—de- served the preference in this enterprise. The purpose of its creation as defined be- ing to prepare an exhibit of «‘ such articles and materials as illustrate the function and administrative faculty of the Govern- ment in time of peace and its resources as a war power, tending to demonstrate the nature of our institutions and their adapt- ability to the wants of the people.”
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ETHNOLOGY AT THE EXPOSITION. By FRANZ BOAs. T great expositions the achievements of individuals and of nations may be set forth in two ways: either by com- petitive exhibits, in which each individual and each country endeavors to show to best advantage the points of eminence of its products; or by selected exhibits, which are arrangec with a view of giving a systematic series of exhibits covering a certain field. The latter method gives the best result for the student of the his- tory of civilization ; the former is unavoid- ably pursued in all portions of an exposi- tion which have a commercial interest, as the producer considers the exhibition of his works a profitable investment, and as the consumer or trader is given an op- portunity to find the best source of sup- ply for his demands. This method can- not be avoided even in art exhibits which rely upon contributions of living artists. It is the method which subserves best the interest of the exhibitor ; it is the exposi- tion method. The method of selected ex- hibits is more advantageous to the stu- dent ; it is the museum method. Many departments of the World's Co- lumbian exposition have a series of ex- hibits arranged from the latter point of view ; but it is the distinctive featureofone only—of the Department of Ethnology. If the department liad relied upon con- tributions of exhibitors only, there would have been danger of an accumulation of heterogeneous collections, arranged ac- cording to the fancy and taste of collect- ors; a systematic representation of the present status and methods of ethnology would have been almost out of the ques- tion. Besides this, the best available material is massed in museums, which naturally can send a small portion of their collections only to an exposition. The abandonment of the plan to bring to- gether isolated ethnological collections, and the effort to create a systematic and comprehensive exhibit, characterize the ethnological department of the World’s Co- lumbian exposition. The lines on which the exhibit was to be developed were laid down in the request of the World’s Fair committee to Professor F. H. Putnam, of Harvard university, to present a plan fora department which should illustrate early life in America, from remote ages down to the period of Columbus. Thus the an- thropology of America was made the lead- ing point of view and determined the direction in which the department de- veloped. Professor Putnam was selected chief of the department, and at his suggestion a considerable sum of money was set apart for original scientific work on the anthro- pology of America. The results obtained by means of these funds form the nucleus of the ethnological exhibits at the World's Fair. First in importance stands the work in American archeology. Four subjects, which cover some of the most important problems in this field, were selected for special studies : the age of man in Amer- ica; thecultureof the mound-builders ; the archeology of Central America ; and the ancient culture of Peru. Therefore, these subjects are most fully represented in the exhibits of the department. The work has been favored by good fortune, and it may safely be said that some of the most im- portant finds have been made during those investigations. The much-disputed palzolithic imple- ments are fully represented, together with material relating to their stratigraphical position. The question of the antiquity of man hinges upon the undisputed find of rude stone implements in undisturbed layers, the geological age of which can be determined beyond doubt. Disputed ground has been subjected to a new ex- amination, and a number of new finds have been made, which seem to favor the theory that man inhabited the Delaware valley at the time when the glacial grav- els were being deposited. Incidentally, numerous remains of the Indians of this region have been found, and a series of well-preserved graves have been opened, the contents of which are shown irf the collections of the department. The culture of the mound-builders of the Ohio valley is represented by a mag- nificent collection. Models of a series of
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608 earthworks illustrate a number of types of those structures. The beautiful im- plements and ornaments made of stone, copper, bone and shell, the clay altars on which burnt offerings were found, the variety of objects buried with the dead, convey a most vivid idea of the arts, in- dustries and customs of those people. They also show that we must not imagine the mound-builders to have been a people very far in advance of the Indian tribes at the time of their discovery, but that their culture was on a similar level. The results of those systematic explora- tions form the nucleus of the exhibits on North American archeology. They are supplemented by a series of collections which give a comprehensive review of types found in certain regions. Ontario, Ohio, Missouri, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Arkansas and California deserve special mention in this connection. The archzeological exhibit of the state of Colorado is also the result of special ex- ploration, and the ancient culture of the cliff dwellers is one of the best represented subjects at the exposition, as, outside of the Anthropological building, where the department collections are exhibited, the “cliff dwellers exhibit’? is devoted en- tirely to this subject. Perhaps the most impressive exhibit of the archzeological section is the one de- voted to Central America. Never before has so complete a collection of sculptures of the ancient peoples of this region been attempted. In front of the Anthropological building are found facsimilesof some of the most remarkable edifices of Yucatan—the famous portal of Labna, the Parade of the Serpents, the arch of Uxmal, and several others. The moulds which served for the construction of these facsimiles were taken by agents of the department. The collec- tion of sculptures in the Anthropological building contains casts from Mexico, Guatemala, Yucatan and Honduras, and is supplemented by an excellent series of photographs. The achievements of the Central American Indians, and the stage which their civilization had reached in early times and long before it was so ruth- lessly destroyed, is forcibly illustrated by these works of art. Costa Rica has fur- nished a collection of beautiful stone carvings, of pottery and gold ornaments, which shows another side of the varied A WORLD'S FATR. arts and industries of Central America. The civilization of the highlands of South America is well represented through collections made under the direction of the department. Explorations in the necropolis of Ancon have yielded a large series of mummies, with which are found specimens of pottery and wonderfully pre- served textile fabrics, woven in highly ar- tistic designs. The exploration was not confined to this region, but covered all the more important centers of South American culture. ° Another section of the department is devoted to ethnology and endeavors to set forth the customs and arts of various peo- ple before they were influenced by the whites. Naturally, American collections predominate in this section as well as in archeology. Although nowadays it is difficult to obtain good coilections, which show native industries entirely unaffected by our civilization, they have the ad- vantage over archzeological collections that the implements can be seen in actual use and that the meaning of ceremonial objects and of ornaments can be learned from the people who use them. The Es- kimo of North Greenland and of Alaska, the numerous tribes of the North Pacific coast, the Indians of the northwest terri- tories of Canada and the tribes of Wis- consin are best represented. The Indians east of the Rocky mountains have been so much modified by contact with the whites that, taken as a whole, a small amount of material only has been gath- ered. A number of excellent collections from South America represent the ethnol- ogy of parts of that continent quite ex- haustively. Brazil sends a large collec- tion of its curious pottery, dancing masks and drums and stone implements. Par- aguay has a magnificent display of feather ornaments, weapons and utensils of the tribes of the Gran Chaco, of Paraguay and of southeastern Brazil, which can hardly be equalled by any other collec- tion. British Guiana and Venezuela, Bolivia and Peru add their share to the ethnological exhibit, which illustrates the recent status of the Indian. All this material is arranged in geographical groups, in order to convey to the mind as clearly as possible the culture of each tribe. This tribal exhibit is supplemented by a few very good collections illustrative
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A WORLD'S FATR. of certain manufactures of the American Indians. There are collections of basketry, of beadwork and of pottery, gathered from all over North America. The meaning of the ethnographical spec- imens is made clearer by the presence of a small colony of Indians, who live in their native habitations near the Anthropolog- ical building. The most striking among these buildings are the houses from British Columbia, with their carved totem posts. The collection from this region is partic- ularly strong in paraphernalia used in re- ligious ceremonials, and their use is illus- trated in the dances which the Indians perform. Another instructive group of dwellings are the bark-houses of the Iro- quois Indians, which are inhabited by a number of members of the various tribes composing that stock. Other tribes and dwellings represented in this group are the Eskimo, Cree, Chippewayan, Winne- bago, Navajo, and the Arawak of British Guiana. In this connection must be mentioned the highly instructive villages of Midway Plaisance, in which a great variety of races are found. A mere enu- meration will give an idea of the scope of these exhibits: Java, the South Sea Islands, Dahomey, the Soudan, Lapland, Arabia, Turkey and Algeria are represent- ed here. The ethnological collections from for- eign continents are not numerous. Those from Australia, the South Sea Islands, and from parts of Africa, are fairly good, but cannot be compared with those of the great museums of Europe. One section of the Department of Eth- nology is devoted to religions, games and folk-lore. In this section the historical development of a number of games is il- lustrated by an elaborate series of speci- mens. Naturally, the games of the Old World, the history of which can be traced through long periods and through many countries, have received fullest attention, but homologous games of primitive peo- ple are not wanting. In the arrangement of this section the wide spread of ideas as well as the recurrence of similar ethnic phenomena among a great variety of peo- ple, is brought out with great force. Ob- jects of worship, idols and amulets form another attractive group in this section. The anatomical and psychological as- pects of anthropology are treated in the 609 anthropological laboratories. The meth- ods of studying the anatomy of races are illustrated by means of a series of the principal apparatus used in anthropolog- ical investigations. The results of re- searches on certain races, and on people of the same race living under different conditions, exemplify the scope and the objects of these researches. In order to attain thisend more satisfactorily, a num- ber of instruments are shown in operation, and measurements of visitors who present themselves are taken. A very full collec- tion of crania and skeletons illustrates the anatomy of human races. A second sec- tion of the laboratories is devoted to the anatomy of the nervous system. The growth of the brain and its anatomy are set forth by means of specimens, casts and diagrams. The third sectton of the laboratories is devoted to experimental psychology. There a very full collection of psychological apparatus is found, and the methods of investigation are illus- trated in a working laboratory, in which a number of the simpler tests are shown. These laboratories serve to explain the objects of psychological and anthropolog- ical research, but at the same time the ac- cumulating material will prove to be of considerable scientific interest. The remaining parts of the laboratories are devoted to two special subjects: the development of children, and the anthro- pology of the North American Indians. In the former section the results of spe- cial investigations on the physical and psychical development of American chil- dren are exhibited. This collection of material will be of special interest to edu- cationists who believe that the experi- mental study of children is the true basis of the art of education. There also are found Dr. D. A. Sargent’s statues of the typical American man and woman, the dimensions of each being derived from an extensive series of measurements of col- lege students. This brief sketch of the ethnological exhibit at the World’s Fair shows that its strong side lies wholly in a full represen- tation of American anthropology. Its great meritis thelarge amount of material, new to science, that has been accumulated and which has considerably advanced our knowledge of the history and character- istics of man in America. 39
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READILY comply with your request for a few words about the World's Columbian exposition, because my inter- est, which has followed the great enter- prise from the beginning, has been kin- died into enthusiasm by a recent visit. It was a national invitation that assem- bled the representatives of all nations and tribes at Chicago. Our official represen- tatives at foreign courts, at formal audi- ences and under the great seal of the nation, announced the event and bade them come. Chicago could not corre- spond with them. A nation must be the host at this great entertainment. Our arrangement with Chicago was a private one—wholly within the family. There have been complications—they were to have been expected; but their solution would have been easy if the national character of the enterprise had been con- stantly kept in mind. Chicago was to supply the grounds and buildings, in consideration of the enormous special benefit that the location brought to it. The city had much beside money at stake upon the success of the Fair, but the na- tion had more. It was hard for those who had assumed a gigantic financial burden to surrender the direction in mat- ters that affected the question of the re- turn of contributions that had strained the public spirit of the most enterprising and public spirited of our great cities. We do not know how much patience and wisdom has been expended in the effort to keep the national commission and the local corporation from going apart, and to organize an effective and harmonious executive direction. But the work we can see, and it is wholly and greatly creditable. Only upon one question—Sunday clos- ing—has the divergence between the gen- eral and the local direction been so serious as to attract much attention. I do not enter into the question of Sabbath ob- servance at all; it was not before the commission, because it had been authori- tively settled. Before the acceptance of the $2,500,000 in souvenir coins from the United States it was an open question— - POINTS OF INTEREST. By BENJAMIN HARRISON. after acceptance it was a closed question. The promise to repay the par value of the souvenir coins, which had brought to the treasury of the Fair double that value, was not a good rescission in law or in conscience. Not a promise to pay, but payment of the full value received was the condition—if the act of congress in diverting some part of the donation, which I do not justify, furnished ground for a rescission. It is not pleasant to have our foreign visitors see a national exposi- tion open on Sunday which the law of congress requires to be closed on that day. In everything else Chicago has done so magnificently that this bad break is the more to be regretted. But I have no sympathy with those who threaten to boycott the exposition on account of Sunday opening. The Sabbath observer does not refuse to avail himself of the Monday train because of the Sunday train. No more should we deny ourselves the inspiring and instructive spectacle which the «‘ White City”’ offers on week days. If the American Sabbath, that great conservator of health and social order, to say nothing of its higher uses, is not illustrated, there is much to the praise of man and to the glory of man's Creator to be seen, without involving the spectator in Sabbath desecration. Five days at the Fair does not qualify even the most industrious and retentive for the work of description. He must go again and again. A benevolent and wise Christian friend of mine, who has a Sun- day-school class in a western city, com- posed largely of young mechanics, has planned to take them, three or four at a time, to see the exposition. What a spread of thought and imagination, what an education in mechanics they will get ! To them, coming from humble homes and grimy shops, a new world will be opened —like that Columbus exposed to the geog- raphers. It is a suggestive example, and one that the employers of labor might well imitate. Some will have to inaugu- rate economies if they see the Fair—but it is worth while. I use the words of sober- ness when I say that it is worth while to
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A cross the continent just to see the outside of things ; and the interior of anyone of the greater buildings is worth as much. I am not a travelled American, in the New York sense. My own country I know, but no other. Consequently, I cannot compare the Columbian exposition with those of London, Paris or Vienna. The Centennial exposition at Philadelphia, however, when contrasted with this, gives a glorious vision of the growth in power, wealth, in- vention and art, which sixteen years have brought to the world. But we are not without competent comparisons with the greatest previous expositions. Sir Henry Trueman Wood, the English represent- ative, says over his own signature: «So far in advance is it of all expecta- tion, that I find it hopeless to convince my countrymen of the marvellous nature of the spectacle, or to make them believe how well it is worthy the long journey from England. Only those who have seen it can justly appreciate how far this latest of international exhibitions has sur- passed all its predecessors in size, in splen- dor, and in greatness both of conception and of execution.”’ The German commissioner, the Hon- orable Adolph Wermuth, in response to a request from one of the Chicago news- papers for his opinion, very happily and tersely expressed the feeling of every true American who sees the exposition. His answer was, ‘* Hail Columbia !’’ President Anderson, of the Royal Insti- tute of British Architects, in presenting the queen’s gold medal of that society to one of the designers of the great buildings at Jackson park, said: ‘ These buildings are the most wonderful development to which international exhibitions have at- tained, or are likely to attain in the fut- ’» They are, indeed; and, when the ure, WORLD'S FAIR. 611 awards are made, suitable recognition should be given to the architects who de- signed them. It would be altogether ap- propriate for congress to give them medals of honor. The acreage enclosed is three times greater than was ever before set apart for an exposition, and the roof space nearly twice as great. If this ‘‘expansiveness”’ subjects the visitor to added labor, he is more than compensated by the fact that a wider distribution enables him to see everything closely, and with comfort. Only in the fisheries exhibit, about the aquaria, did our party find any difficulty in getting a near and satisfactory view. The transportation facilities, to and from Jackson park, are adequate and excel- lent. I have avoided statistics—they have their use—the dealer in art has to do with inches ; the lover of art, with tone, color, perspective, expression. I like to keep in mind the indefinite sense of vast- ness which one gets as he ascends towards the high roof of the building dedicated to manufactures and liberal arts. To be told that the building covers thirty-one acres of ground rather limits than en- larges. ‘The Fair is not only a success, but a triumph—an American triumph. When it closes we can think rightly and gratefully of the men who made it such. They would be knighted in England or Germany; but, perhaps, all they can expect in free democratic America is that the newspapers and people, who knew all along, and in everything, a better way, shall admit that on the whole it was well they were not in the management, and that New York shall admit that there are two cities in the United States that can adequately and creditably entertain the world.
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OF ART AND LETTERS. BERANGER is undergoing the fate of a «Turk’s head.”’. I am not sure ¢« whether the English language affords a satisfactory translation of this emi- nently Parisian locution. In the fairs of Neuilly and St. Cloud are to be seen certain blocks, fashioned after the human figure and invariably bearing a Turk'’s head. Two sous pay for the right to test one’s muscular strength as with a heavy mallet he strikes this Turk’s head and, according to his vigor, scores four hundred or five hun- dred pounds. Thus a man who has become the Turk’s head of his fellow-citizens is one who has got to be hit by every passer-by, without having the privilege of retali- ating. There is a proverb with us that says that the ultimate form of celebrity, which con- sists in one’s likeness ornamenting clay-pipes, can only befall men who have been first «‘ Turk’s heads.’’ A man’s glory can, to a great extent, be measured by the abuse offered him ; the stones thrown in his garden serve so well to erect his pedestal ! Using that material, M. Béranger will be able to raise for himself one as high as the Eiffel tower. Seldom has a but been chosen with such unanimity by the Parisian press and the worldly chronicles as has been the unlucky organizer and speech- bearer of the League against License in the Streets. In America you cannot form an idea of the excesses which we had gotten to. We are so ready to profess our hate for hypocrisy, that, really, we had ceased to have enough of it left. Do you remember that pretty anecdote of the eighteenth century ? Duclos, maintaining before two great ladies that honest women were those who best prized frankness and who could smile without false shame at a spicy story. To sustain his argument, he treated them at once to a very risky tale, followed it with another still worse, and as he lingered on the details— “Now, Duclos, beware !’’ interrupted one of the ladies. *«« You take us for much more honest women than we are.”’ Evidently, our national taste for Gallic salt has been unduly stretched—consider- ing those papers whose specialty was off-color stories and the display of licentious illustrations, often verging on the obscene, with which our news-stands were decked from early morning. The sacred name of art was invoked as palliative. Art, alas ! has little to do with those exhibitions, which most of the time are simply unclean. Police and magistrature kept still ; we are very ticklish on that subject in France. There is no doubt that had a writer or an artist been prosecuted for infringing on the laws of decency, the immediate result of this step would have been to call on the offending one an attention far from unfavorable to him. The best course was to wait until the public, saturated with these spectacles, called for repression.
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IN THE WORLD OF ART AND LETTERS. 613 By that time was founded the League against License in the Streets. Its pro- moters were three prominent men: M. Béranger, M. Passy and M. Jules Simon. At first their initiative was very well received in Paris. The campaign they opened seemed quite legitimate. They were the cause which decided the disappearance of those licentious prints so offensive to public decency. Andthis won them applause. A number of adherents enlisted in their ranks. These were the palmy days of the league—its honeymoon, which came to an end as all honeymoons do. Public favor encouraged the leaders so well, that they imagined they could go ahead and would be followed with the same confidence. They did not reckon suf- ficiently on the instincts of our race, devoted to artistic freedom and toa lenient phil- osophy. Where great tact and great deftness were needed to carry on the pursuit and repression, their hand was a trifle too heavy. The pupils of our national school of fine arts are wont to give every year a féte, where merriment bears a rather décolleté character. I believe that this year, on the occasion of that famous and much-talked-of baJl (the ball of the four branches of art), our students rather overdid the thing. An exhibition of almost nude women in a gar- den is not to be countenanced, to say the least ; yet it would have been more sensible not to take any heed of it. Instead of that, M. Béranger goes and denounces the stu- dents’ lark to the court. The court, of course, cannot do otherwise than to prosecute ; the tribunal cannot do otherwise than to pass a sentence of condemnation, which, although lenient, sets all our young men in ebullition. They start, Indian file, three or four thousand in number, to call on poor M. Béranger, whom they have nicknamed «Old Pudor;”’ they hoot him, and they smash his window-panes. All this row, however, cannot be tolerated ; the police interferes, blows are exchanged, blood flows. A young man, wounded in the fray, dies next morning. Thus matters grow worse ; for very little ««Old Pudor’’ would be charged with the accident and be called an assassin. Interpellations at the house and at the municipal council follow. At the hour I write these words it is uncertain whether the prefect of police will not be compelled to resign, and whether the cabinet will not topple over this ridiculous pebble thrown by fate across its way—and all that because two or three foolish virgins disported themselves in too slender attire at a ball given in artistic Bohemia. FRANCISQUE SARCEY. * * * CHRONIQUE PARISIENNE. BERANGER est en train de passer /e/e de turc. Je ne sais si vous trouverez dans la langue N anglaise—pour vous traduire cette locution toute Parisienne. Dans les foires de Neuilly ou de St. 4 * Cloud, il y a des mannequins sur lesquels on achéte pour deux sous le droit d’essayer sa force. Ces mannequins sont invariablement une téte de ture." On tape dessus, et l'on améne quatre ou cing cents, selon sa vigueur musculaire. Passer téte de turc, c’est donc se mettre dans le cas de recevoir sur le crane les coups de poing de tous ceux qui passent et de les recevoir, sans y répondre. C'est une espéce de proverbe chez nous de dire qu’il faut avoir été téte de ture pour devenir téte de pipe. C'est qu’A Paris, le dernier terme de la célébrité pour un personnage trés en vue, c’est de voir son visage sculpté en bois orner le fourneau d’une pipe. II n’y a que ceux sur qui l'on a fortement daubé qui conquiérent une illustration suffisante pour étre choisis par les fabricants de pipes, comme parure a leurs produits. La gloire d'un homme se compte en grande partie des injures que ses adversaires lui ont adressées. II se fait un piédestal des pierres que l'on a lancées dans son jardin. M. Béranger pourra s’en élever un monument aussi haut que la tour Eiffel. C’est dans ce moment-ci dans tout le journalisme parisien, dans toute la chronique mondaine un feu de file des plus nourris contre la ligue dont il a été lorganisateur, dont il est aujourd’hui le représentant et le porte paroles. Cette ligue c'est la ligue contre la licence des rues. Vous ne pouvez vous imaginer 1a-bas en Amérique 4 quel excés cette licence était montée chez nous. Nous nous faisons volontiers gloire de notre haine pour I’hypocrisie mais vraiment nous avions fini par ne plus en avoir assez. Vous rappellez-vous une jolie anecdote du xvirte siécle, Duclos causant avec deux grandes dames soutenait cette thése que les honnétes femmes étaient celles qui estimaient le plus la franchise et qui savaient sans fausse pudibonderie rire d'une anecdote salée. Et 1a- dessus il enfile une histoire égrillarde, qui est bient6t suivie d’une autre plus nue encore, et comme il jouissait le son effet Ah! prenez garde, Duclos!’ lui dit une de ces dames l’arrétant du geste, ‘‘ vous nous croyez aussi par op honnétes femmes.” Peut-€tre aurait-on abusé de notre gofit pour la gauloiserie. Nos kiosques étalaient chaque matin une foule images licencieuses, certains journaux s'étaient fait de contes graveleux une sorte de spécialité; ils les illustraient de dessins dont quelques-uns étaient presque obscénes! IIs alléguaient les droits sacrés de l'art. IL, a hélas n’avait pas grand chose a voir dans ces exhibitions qui n’¢taient le plus souvent que fort ma propres. La police et la magistrature ne disaieut rieu. Nous sommes trés-chatouilleux eu France sur l'article, et si
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614 IN THE WORLD OF ART AND LETTERS. l'on se fit avisé de poursuivre soit un écrivain soit un artiste pour outrage a la pudeur on efit été sfir de provo- uer un mouvement d’opinion en faveurdu prévenu. On attendait donc que le publicsaturé de ces spectacles se révoltat de lui-méme et appelat la répression. C’est alors que se fonda ts lque contre la licence des rues, dont les promoteurs furent ery amy trés considérables: M. Béranger, M. Passy et M. Jules Simon. A Paris on leur sut gré d’abord de leur initiative, La guerre qu'ils avaient déclarée 4 une pornographie décidément trop éhontée, parut légitime. Ils firent disparaitre des vitrines les images licentieuses qui offensaient la pudeur publique. On les applaudit; nombre d’adhérents se rangérent derriére eux; ce fut le beau temps, la lune de miel de la ligue, lune qui ne dura guére comme toutes les lunes de miel. Ces messieurs encouragés par la faveur publique crurent qu’ils pouvaient aller de l'avant et qu’on les suivrait toujours avec la méme confiance. IIs ne tinrent pas assez de compte des instincts de notre race qui aime par dessus tout deux choses, la liberté dans l'art et fa gaite dans la gaudriole. Il aurait fallu beaucoup de légéreté et de tact dans les poursuites et les répressions; ils eurent la main un peu lourde. Les éléves de notre école des beaux arts ont l’habitude de donner chaque année une f€éte od 1a joie est ree peu décolletée. Jecrois bien que cette année dans ce fameux bal des guatre-z-arts, qui a fait tant e bruit, ils étaient allés un peu loin. Des exhibitions de femmes a peu prés nues dans un jardin, c’est un peu raide! Mais il efit été plus spirituel de ne pas s’en apercevoir. M. Béranger dénonce cette gaminerie au parquet; le parquet est obligé de pourstivre; le tribunal de con- damner. II 1’a fait d'ailleurs avec une grande modération. Mais voila tous ces jeunes gens en ébullition! Ils organisent des mondmes contre le pauvre M. Béranger qu'ils ay pellent ironiquement le pére * la pudeur;”’ ils vont au nombre de deux ou trois mille le ‘‘conspuer"’ sous ses fenétres et lui casser ses carreaux. On ne peut pourtant leur laisser faire impunément tout ce tapage. Voila la police en mouvement; on cogne de part et d'autre; le sang coule, un jeune homme est blessé dans la bagarre et meurt le lendemain. , Les tétes s’échauffent. Peu s’en faut qu’on n'accuse le pére ‘“‘la pudeur” de cet accident, et qu’on ne le traite d’assassin. Interpellation 4 la chambre, interpellation au conseil municipal. A l’heure oid j’écris on ne sait pas si le préfet de — ne sera pas forcé de donner sa démission, et le ministére ne culbutera sur le méchant caillou jeté par le hazard au travers de la route. Et tout cela parceque quelques rapins en humeur de rire ont promené, gorge au vent, dans un bal deux ou trois filles de demi vertu ! FRANCISQUE SARCEY. A %, fs yy y) ri AY SY “. ?. ¢ al oe H EINRICH HEINE, the daring cosmopolite who professed to labor for the abolishment of national prejudice, would seem to be an ideally appropriate subject fora World’s Fair number. His familiar letters to his mother and sister now for the first time published under the title «« The Family Life of Heinrich Heine,” (and admirably translated into English by Charles de Kay) supplement his character on rather an important side; but make an end, too, of some of the picturesque legends which had gathered about his name. The pathetic story, for instance (for which Heine’s first biographer Strodtmann is responsible) that he wrote the jolliest letters home while he was writhing in agony, in order to conceal his terrible condition from his old mother, is apparently a piece of generous imposture which the lovers of Heine will be loath to dismiss. However, here the unpleasant fact stares you in the face. He entreats, to be sure, his sister to keep the old lady in ignorance as to the nature of his illness; -but a few weeks later he must have forgotten this request, for he himself informs her that he has all the symptoms which are the forerunners of paralysis. Our fundamental conception of Heine as a brilliant, dashing, but rather unreliable guerilla in the warfare for human progress, is strengthened and clarified by many of these intimate confessions. He was an egotist to the core, and essentially lacking in nobility. Though he is fascinating, he is never truly admirable. He was too much of a scoffer and too much interested in the figure he was cutting, to surrender himself with generous ardor to any cause. Though a lover of liberty and a professed hater of tyranny, Napoleon was his hero, and every instinct of his soul was aristo- cratic. It was the fact that (being born a Jew) he felt the thorn in his own flesh, ehich inspired him with a sympathy for the under dog in the struggle for existence. But when the under dog encouraged by this printed sympathy, presumed to grow
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IN THE WORLD OF ART AND LETTERS. 615 friendly and companionable, Heine’s first impulse was to kick him down stairs. As for the three grand abstractions which the French revolution emblazoned in blood and fire upon the horizon of the expiring century, Heine’s devotion to them, as ex- emplified by his life, was more than half Pickwickian. He loved liberty, except in so far as it made men free; equality, except in so far as it made his inferiors unpleas- antly familiar; and fraternity, except in so far as it made the mob his brothers. He loved with the instinctive predilection of a fastidious soul, what was eminent, excep- tional and heroic, and I cannot but believe that it was the accident of his birth, identifying him with those whom he disliked, which made him enlist in the ranks of the revolutionists. In a beautiful passage, written on his bed of agonized suffering— his mattress-grave as he called it—he begged that a sword, rather than a laurel wreath, be placed upon his coffin. « For,’’ he said, ‘‘ poetry, much as I have loved her, was with me nothing but a divine plaything. . . . . But Iwasa valiant soldier in the cause of the emancipation of humanity."’ Matthew Arnold has already remarked upon the pathetic self-delusion of this pass- age. And yet it is not to be denied that Heine, in his own inconsequent way, did effective service in the cause which he professed to have at heart. If not a sword, then at least, a dagger ought to have been placed upon his coffin—a keen, bright, jeweled dagger, the beauty of whose workmanship half disguises the fact that it is a deadly weapon. HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN. \ [ R. CHIVY SLIME described himself as «‘ the most literary fellow breathing,”’ 4 and, assuredly, Mr. Gosse’s ‘‘ Questions at Issue’’ (Heinemann) is the most literary book of the month. It is entirely concerned with literary problems, modern literary problems, so that Mr. Gosse is able to say, «‘ that Homer is a great poet is ” not a question at issue.’’ Alas, it 7s a question at issue, for the immense majority of critics believe Homer to have been: one great poet, one inferior ditto, one multitude of reciters and ballad-mongers, four or five rédacteurs (all bad), a crowd of inter- polators, and ancient editors beyond all reckoning. Indeed, Wilamowitz Mollen- dorff frankly avers that Homer (as we take him) is zo/ a great poet. So the question is at issue, though not for Mr. Gosse, with his eyes fixed on the magazines, the newspa- pers, the successors of Lord Tennyson. But all this discussion deals only with a casual remark in a preface. The book is lively and easily read, and provocative of controversy. Mr. Gosse, asking «‘ What is a great poet?’’ makes up an English twelve, and remarks: ‘In the case of Scott, I must still be firm in excluding him."’ The attitude, the voice, are those of Miss Pinkerton, arranging the prize list of her academy for young ladies, It is very difficult to select, say, an eleven of England, or even of Oxford, at cricket. Are you for Mr. Arkwright, or for young Mr. Palairet ? There is no certainty, no absolute test, in such selections. Personally, I might put in Scott, and exclude Byron and Pope, if I were making up a poetic team. But would not Mr. Gosse think it funny if I wrote: «In the case of Pope, I must still be firm in positively excluding him.’’ It is extremely funny. But everyone who still cares for the literature of the day is sure to read ‘‘ Questions at Issue,’’ to agree or dis- agree ; but to disagree in a friendly and sympathetic manner. ‘The « Lucianic”’ essay is diverting, though it rather reminds one of «: Friendship’s Garland’”’ than of Lucian. The amateur of Scotch history and manners will welcome Mr. T. F. Henderson’s ‘‘Old World Scotland’’ (Fisher Unwin). The style is rather heavy and complicated, in places, and the essay on the « Border Reiver’’ somewhat jejune. But the study of
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616 IN THE WORLD OF ART AND LETTERS. ‘« Kirk Discipline’’ must open Presbyterian eyes to the truly monstrous and intoler- able pretensions of the kirk, when she was like ‘‘an army with banners.’’ Every statesman, however profligate, selfish, or dull, who lived between 1560 and 1688, had to fight the kirk for the very life of the state ; thus even Morton, even James VI., even Lauderdale, became sympathetic and appear as friends of human freedom. The essay on Darnley’s murder tries to knock another nail into the coffin of Queen Mary’s reputation—but the subject demands minute discussion, impossible here. Mr. Whibley has edited old Nyren’s delightful «* Young Cricketer’s Tutor ’’ (1833), with a preface. He takes Nyren, not Charles Cowden Clarke, for the writer of the book. But Mr. Whibley cannot have read Clarke's preface to the second edition (1840), where Clarke says ‘his little book was compiled from unconnected scraps and reminiscences during conversations concerning his old playmates.’’ This settles the question, A critic in the Academy is correct: Clarke is the author, Nyren only provides the materials of this charming book, as English as cricket itself. (Published by Nutt.) Though I edited it myself, I will venture to mention another reprint: Mr. Kirk of Aberfoyle’s «Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies.’’ (Nutt.) Mr. Kirk was carried away from earth in 1692, by the ‘‘ good folk,’’ the fairies. His manuscript lay unpublished till 1815, when Messrs. Longmans put out one hundred copies. Mr. Kirk's charmingly innocent psychical researches may be compared with those of Mr. Ernest Hart in «‘ Hypnotism, Mesmerism, and the New Witchcraft.’’ (Smith & Elder.) Mr. Hart has rather a domineering style. What he believes in (hyp- notism) is a fact in nature ; many queer phenomena, which, in all ages, and by Mr. Kirk, are said to accompany the hypnotic state, Mr. Hart rejects as ‘‘impostures.”’ It may be so; but Mr. Hart’s arguments and manner are very far from being per- suasive. Among books of fiction, Mr. Kipling’s «‘ Many Inventions’’ (Macmillan) is far the most popular, and deserves its popularity. There are great varieties of excellence in the tales. The fun of «‘ The Children of the Zodiac”’ I fail to see, but «In the Rukh” is a surprising piece of modified were-wolfism; ‘The Best Story in the World”’ is one of the five or six best stories in the world. «The Lost Legion” shows a new kind of skill in the supernatural, and the three soldiers are as good as ever, except in ‘‘ Love o’ Women,’’ which seems, to my taste, rather dully disagreeable than really «‘ powerful.’’ But it is all a matter of taste. A writer quite new to me, Mr. Hope, published last year a most diverting novel, «« Mr. Witt’s Widow,” and this year «‘ Change of Air.’”’ (Methuen.) As Mr. Hope is apparently young, and may be guileless, it might pay to pirate ««Mr. Witt’s Widow.”’ It is full of humor and of irony, reminding one of Mr. Norris at better than his best. Mr. Hope has written other novels, which I have not read. A. LANG. [) RETRO- A, SPECTIVE | FORE- | N Peru (as is told by travellers returned hence out of that far country) there hap- pens once perhaps in acentury a rain-fall in the high region back from the coast—near two miles above the sea-level—that otherwise, from generation to gen- eration, is parched by the unclouded sun. And scarce is this rare luxury of water poured out from heaven (the travellers say farther) than is all that desolate region —until that moment as bare as the peaks of rock above it—covered over with delicate
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IN THE WORLD OF ART AND LETTERS. 617 green grasses and all manner of flowers: for God so manages this matter that seeds remain always in that dry earth, in waiting for the time when He shall bid them germinate by sending them His rain. Much in the way of the Peruvian miracle, as it has seemed to me, was the sudden upspringing of refining influences in this country which followed the Centennial Ex- hibition of 1876—when, the needed conditions being fulfilled, there was instantly a germination of gracious seeds which all along had lain hidden in a neglected yet not sterile soil, Then was reached one of the deeply, yet at the moment not clearly, marked turning-points in our life national : when, without proclamation, silently, al- most unconsciously to ourselves, began our emancipation from undivided ultilitarian- ism and we openly (yet still a little shamefacedly) made the principle of beauty an active factor in our lives. And so great has been the national change wrought by the refining influences then implanted—influences which somehow all at once put us in the way of knowing that we needed ideals and of creating them and of striving to realize them—that those of us who are so unfortunate as to be old enough to remem- ber distinctly how matters stood seventeen years before that Centennial sometimes now, seventeen years after it, being pulled up short by a sudden confronting with one or another of its many elevating results, fall to wondering if we have not slipped by accident across an orbit or two into another and superior planet revolving in a purer sort of space. There is no record in Peru (for the reason that the event has not occurred there) of what luxuriant beauty of vegetation would cover all those bare mountain heights should fresh rain descend upon them ere yet the *rst growth of flowers and grasses, withering for want of moisture, had fallen into the soft slumber which is rest with nature but with men is death. Therefore the parallel that I have drawn between the revival of those desert places of the Andes and of the not less, yet differently, desert places of this our own country is not a complete one: for the fortunate reason that with us, while the growth of the first germination prosperously continues, a second germination is about to begin. As we all know, the Columbian creations of beauty at Chicago, before which the present world stands still in a wondering admiration, are the flowers which less than a score of years ago at Philadelphia sprouted in the Centennial soil ; and we have but to contrast the two exhibitions, point by point, to arrive at a just appreciation of the prodigious advances which we have made on the lines of intellectual development since an understanding love of things beautiful became consciously a part of our national soul. This much we perceive easily. But to perceive, in a spirit of prophecy, the logical outcome of the fresh and wider germination which now has begun at Chicago puts even the most sanguine of us—because of the very dazzle and glory of it—almost to a stand. For though the matter, obviously, is but a simple enough calculation in the rule of three—the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 being to the con- dition of the country now as the Columbian Exhibition of 1893 is to the condition of the country in 1910—the result thus arrived at is so overwhelming in its promise of magnificent achievement that to accept it demands great steadfastness in faith. Also, being perceived, this result demands great thankfulness. I believe — for I hold that happiness and sorrow, with the emotions thereon attendant, are not the monopolistic attributes of man alone—that those high desert places in the Andes are full of gratitude when God sends His rain upon them and their seemingly dead and forgotten solitudes for a little while are gladdened (yet through that short season are made as blithe as the freshest garden in the tropics) by an outburst of beautiful life. Far deeper, then, should be our gratitude for the beauty which has been added to our natures, and for the open promise that yet greater beauty will be given us in the ripening fulness of time. For in our case, as in the case of those thankful mountains, our barrenness in part has been hidden ; and with the happy difference in our favor that with us the beautiful growth continues, and promises to be aug- mented continually, instead of being lost in a long trance again at the end of one bright year. THOMAS A. JANVIER.
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ALIENATION. TWENTY BOOKS OF THE MONTH. FICTION.—THE NIAGARA Book, by W. D. Howells, Mark Twain and Others. Underhill & Nichols. $1.25. PIETRO GHISLERI, by F. Marion Crawford. Macmillan & Co. $1.00. THE REFUGEES, by A. Conan Doyle. Harper & Bros. $1.75. THOSE GIRLS, by John Strange Win- ter. Tait, Sons & Co. $1.00. A TILLYLoss SCANDAL, by J. M. Bar- rie. Lovell, Coryell & Co. $1.00. THE PRINCE OF INDIA, by Gen. Lew Wallace. Harper & Brothers. $2.50. ForEcAST, by C. H. Pearson. Macmil- lan & Co. $4.00. RELIGION.—THE DEFENCE OF PROF. BRIGGS BEFORE THE GENERAL ASSEM- BLY. Charles Scribner’s Sons. 75 cts. BIOGRAPHY.—MEMOIRS OF CHANCEL- LOR PASQUIER. Brentano. $2.40. WOMEN ADVENTURERS, edited by Menie Muriel Dowie. Macmillan & Co $1.50. re EDWIN Boot, by Lawrence Hutton. Harper & Bros. 50 cents. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF GEORG EBERS, SCIENCE.--DECIPHERMENT OF BLURRED FINGER PRINTS, by Francis Galton. 80 cents. A DICTIONARY OF Birps, by Alfred Newton. Part 1. Macmillan & Co. $2.60. THE UNSEEN FOUNDATIONS OF So- CIETY, by the Duke of Argyll. Mac- millan & Co. $3.50. ESSAYS.—Woman’s Mission, edited by Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Charles Scrib- ner’s Sons. $3.50. NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER: A translated by Mary J. Safford. -D. Ap- pleton & Co. $1.25. TRAVEL.—AMERICANS IN EUROPE, by one of them. Tait, Sons & Co. $1.00. THE JOURNAL OF MARIANNE NORTH, edited by Mrs. John Addington Sy- monds. Macmillan & Co. $3.50. THE COLUMBUS MEMORIAL, edited by George Young. Cranston, Stowe & Co. $1.00. THE EMPIRE OF THE TSARS AND THE RussIAns, by Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu. G. P. Putnam’s Sons. $3.00. ALIENATION. By EDWARD LUCAS WHITE THE stars shine out above the barren wold, Each sending unto me some weary light, Starved and diminished by an endless flight Through everlasting samenesses untold. And lower; yea, and brighter; I behold Your lamp that glimmers in the aching night, Some clovered furlongs from my yearning sight, Piercing with mellow rays the dripping cold. As I perceive the wind-tunes in the trees, I seem to feel the music of the spheres Thrill all about, from every chanting star ; But the near songs you sing I cannot seize, With my strung soul or with my eager ears, Your heart is distant from my heart so far. °
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m tee great Fair has its scientific features, and some of the exhibits in this line are said to be admirable. So far, however, as one, prevented by circumstances from seeing for himself, can learn, astronomy is not specially conspicuous, though scattered here and there through the various sections a great deal is to be found which is really interesting and important. The principal exhibits by our American instru- ment makers are those of Warner & Swasey and Saegmuller. The former presents a part of the mounting of the great Yerkes telescope, which when finished will be by far the most powerful instrument in the world with its 40-inch object-glass (by Clark) and its tube nearlyseventy feetin length. They alsoshow avery beautiful 12-inch telescope, and a number of smaller instruments. Saegmuller shows some elaborate equatorial telescopes, an excellent meridian-circle, and various field instruments. Brashear exhibits a number of the magnificent and really epoch-making «: diffraction-gratings ”’ of Professor Rowland, and with them some fine spectroscopes, which contrast in a very interesting way with the historical apparatus of Kirchoff and Bunsen exhibited in the German section. The foreign makers of astronomical instruments appear to have sent very little. Queen & Co., of Philadelphia, in their extensive exhibit of scientific apparatus, show a collection of imported telescopes and minor instruments, and Sir Howard Grubb, of Dublin, has some astronomical instruments in his exhibit in the English section. But so far as we can learn the great French and German opticians are not represented at all. To one interested specially in the progress of the science, the most noteworthy objects are the astronomical photographs of various kinds. The English section, in addition to many eclipse photographs, contains the wonderful nebula photographs of Roberts and Common. In some respects Professor Pickering’s collection in the Harvard college exhibit, is still more notable, containing not only the latest results obtained at Cambridge and in South America by the Harvard observers, but begin- ning with Bond’s historical daguerreotypes of the moon which excited so great interest in 1851 at the Crystal Palace exhibition. There are numerous other negatives, well deserving notice, from the Kenwood observatory of Chicago, and other astronomical establishments. Quite probably, before the meeting of the Astronomical congress, on August 2tst. the exhibits will have been considerably increased by specimens of recent work brought with them by the various delegates. From information received since the above was written, we learn that Mr. Brashear’s exhibit also contains two fine object-glasses, one eighteen and the other fifteen inches in diameter ; also, that in the Electricity building, in the exhibit of the German op- ticians, there are some fine specimens of the new Jena optical glass, including a pair of disks twenty-three inches in diameter. ‘There are also a number of object-glasses by Merz, from ten inches aperture down, and a considerable collection of small
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620 THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. telescopes, spectroscopes, etc., by Merz, Steinheil and others. The Johns Hopkins university exhibits a number of Rowland’s diffraction gratings and his unrivalled photographs of solar and metallic spectra. There are also numerous other exhibits of considerable astronomical interest, which we have not space to mention. C. A. YounG. ELECTRIC WELDING. W! THIN the recollection of men but little past middle life, means of travel were nowhere in advance of those possessed by the most remote recorded antiquity. The chariot of English Elizabeth was no whit better than that of Egyptian Rameses three thousand years earlier. Even the seventeenth century contrivance of carriage springs marked no radical advance. It was during this prenatal period of «rapid transit” that, as a child, I witnessed, in the city of London, a panorama of a strange new contrivance called a «steam railway,’’ said to be in actual operation somewhere in ‘‘the north countrie.’’ A few years later, while employed in one of the great loco- motive shops of Lancashire, I became an eye-witness of the system in some of its early stages and of the throng of distinguished visitors. Among these, the venerable astronomer, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, is well remembered, because it became my duty to conduct the measurer of astral spaces through the establishment. The Liverpool and Manchester railway was the work of men who « builded wiser than they knew.’ The original scheme simply contemplated the application to a public thoroughfare of an iron tramway such as long used in mines. The type of tram adopted required, indeed, a special form of track-wheels, but vehicle-propulsion by a self-contained power, was an afterthought. Such vehicles, however, and such a track were soon found to be essential complements of each other, but, of the two, no one then thought that the seemingly far simpler problem of a perfect track would be the last to reach a satisfactory solution. Every traveller is aware of the annoyances arising from lack of continuity in the track ; tosome, it has come in the serious form of impairment of vision or hearing, to the railroad manager it means wear and tear of rolling stock and of the track itself. In the incipiency of the system, the mills could supply only short sections, and the greater lengths since btainable, having been accompanied by a corresponding accel- eration of travel, the frequency of jolts due to the still numerous and constantly de- teriorating joints has remained about the same. The various expedients of bolted fish-plates, chairs, etc., have proved only temporarily effective. When the propo- sition of welding end-to-end in situ was first suggested, the objection was raised that contraction after summer welding would result in transverse fracture, and expansion after winter welding in dangerous lateral swerving of the track, but, in default of any then known mode of welding in situ, these objections possessed no practical signifi- cance. Inasmuch, however, as under the method now to be described the sections are welded in situ, it may be proper to call attention to the fact that the now ascer- tained change of length of a bar of Bessemer steel (the present material of track-rails), under the greatest known range of atmospheric temperature, being considerably less than its limit of elasticity, no trouble is expected by the projectors, especially where, as in the present case, welding is confined to the hottest months, and, therefore, only the lesser evil of contraction need be considered. The Problem Solved.—End-to- elding ail-sections, coupled with perfect alignment has, at last, been made possible by Professor Elihu Thomson’s electric
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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 621 welding process. Theapplication of this invention to railway engineering is now undergoing its first practical application on the Harvard Square electric railway of Cambridge, Mass., under direction of the engineer, Mr. Milton Brown. As has so often been observed with inventions of the first rank, the details are extremely simple. Before application of the welding apparatus, the sides of two abutting rail- sections, near their respective extremities, are scoured at four places, each about eight square inches, by means of an emery-wheel mounted on the end of a flexible revolving shaft, differing in size only from those which, it may be feared, have already been familiarized to the reader in his dentist’s laboratory. This flexible shaft is rotated by a small motor having electrical connection with the trolley-wire. Before application of the weld-plates, any opening found between the abutting sections is closed by sheet-iron plugs. The weld-plates, two to each joint, consist of slabs of mild Bessemer steel, 1x 4x8 inches. Against these plates two copper-faced jaws (cooled by currents of cold water) of a powerful vise are brought to bear. A switch en- ables the operator to include these jaws, together with the rail-sections and their en- closing plates, in an electric circuit. The plates having been placed in position and the jaws made to bear against them with the desired pressure, the electric current is turned on, and, accumulating in the relatively slow-conducting plates and rail-sec- tions, these parts, in a few seconds, reach a white heat. As the parts become thus softened, the operator gradually increases the jaw-pressure. In about three minutes, the current being switched off, a final squeeze of the still glowing metal completes and solidifies the weld. Where a joint is found to be in proper alignment this final squeeze perfects the work for that particular joint, but, where otherwise, the opera- tor, while the parts are still in the glowing and plastic condition, takes the oppor- tunity thus afforded to bring them into line. The red-hot plates and rail-ends yield and take new forms under the swinging blows of a ponderous hammer, but the welds hold fast. The operation thus combines the advantage of continuity and perfect alignment. The weld-plate, in its horizontal section, being of ->— form, touches the rail-side only by its two flanges, which become flattened against the rail by the joint action of the heat and mechanical pressure. In the experiment noted, a continuous current of about five hundred volts four hun- dred ampéres, is taken from two trolley-wires into a motor-dynamo on the operating car by which it is converted into an alternating current of three hundred and fifty volts electrical pressure, thence, traversing a system of induction coils, the electric force becomes transformed into a current of four volts fifty thousand ampéres, that is to say, a current of large volume having just sufficient electrical pressure to force it through the point of contact. In the present early stage of the experiment the work proceeds at the rate of about four joints an hour. GEORGE H. KNIGHT. KNOWLEDGE of chemistry is undoubtedly more essential to all classes and 4 consequently more general than that of any other science. The hygienic requisites to reasonable health and comfort enforce this knowledge upon all peoples of whatever clime, country or condition. The greater the knowledge of the more general laws of chemistry the higher is the physical life of the people. Chemistry is likewise the science most generally and generously drawn upon by all the learned professions and liberal arts. These facts are strikingly illustrated in the exhibits at the Columbian Fair. More
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622 THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. than three-fourths of the general departments represented at the exposition have chemical laboratories as part of their equipment. In nearly all of the buildings are model laboratories for special purposes, and in all are shown the results of the practi- cal application of the science. These applications are entirely too numerous for any attempt at general mention in this place ; indeed, such mention would include a large proportion of the arts and industries whose products are shown at the Fair and which are seen on every side. While chemistry could not be expected to prepare new bodies especially for the Fair, it may be interesting to note that the Johns Hopkins university has on exhibi- tion a series of such bodies which have, at different times, been isolated at that in- stitution. Among theexhibits of the Mining building the curious will find many of the rarer elementary bodies, such as will never be seen, except by specialists, out- side of show-cases. Among these may be mentioned silicon, boron, osmium, iridium, ruthenium and palladium. Along with these is shown, by a London firm, a single appliance of chemistry, made of platinum, for concentrating sulphuric acid, which is valued at over fourteen thousand dollars, and which is capable of concentrating thir- teen tons of acid in twenty-four hours. In the same building may also be seen con- siderable quantities of the valuable metal aluminum, becoming constantly more im- portant because of its increasing cheapness. Perhaps the most remarkable and valuable Columbian contribution to the science of chemistry is a volume bearing the title, «« A Select Bibliography of Chemistry, 1492 to 1892.’ It is the work of Professor Henry Carrington Bolton, already widely known to the scientific world through his previous researches and writings, and now president of the New York Academy of Sciences. The book is shown in the model library exhibited by the Bureau of Education in the Government building. It contains the titles of the principal books on chemistry published from the rise of the literature to the end of the year 1892, and embraces over twelve thousand titles in twenty-four languages. It will be of great value to librarians as wellas to chemists. This portly octavo of 1212 pages forms Vol. xxxvi of the Smithsonian Miscellane- ous collections. S. E. TILLMAN, COLONEL U.S.A. * * * DIAMONDS AT THE FAIR. NE of the most attractive exhibits in the Mining building is that of South African diamonds. Here one may see not merely the familiar finished gem, but the process of cutting ; and not merely the uncut stones, but lumps of dark rock from which large, more or less well-formed crystals of diamond protrude like pieces of citron from a fruit pudding. This rock is a very basic one of eruptive origin ( peridotite or a closely allied rock ), and the diamonds are porphyritic constituents which probably reached their full size before the molten mass started upon its journey toward the surface. The precise depth from which eruptive rocks reach the surface is not known, but that the distance is a considerable number of miles no one doubts. It is scarcely possible that it should be so little as ten miles and is probably nearer twenty. In either case the eruptives originated below the stratified rocks of sedimen- tary origin, and therefore the carbon of which these diamonds are formed is not de- rived from vegetable or animal matter. On the contrary it must be furnished by subterranean supplies of the element which have never entered into organic structures. The diamond has also been found in meteoric iron from Diablo cafion, Arizona, in the form of small grains, which display all the physical and chemical properties of the gem. These meteorites contain some carbon, too, in another form, namely, in union with iron and nickel. This is the same way in which carbon exists in the nickel- steel now being manufactured for armor-plates, and it is never absent from the me- tallic meteorites in this form. Metallic iron, again, has in some cases reached the sur- face of the earth embedded in basic eruptions containing, like peridotite, a mineral called olivine, also known in meteorites. Now, since diamonds, metallic iron and olivine are all interterrestrial substances and all also meteoric constituents, it is ex- tremely probable that portions at least of the earth’s interior are similar in composi-
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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 623 tion to the meteorites. The great average density of the earth, five and a half times that of water, would be quite intelligible if one were to assume that it consisted in great part of nickel-steel like so many of the meteorites. Real translucent diamonds have been artificially produced by Mr. Henri Moissan, whose method was stated in the July Cosmopolitan. GEORGE F. BECKER. ELECTRIC COMPARI Hoe’ rapid the development of the electrical arts has been within the past few years may be seen by comparing the electrical exhibits at the Centennial ex- hibition in Philadelphia, in 1876, with those at the Columbian exposition now at Chicago. Then, electrical apparatus consisted mostly of telegraphic devices, gal- vanic batteries, static machines, leyden jars, etc., for school illustrations and measur- ing instruments such as galvanometers and resistance coils. There were a few crude dynamos and one small imported Gramme machine, none of them intended to main- tain more than one arc light. Now, there is rivalry for space in which to exhibit dynamos capable of lighting fifty or more in one circuit. Then, there was not a single incandescent lamp in the world. Now, they are to be seen by the tens of thousands and with all degrees of brightness from that of a tallow dip to those but little inferior to the arc itself, and every exhibit is thus lighted. Then, there was not a single electrical motor that was more than a toy to berun by a galvanic cell. Now, motors for all kinds of service from driving a fan to those run- ning printing-presses, looms, machine shops, and threatening the existence of the locomotive itself. Then, all welding was done by hammering at the forge. Now, electricity heats the ends to be joined and in less time than it takes to describe the process, heavy shafts and rails may be welded even better than was possible before. Then, it was not pos- sible to weld steel or other metals than iron. Now, almost any metal may be electri- cally welded to another as easily as iron to iron. Then, there were induction coils for producing sparks a few inches long. Now, such sparks have been made five feet long and it is believed could be made fifty feet long if it were worth the while. Then, induction coils were employed only for changing low potentials to higher. Now, the transformer reverses the process and makes elec- tric lighting feasible miles away from the dynamo. Then, it was possible to send but two telegraphic messages in opposite directions simultaneously. Now, seventy-two messages can be sent, thirty-six in each direction, on one wire without interference. Then, the telephone was first exhibited on a line the length of a building. Now, one can talk with another a thousand miles away. Then, it was believed that a continuous conductor was essential for doing any kind of electrical work. Now, it is shown that all kinds of such work may be done without material connections. Then, it was thought that light was one of the physical forces. Now, it is believed that light is an electro-magnetic wave. Then, it was believed and taught that electricity cou!d never be economically em- ployed for driving machinery and that its light could not be subdivided. Now, it is believed that electricity is in its infancy. Then, all the electrical exhibit could be put in a space fifty feet square. Now, a huge building, covering acres, is found insufficient for the needs of exhibitors. All this since ’76. A. EF. DOLBEAR.
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standing ankle- deep in the sand ny, swinging his sombrero back and forth by his side and swearing in a rich, sonorous mellif- luous strain which swept on and on as uninterruptedly as the winds ranged over the plains. Introduction : andante, pianis- simo—a soft-voiced appeal to some of the lesser saints of his calendar to stand by and see fair play. Opening strain: a creditably performed presto movement in good, short, stout oaths, serving to inspire the performer with confidence and to ac- quaint the listener with the theme of the composition in its simplest expression ; then theme in octaves, allegro furioso, with elaborate appoggiatura effects, drift- ing in the third strain into a short fugue movement, difficult of execution and bringing the perspiration in beads ; then, finale, a mighty crescendo, woven close with sweeping arpeggios—an unreserved condemnation of all things earthly to an eternity of existence in a very lurid and real perdition of unimaginable horrors. When he had done, and was panting for breath, he made his pony limp a few steps along the trail. It was of no use; the beast was hopelessly lame, and there was nothing in José’s immediate future but a weary march of ten miles on foot over pe the sinuous dusty trail which , stretched out ahead of him, a streak of brown desolation, toward Socorro. So, with a final brief anathema upon the head of the prairie-dog which would dig a burrow in the middle of a trail, and upon the aavk- wardness of the pony which would blindly thrust his foot into it, he threw the bridle rein over his arm, gave a fierce hitch to his buckskin trousers and took up his walk. The mere circumstance of walking was bad enough in the abstract, for he was possessed of an infinite capacity for ease. But that was not the worst of it ; tomor- row was the day of the correr el gallo, with the fandango in the evening. It was in honor of that that he had attired himself in his best buckskin and his sil- vered sombrero and was going on this pilgrimage. And now in the game he would have to ride a strange pony, one unaccustomed to the work perhaps ; there was no dependence to be placed upon the temper of a strange pony : it might mean defeat in the game, and ignominy in the sight of Florita Espalda. Ah! Florita Espalda was the attraction to Socorro, and not the correr—a curse upon the breakneck game ; he would not have stirred a step but for the hope of seeing her and winning a mark of her favor—a smile or a glance or some sign of her pleasure when she should bow acceptance of the token of his valor.
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JOSE: A TALE OF OLD SOCORRO. Was there ever so fair a sefiorita? Even now, when he half closed his own lids, he could see the glorious languid eyes, the round threat and the oval face, and he swore a soft little oath of simple ecstacy. But that died away unfinished, before a sharp spasm of jealous fear. It was a month since he had seen her—a whole month. What might not have happened in a month? When they had parted he had held her little fingers for an instant— long enough to carry them passionately to his lips. Butamonth! The lips of a dozen lovers might have kissed her hand : the right might no longer be his. But even the passion of love or the pangs of jealousy will take on a secondary im- portance under present pressing physical discomfort, and it was a mighty discomfort to lift the dead weight of his feet through mile after mile of yielding dry sand under a broiling sun, with nothing to relieve the monotony but the interminable red hills and the patches of cactus and sage-brush, reduced to the same tiresome color by their coat of yellow dust. They did not relieve the monotony ; they only served as accent and punctuation marks. At last the red sun went down behind the low range to the westward, with José’s blessing upon it, and the outer confines of the dreary landscape grew confused and indistinct under the gathering dark- ness, the circle of shadows narrowing closer and closer about him until he could only see the trail with difficulty. Then the moon came up, blood-red, looking tired and hot, too, and kept him company on the last mile of his walk, until he reached Socorro and became one of the roisterers upon the plaza, who were drink- ing themselves into a state of proper en- thusiasm for the festivities of the morrow. When a Spaniard unbends, he grows thirsty ; it isa natural sequence. Thirst, fathomless and unquenchable, had _ pos- session of every human soul upon the plaza. No one tried to disguise it; no one pretended to satiate it; what they drank only teased and irritated it toa more vigorous expression of itself. José drank too. Again that fair round-throated vision rose before his eyes ; the pulque had dis- pelled his fears as it warmed his blood. He pronounced her name, and bade his friends drink with him to his success. ‘« There is need to drink to thy success 625 in strong liquor,’ one of the revellers said, with lips smiling over the rim of his glass. There was a question in José’s eyes, half closed, menacing, and in the poised hand with its glass of pulque. ‘« Thy sefiorita has not suffered of lone- liness,’’ the other explained ; ‘« Only to- day I saw her, forgetful of propriety, walk- ing under the cottonwoods with a sejior Americano, and she listened to him will- ingly. He is entered for the correr to- morrow, too, and if he wins, I doubt not she will wear his favor.”’ «“Caramba!’’ José burst forth. «A sefior Americano! And she looks at him ! She shall see! And he is entered for the correr? It is well; she shall see. Drink! Drink!’’ The poised glass went to the lips and the narrowed eyes widened. He shared a common contempt for los Ameri- canos. He had soon drunk himself into forgetfulness of the despised dog of a gringo. * * * Upon the northern side of the pictur- esque sunlit plaza which formed the cen- ter of life in the village of Socorro, there opened a narrow, winding adobe-walled lane, its snake-like course cast into deep grateful shade by the interlaced branches of the giant cottonwoods growing in the yards and courts upon either side. Here and there throughout its length rude seats of stone or hewn timbers were placed, wooing the idle Spaniard. It was the one cool retreat in the village from the persis- tent desolating glare of the southern sun. John Vannerson was keenly alive to the charms of the place as he loitered among the shadows that August afternoon, with the warm breath of the valley air stirring in the cottonwoods and fanning his bared head. He was still more keenly alive to the delicate charms of the companionship of Florita Espalda, the dark-eyed sefiorita, the belle of every village fandango, who sat upon the bench beside him listening, with kindling color and dainty deliciously natural coquetry, to his speeches in badly muddled Spanish. She too was charmed ; her lovers had been of the fiery, compelling Spanish type hitherto; she had known nothing of the winning ingenious gentle- ness of the Yankee lover, who pleaded in- stead of commanding. And John him- self, with his sturdy Saxon height, laugh- ing blue eyes and fair hair, was so differ- 40
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626 entaman. And so she listened, with her pretty head bent, with round bared arms crossed in her lap, with brown bosom ris- ing and falling gently under the folds of the loose mantilla, while John Vannerson talked. friend, had seen. * It was this that Juan Pino, José’s Poor José ! * * In their parlance the next day was a ‘‘saint’s day,” although it might have puzzled the saint—whoever he was—to discover just what part he had in it. An extra candle or two burned in the little adobe church, and the wrinkled old men and withered women who knelt about upon the earthen floor were somewhat more gaily attired and a trifle more pre- cise in their prayers than was common, but other signs were wanting. Outside the church, in the warm air, all was life and fervid activity. Age was thé dominant element among the worshippers; youth was in the ascendant without— pretty speech, softly intoned laughter and shy juggling tricks of the dark eyes. The wide plaza was all aglow with its gay decking of green branches, colored rib- bons and mantillas, and brave with holi- day trappings of men and ponies. Even the low red hills which hedged them in were not altogether unlovely today. A shout, a gay babbling of many tongues and a scattering of the multitude toward the center of the plaza disturbed the slow noon. It was the beginning of the game—the correr el gallo. An im- pressive figure in jeweled sombrero and brilliant serape stood apart from the others, urging them to listen. Under his arm he carried a finely plumed barnyard cock, which jerked its head about with many chucklings of surprise. He of the brilliant serape declared the rules. The bird, with neck well greased, would be buried in the earth so that nothing but the head and neck remained in sight ; the contestants would mount, retire to the further end of the plaza, fifty yards away, and as each one’s name was called he would strike his pony into a gallop, charge upon the unlucky fowl, throw himself upon his animal’s side, and en- deavor to seize the bird’s head in his hand, and tear it from the body or lift the body from the earth. This done, the suc- cessful sportsman was at liberty to present a bit of the plumage to his chosen lady, JOSE: A TALE OF OLD SOCORRO. as a token of esteem, and if accepted sh: would wear it at the dance in the evening as a mark of her favor. It was soon ar ranged: then the master of ceremonies had a hole made in the earth of the court, where the bird was buried, too much sur- prised now to do aught but blink his round eyes helplessly. José was mounted, as he had feared, upon a strange pony, a beast of pure white with trappings of yellow. Vannerson had a sturdy bay. Upon the breast of his shirt he wore a tiny knot of ribbon. The furtive eyes of the Mexican, measuring the lithe figure, detected this fleck of color and his brow lowered. Florita wore ribbon of the same hue in her dark hair. There was a dangerous light in his glance now, but Vannerson was innocent and calm. Twice in the morning José had sought Florita; twice he had found her and the madre with John Vannerson. His nervous fingers toyed with his belt and his sensuous lips were compressed and colorless. ‘‘Ready !’’ the master of ceremonies called, and the contestants grouped them- selves in their place, waiting. ‘‘Manuel Espejo!’’ It was the name of him who stood first upon the list. A bit of a lad, hardly out of his teens, struck spurs into his pony and leaped forward. He was but a novice ; he went wide of the mark, but the crowd cheered his effort. «Carlos Baca!’’ The second had no better success, nor the third, nor the fourth ; then the fifth succeeded in grasp- ing the hapless bird’s head lightly, but it slipped through his fingers. At last, ‘‘ José Lopez !’’ A sharp stroke of the heels, and José was away. He was a bold rider, and the fire of determination burned in his heart and shone out of his eyes. Buta prairie-dog had dug a burrow in the trail back there on the plains ; upon such little things do events hang. With cool courage José threw himself down upon the pony’s side and stretched out his eager hand, but the beast was not used to the correr. He shied nervously out of his path, reared, and José sprawled in the yellow dust of the plaza, while the gay throng laughed. He picked himself up and limped away, furious ‘‘Juan Gonzales !’’ But Juan was luck- less. Then, «El sefior Americano, Juan Vanareson !”’
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JOSE: A TALE OF OLD SOCORRO. The bay was off like a shot, and in a moment the assembly was cheering gen- erously. John swung himself from the saddle, his sinewy hand closed about the neck of the buried fowl and lifted it bodily from its place and waved it high in the air. He clipped a dozen feathers from the cock’s bright plumage, then loosed him, squawking. With bridle rein over his arm he walked to Florita and knelt before her. ‘‘ Will you wear these for me?’ he asked, and her pretty hand thrust the feathers into the fine masses of soft hair coiled upon her head. * * “Drink ! Drink !’’ José and his friend, Juan Pino, sat together through the after- noon in a small room back of one of the saloons. ‘Drink! Drink!’’ was José’s constant plea, and Juandrank. Why not? José was paying, and the wine was rich and warm and cheered his heart. For hours they had sat together thus, drink- ing now and again, until Juan was well mellowed. When José saw that his eyes were dancing and heard his loosened tongue wagging, he drew his chair close to the other and bent forward, whispering impressively. Did you ever know that whispers will inspire attention and con- fidence where thunders would fail ? «Juan, brother of my soul,’’ he began, and Juan’s tongue ceased its din: «* We have always been friends ; is it not so?”’ ‘‘ Always, my José—always,’’ Juan re- turned, warmly—a warmth bred of José’s wine. ‘And now I have that to ask which will show thy love of me. Drink! Drink !’’ and he filled his companion’s glass with the dusky liquor. Juan lifted it to his lips; it was ripe and fragrant. ‘« Ask what thou wilt !’’ he cried, wip- ing the beads of wine from his moustache, ‘©ask what thou wilt.’’ ‘«« Softly, softly !’’ José warned in his most winning whisper ; ‘it is of vast im- port and none must hear. I shall not ask it of thee for mere friendship’s sake; I have gold to give thee too, if it is well done,’’ and he held some shining pieces in his hand. Juan’s eyes glistened; the world was not a bed of roses for him ; his couch was commonly the hard ground of the mesa, among his few sheep. A piece 627 of gold was an unaccustomed sight. Juan extended his hand and locked it in that of his friend, ‘‘I am thine,’’ he said, ‘«thou hast but to command.”’ ‘«It is well,’’ José answered ; «I knew I should not ask amiss. Thou hast seen my deep love of the sefiorita Florita, and thou hast seen the greater success of the dog of an Americano. Caramba! it makes my blood boil in my veins! He has won the correr, and she has taken his favor and tonight she will wear it in the dance. Is it not enough? But she does not love him, think you? She is only charmed by his big body and his blue eyes. She loved meonce, and Dios! shemust lovemeagain! It is this that I ask of thee; here is liquor —drink,drink what thou wiltandstrength- en thy heart. Then tonight, at the dance, thou must find cause to quarrel with this dog. It will be easy, for I have seen him drinking today, too. Thou must have thy knife convenient—dost thou compre- hend?’’ His narrowed eyes were search- ing his friend’s face; the coins chinking in his hands were speaking eloquently. Juan smiled, nodding and draining his glass. “It is so simple,” he said ; « I wonder that thou hast need to ask it of another.’’ José’s face brightened. « Ah!”’ he said, «‘thou forgettest that the sefiorita will be there ; it must not be my quarrel with the Americano; it must not be my knife, or she will not look upon me again. It is well. Drink! Drink!” *% % % By ten in the night the fandango was well a-going; the low-ceiled wide room was stifling with the smoke of the lights, but through the sultry air sounded the ceaseless, throbbing, palpitating music of guitars and mandolins, and no foot could be still. Even the shriveled dames and men seated in the corners, out of the way of the dancers, trod in quaint rhythm with their old feet, and here and there a faint color came into the hueless cheeks, beneath the strangely bright eyes. Florita was the gayest of all, and the most beautiful. She had no charms but were shown tonight, as she danced with Vannerson, smiled upon Vannerson, co- quetted with Vannerson, until his sus- ceptible Yankee heart burned and glowed, and José, watching with eager eyes, mis- took the flush upon the blonde cheeks for
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628 the work of the wine, which flowed with- out limit. He thought that Juan’s quar- rel would be easy. Then there came a brief lull in the hum of the music, and John sat apart, alone, with head bared to the grateful air enter- ing through a low window. He had left Florita’s side, but his eyes were still upon her, seated over on the woman's side of the wide room. He saw her leave her place and cross toward him, laughing shyly, her hands hidden be- neath her mantilla, She paused before him for a brief instant, quickly re- leased her hands and dashed upon his head a beribboned egg shell, which burst and threw over him a spray of delicate perfume. It was a direct challenge: he must catch her before she regained her seat; then he might kiss her. He was quick to move; his long legs were agile, and midway on the floor his arm encircled her and the merry spectators cheered the sounding kiss upon the brown cheek. They were in gay humor; they would have cheered the appearance of the evil one, had he come with some fresh diversion. Then, in the midst of the throng, Juan, inflamed, passionate with wine, brushed rudely against the American. It was a studied insult which he muttered under his breath. He saw that there was no knife or pistol at Vannerson’s belt, and THE STRONGHOLD OF THE GODS. he felt quite safe. He had forgotten that the great American fist is sometimes a most effective weapon ; he only remem- bered it when he lay sprawling upon the floor, with a deep cut over his eye He was up again like an infuriated beast, with long, slender knife bared in his hand. Vannerson, unarmed, await- ed the savage rush, then stepped aside, thinking to avoid the knife and grasp his fiery little antagonist in his sinew) arms and deprive him of his weapon. Juan, maddened with his long carouse, furious under the ignominy of his floor- ing, blinded with the blood which flowed from the cut on his forehead, did not see what was done; he only knew that he had leaped forward, writhing his arms and legs about the figure of the man who stood in his path, and then— once—twice—he sent the slender blade deep into the breast of his victim. ‘Juan! Mother of God!’ It was a long, shrill wail of agony, but Juan knew the voice. ‘«José!’’ He brushed the blood from his blinded eyes and bent over the pros- trate man: ‘José! José! Look at me! God in heaven, what have I done! José, brother of my soul, speak to me!”’ But there was only a gasping sigh, and the awed revellers looked glazed in . down into eyes 1) THE STRONGHOLD OF THE GODS. By JOHN VANCE CHENEY. HERE, in this monastery of the rock, Be mine the kingly comfort of a soul At peace. In stronghold of the gods’ control I rest, well-sheltered ; safe against the shock Of change, against the horrors all that knock At hope’s lone door. Here life is sweet and whole, As Heaven means it; doubt is not, no dole, Pain's bony finger cannot break this lock. The stanchest monarch never wore this crown; High on the hilltop, trouble lies far down.
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IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD ¢ By MARK TWAIN. WAS spending the month of March, 1892, at Mentone, in the Riviera. At this retired spot one has all the ad- vantages privately, which are to be had at Monte Carlo and Nice, a few miles further along, publicly. That is to say, one has the flooding sunshine, the balmy air and the brilliant blue sea, without the marring additions of human pow-wow and fuss and feathers and display. Mentone is quiet, simple, restful, unpretentious ; the rich and the gaudy do not come there. As a rule, I mean, the rich do not come there. Now and then a rich man comes, and I ~,resently got acquainted with one of these. Partially to disguise him, I will call him Smith. One day, in the Hétel des Anglais, at the second breakfast, he exclaimed : «Quick ! Cast your eye on the man go- ing out at the door. Take in every detail of him.’’ “Why?” ‘«Do you know who he is?”’ ‘Yes. He spent several days here be- fore you came. He is an old, retired and very rich silk manufacturer from Lyons, they say, and I guess he is alone in the world, for he always looks sad and dreamy, and doesn’t talk with anybody. His name is Theophile Magnan.” I supposed that Smith would now pro- ceed to justify the large interest which he had shown in Monsieur Magnan, but, in- stead, he dropped into a brown study, and was apparently lost to me and to the rest of the world during some minutes. Now and then he passed his fingers through his flossy white hair, to assist his think- ing, and meantime he allowed his break- fast to go on cooling. At last he said: ‘No, it’s gone; I can’t call it back.’’ «¢Can’t call what back ?® ‘It’s one of Hans Andersen’s beautiful little stories. But it’s gone from me. Part of it is likethis: A child has a caged bird, which it loves, but thoughtlessly neglects. The bird pours out its song unheard and unheeded; but, in time, hunger and thirst assail the creature, and its song grows plaintive and feeble and finally ceases—the bird dies. ‘The child comes, and is smitten to the heart with remorse ; then, with bitter.tears and lam- entations, it calls its mates, and they bury the bird with elaborate pomp and the tenderest grief, without knowing, poor things, that it isn’t children only who starve poets to death and then spend enough on their funerals and monuments to have kept them alive and made them easy and comfortable. Now—”’
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630 But here we were in- terrupted. About ten, that evening, I ran across Smith, and he asked me uptohis par- lor to help him smoke “ and drink hot Scotch. It was a cosy place, with its comfortable chairs, its cheerful lamps and its friendly open fire of seasoned olive-wood. To make everything perfect, there was the muffled booming of the surf outside. After the second Scotch and much lazy and content- ed chat, Smith said: ‘« Now we are properly primed—TI to tell a curious history, and you to listen to it. It has been a secret for many years—a secret between me and three others ; but I am going to break the seal now. Are you comfortable? ’’ ‘Perfectly. Goon.”’ Here follows what he told me: A long time ago I was a young artist— a very young artist, in fact—and I wan- dered about the country parts of France, sketching here and sketching there, and was presently joined by a couple of dar- ling young Frenchmen who were at the same kind of thing that I was doing. ~and skérening Were PF IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD? We were as happy as we were poor, or as poor as we were happy —phrase it tosuit your- self. Claude Frére and Carl Boulanger—these are the names of those boys; dear, dear fel- lows, and the sunniest spirits that ever laughed at poverty and had a noble good time in all weathers. At last we ran harda ground in a Breton vil- lage, and an artist as poor as ourselves took us in and literally saved us from starving —Francois Millet— ‘What! the great Francois Millet?’’ Great? He wasn’t any greater than we were, then. He hadn’t any fame, even in his own village ; and he was so poor that he hadn’t anything to feed us on but turnips, and even the turnips failed us sometimes. We four became fast friends, doting friends, inseparables. We painted away together with all our might, piling up stock, piling up stock, but very seldom getting rid of any of it. We had lovely times together; but, O my soul! how we were pinched now and then ! For a little over two years this went on. At last, one day, Claude said : ‘« Boys, we’ve come tothe end. Do you understand that ?— absolutely to the end. Everybody has struck—there’s a league formed against us. I’ve been all around the village and it’s just as I tell you. They refuse to credit us for another cen- time until all the odds and ends are paid up.”’ This struck us cold. Every face was blank with dismay. We realized that our circumstances were desperate, now. There was along silence. Finally, Millet said, with a sigh: ‘« Nothing occurs to me—nothing. Sug- gest something, lads.’’ There was no response, unless a mourn- ful silence may be called a response. Carl got up, and walked nervously up and down a while, then said: ‘‘It’s ashame! Look at these canvases: stacks and stacks of as good pictures as anybody in Europe paints—I don’t care ws y <saereniny NAAE—
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IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD? who he is. Yes, and plenty of lounging strangers have said the same—or nearly that, anyway.”’ ‘«« But didn’t buy,’’ Millet said. ‘«‘ No matter, they said it ; and it’s true, Look at your ‘Angelus’ there; ” too. will anybody tell me — «Pah, Carl—my Angelus! fered five francs for it.’’ ‘‘ When !”’ ‘«« Who offered it !”’ «« Where is he!"’ ‘«« Why didn’t you take it!” « Come—don’t all speak at once. I thought he would give more—I was sure of it—he looked it—so I asked him eight.’’ «« Well—and then? ’”’ ‘« He said he would call again.’”’ «« Thunder and lightning ! Why, Fran- ” I was of- cois— «Oh, I know, I know! It was a mis- take, and I was a fool. Boys, I meant for the best; you'll all grant me that, and i" “ “TAKE IN EVERY DETAIL OF HIM.’” ‘‘ Why, certainly, we know that, bless your dear heart ; but don’t you bea fool again.’’ “IT? I wish somebody would come along and offer us a cabbage for it—you’d see !’’ ‘““A cabbage! Oh, don’t: name it—it makes my mouth water. Talk of things less trying.”’ ‘‘ Boys,’’ said Carl, «do these pictures lack merit? Answer me that.” ‘No!’ ‘‘Aren’t they of very great and high merit? Answer me that.”’ ++ Yes,” “Of such great and high merit, that, 631 if an illustrious tame were attached to them they would sell at splendid prices. Isn't it so?”’ ‘« Certainly it is. Nobody doubts that.”’ ‘« But—I’m not joking—zsn’? it so?”’ ‘Why, of course it’s so—and we are not joking. But what of it? What of it? How does that concern us?”’ ‘In this way comrades—we'll attach an illustrious name to them !”’ The lively conversation stopped. The faces were turned inquiringly upon Carl. What sort of riddle might this be? Where was an illustrious name to be borrowed ? And who was to borrow it? Carl sat down, and said : ‘«« Now I have a perfectly serious thing to propose. I think it is the only way to keep us out of the almshouse, and I be- lieve it to be a perfectly sure way. I base this opinion upon certain multitudinous and long established facts in human his- tory. I believe my project will make us all rich.’’ «Rich! You’ve lost your mind.’’ ‘« No, I haven't.”’ «Yes, you have — you've lost your mind. What do-you call rich? ”’ ‘‘A hundred thousand francs apiece.”’ ««He has lost his mind. I knew it.’’ “Yes, he has. Carl, privation has been too much for you and—”’ ‘Carl, you want to take a pill and get right to bed!”’ ‘«« Bandage him first—bandage his head, and then—”’ ‘‘No, bandage his heels; his brains have been settling for weeks—I' ve noticed *.”” «Shut up!’’ said Millet, with osten- sible severity, ‘and let the boy say his say. Now then—come out with your project, Carl. What is it?”’ ‘«‘ Well, then, by way of preamble I will ask you to note this fact in human his- tory: that the merit of many a great artist has never been acknowledged until after he was starved and dead. This has happened so often that I make bold to ’
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632 found a law upon it. This law: that the merit of every great unknown and neglect- ed artist must and will be recognized and his pictures climb to high prices after his death. My project is this: we must cast lots—one of us must die.”’ The remark fell so calmly and so unex- pectedly that we almost forgot to jump. Then there was a wild chorus of advice again—medical advice, for the help of Carl’s brain ; but he waited patiently for the hilarity to calm down, then went on again with his project : «Yes, one of us must die, to save the others—and himself. We will cast lots. The one chosen shall be illustrious, all of us shall be rich. Hold still, now—hold still; don’t interrupt—I tell you I know what I am talking about. Here is the idea. During the next three months the one who is to die shall paint with all his might, enlarge his stock all he can—not pictures, ~o/ skeleton sketches, studies, parts of studies, fragments of studies, a dozen dabs of the brush on each—mean- “EVERY FACE WAS BLANK WITH DISMAY.” ingless, of course, but 47s, with his cipher on them; turn out fifty a day, each to contain some peculiarity or mannerism easily detectable as his—/hey've the things that sell you know, and are collected at fabulous prices for the world’s museums, after the great man is gone; we'll havea ton of them ready—a ton! And all that time the rest of us will be busy support- ing the moribund, and working Paris and the dealers—preparations for the coming IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD ? event, you know; and when everything is hot and just right, we'll spring the death on them and have the notorious funeral. You get the idea?’’ ««N-o; at least, not qu—’’ ‘« Not quite? Don’t you see? The man doesn’t really die; he changes his name and vanishes; we bury a dummy, and cry over it, with all the world to help. And I—”’ But he wasn’t allowed to finish. Every- body broke out into a rousing hurrah of applause ; and all jumped up and capered about the room and fell on each other's necks, in transports of gratitude and joy. For hours we talked over the great plan, without ever feeling hungry ; and at last, when all the details had been arranged satisfactorily, we cast lots and Millet was elected—elected to die, as we called it. Then we scraped together those things which one never parts with until he is betting them against future wealth— keepsake trinkets and suchlike — and these we pawned for enough to furnish us a frugal farewell supper and breakfast, and leave us a few francs over for travel, and a stake of turnips and stuff for Millet to live on for a few days. Next morning early, the three of us cleared out, straight- way after breakfast— on foot, of course. Each of us carried a dozen of Millet’s small pictures, purposing to market them. Carl struck for Paris, where he would start the work of building up Millet's fame against the coming great day; Claude and I were to separate, and scatter abroad over France. Now, it will surprise you to know what an easy and comfortable thing we had. I walked two days before I began business. Then I began to sketch a villa in the out- skirts of a big town—because I saw the proprietor standing on an upper verandah. He came down to look on—I thought he would. I worked swiftly, intending to keep him interested. Occasionally he
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IS HE LIVING OR fired off a little ejaculation of approbation, and by and by he spoke up with enthusi- asm and said I was a master ! . put down my brush, reached into my satchel, fetched out a Millet, and point- ed to the cipher in the corner. I said, proudly : ‘«« | suppose you recognize ¢hat? Well, he taught me! I should ¢Azzk I ought to know my trade!’’ The man looked guiltily embarrassed, and was silent. I said, sorrowfully : «You don’t mean to intimate that you don’t know the cipher of Francois Mil- let !*” Of course he didn’t know that cipher ; but he was the gratefullest man you ever saw, just the same, for being let out of an uncomfortable place on such easy terms. He said: ‘««No! Why, it zs Millet's, sure enough! I don’t know what I could have been thinking of. Of course I recognize it now.”’ Next, he wanted to buy it; but I said that although I wasn’t rich I wasn’t that poor. However, at last, I let him have it for eight hundred francs. «Kight hundred !”’ Yes. Millet would have sold it for a pork chop. Yes, I got eight hundred frances for that little thing. I wish I could get it back for eighty thousand. But that time’s gone by. I made a very nice picture of that man’s house, and I wanted to offer it to him for ten francs, but that wouldn’t answer, seeing I was the pupil of such a master, so I sold it to him for a hundred. I sent the eight hun- dred frances straight back to Millet from that town and struck out again next day. But I didn’t walk—no. I rode. I have ridden ever since. I sold one picture every day, and never tried to sell two. I always said to my customer,— ‘I ama fool tosella picture of Francois Millet’s at all, for that man is not going to live three months and when he dies his pictures can't be had for love or money.”’ I took care to spread that little fact as far as I could, and prepare the world for the event. I take credit to myself for our plan of selling the pictures—it was mine. I sug- gested it that last evening when we were laying out our campaign, and all three of 1S HE DEAD? 6S ALL JUMPED UP AND FELL ON EACH OTHE ’s NECKS.”’ us agreed to give it a good fair trial be- fore giving it up for some other. It suc- ceeded with all of us. I walked only two days, Claude walked two—both of us afraid to make Millet celebrated too close to home—but Carl walked only half aday, the bright, conscienceless rascal and after that he traveled like a duke. Every now and then we got in witha country editor and started an item around through the press; not an item announc- ing that a new painter had been discov- ered, but an item which let on that every- body knew Francois Millet; not an item praising him in any way but merely a word concerning the present condition of the «‘ master’’—sometimes hopeful, some- times despondent, but always tinged with fears for the worst. We always marked these paragraphs, and sent the papers to all the people who had bought pictures of us. Carl was soon in Paris, and he worked things with a high hand. He made friends with the correspondents and got Millet’s condition reported to England and all over the continent, and America, and everywhere. At the end of six weeks from the start, we three met in Paris and called a halt, and stopped sending back to Millet for additional pictures. The boom was so high, and everything so ripe, that we saw that it would be a mistake not to strike
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634 now, right away, without waiting any longer. So we wrote Millet to go to bed and begin to waste away pretty fast, for we should like him to die in ten days if he could get ready. Then we figured up and found that among us we had sold eighty-five small pictures and studies, and had six- ty-nine thousand francs to show for it. Carl had made the last sale and the most brilliant one of all. He sold the Angelus for twenty-two hun- dred francs. How we did glorify him !— not foreseeing that a day was coming by and by when France would struggle to own it and a stranger would capture it for five hundred and fifty thousand, cash. We had a wind-up champagne supper that night, and next day Claude and I packed up and went off to nurse Millet through his last days and keep busy- bodies out of the house and send daily bulletins to Carl in Paris for publication in the papers of several continents for the information of a waiting world. The sad end came at last, and Carl was there in time to help in the final mournful rites. You remember that great funeral, and what a stir it made all over the globe, and how the illustrious of two worlds came to attend it and testify their sorrow. We four—still inseparable—carried the coffin, and would allow none to help. And we were right about that, because it hadn’t anything in it but a wax figure, and any other coffin-bearers would have found fault with the weight. Yes, we same old four, who had lovingly shared privation together in the old hard times now gone forever, carried the cof—’’ ‘Which four?” «« We four—for Millet helped to carry his own coffin. In disguise, you know. Disguised as a relative—distant relative "’ «« Astonishing !”’ But true, just the same. Well, you re- member how the pictures went up. Money? We didn’t know what to do with it. There’s a man in Paris today who *“*I SUPPOSE YOU RECOGNIZE THAT!” IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD? Owns seventy Millet pictures. He paidus twomillion franes for them. Andas forthe bushels of sketches and studies which Millet shoveled out during the six weeks that we were on the road, well, it would astonish you toknow the figure we sell them at now-a-days —that is, when we consent to let one go. “It is a wonder- ful history, perfectly wonderful !’’ Yes—it amounts to that. ‘« Whatever became of Millet ?’’ Can you keep a secret ? +] can.” Do you remember the man I called your attention to in the dining-room today ? That was Frangois Millet. «« Great—”’ Scott! Yes. For once they didn’t starve a genius to death and then put into other pockets the rewards he should have had himself. 7zs song-bird was not allowed to pipe out its heart unheard and then be paid with the cold pomp of a big funeral. We looked out for that. 2 na Ct >
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A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA. By W. D. HOWELLS. XI. ” COULD not give you a clear ac- count of the present state of things in my country,’’ the Altrurian began, ‘without first telling you something of our conditions before the time of our evo- lution. It seems to be the law of all life, that nothing can come to fruition without dying and seeming to making an end. It must be sown in corruption before it can be raised in incorruption. The truth itself must perish to our senses before it can live to our souls; the Son of Man must suffer upon the cross before we can know the Son of God. «It was so with His message to the world, which we received in the old time as an ideal realized by the earliest Christ- ians, who loved one another and who had all things common. The apostle cast away upon our heathen coasts, won us with the story of this first Christian re- public, and he established a common- wealth of peace and goodwill among us in its likeness. That commonwealth per- ished, just as its prototype perished, or seemed to perish; and long ages of civic and economic warfare succeeded, when every man’s hand was against his neigh- bor, and might was the rule that got itself called right. Religion ceased to be the hope of this world, and became the vague promise of the next. We descended into the valley of the shadow, and dwelt amid chaos for ages, before we groped again into the light. ‘‘The first glimmerings were few and indistinct, but men formed themselves about the luminous points hereand there, and when these broke and dispersed into lesser gleams, still men formed them- selves about each of them. There arose a system of things, better, indeed, than that darkness, but full of war, and lust, and greed, in which the weak rendered homage to the strong, and served them in the field and in the camp, and the strong in turn gave the weak protection against the otherstrong. It was a juggle in which the weak did not see that their safety was after all from themselves; but it was an image of peace, however false and fitful, and it endured foratime. It endured for a limited time, if we measure by the life of the race; it endured for an unlimited time if we measure by the lives of the men who were born and died while it endured. ‘«« But that disorder, cruel and fierce and stupid, which endured because it some- times masked itself as order, did at last pass away. Here and there one of the strong overpowered the rest; then the strong became fewer and fewer, and in their turn they all yielded to a supreme lord, and throughout the land there was one rule, as it was called then, or one misrule, as we should call it now. This rule, or this misrule, continued for ages more; and again, in the immortality of the race, men toiled and struggled, and died without the hope of better things. ‘‘Then the time came when the long nightmare was burst with the vision of a future in which all men were the law, and not one man, or any less number of men than all. ‘‘The poor, dumb beast of humanity rose, and the throne tumbled, and the sceptre was broken, and the crown rolled away into that darkness of the past. We thought that heaven had descended to us, and that liberty, equality and fraternity were ours. We could not see what should again alienate us from one another, or how one brother could again oppress an- other. With a free field and no favor, we believed we should prosper on together, and there would be peace and plenty forall. We had the republic, again, after so many ages now, and the republic, as we knew it in our dim annals was brotherhood and universal happiness. All but a very few who prophesied evil of our lawless free- dom, were rapt in a delirium of hope. Men’s minds and men’s hands were sud- denly released to an activity unheard of before. Invention followed invention ; our rivers and seas became the woof of
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636 commerce where the steam-sped shuttles carried the warp of enterprise to and fro with tireless celerity. Machines to save labor multiplied themselves as if they had been procreative forces; and wares of ev- ery sort were produced with incredible swiftness and cheapness. Money seemed to flow fromthe ground; vast fortunes ‘rose like an exhalation,’ as your Milton says. ‘At first we did not know that they were the breath of the nethermost pits of hell, and that the love of money which was becoming universal with us, was filling the earth with the hate of men. It was long before we came to realize that in the depths of our steamships were those who fed the fires with their lives, and that our mines from which we dug our wealth were the graves of those who had died to the free light and air, without finding the rest of death. We did not see that the machines for saving labor were monsters that devoured women and child- ren, and wasted men at the bidding of the power which no man must touch. «That is, we thought we must not touch it, for it called itself prosperity, and wealth, and the public good, and it said that it gave bread, and it impudently bade the toiling myriads consider what would become of them, if it took away their means of wearing themselves out in its service. It demanded of the state ab- solute immunity and absolute impunity, the right to do its will wherever and how- ever it would, without question from the people who were the final law. It had its way, and under its rule we became the richest people under the sun. The Accu- mulation, as we called this power, because we feared to call it by its true name, re- warded its own with gains of twenty, of a hundred, of a thousand per cent., and to satisfy its need, to produce the labor that operated its machines, there came into existence a hapless race of men who bred their kind for its service, and whose little ones were its prey, almost from their cradles. Then the infamy became too great, and the law, the voice of the people, so long guiltily silent, was lifted in be- half of those who had no helper. The Accumulation came under control, for the first time, and could no longer work its slaves twenty hours a day amid perils to life and limb from its machinery and in con- ditions that forbade them decency and mo- A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA., rality. Thetimeof a hundred and athou- sand per cent. passed ; but still the Accu- mulation demanded immunity and im- punity, and in spite of its conviction of the enormities it had practiced, it declared itself the only means of civilization and progress. It began to give out that it was timid, though its history was full of the boldest frauds and crimes, and it threat- ened to withdraw itself if it were rnled or even crossed ; and again it had its way, and we seemed to prosper more and more. The land was filled with cities where the rich flaunted their splendor in palaces, and the poor swarmed in squalid tenements. The country was drained of its life and force, to feed the centers of commerce and industry. The whole land was bound together with a network of iron roads that linked the factories and found- ries to the fields and mines, and blasted the landscape with the enterprise that spoiled the lives of men. «Then, all at once, when its work seemed perfect and its dominion sure, the Accumulation was stricken with con- sciousness of the lie always at its heart. It had hitherto cried out for a free field and no favor, for unrestricted competition ; but, in truth, it had never prospered, except as a monopoly. Whenever and wherever competition had play, there had been nothing but disaster to the rival enterprises, till one rose over the rest. Then there was prosperity for that one. ‘«The Accumulation began toact uponits newconsciousness. The iron roads united ; the warring industries made peace, each kind under asingleleadership. Monopoly, not competition, was seen to be the benef- icent means of distributing the favors and blessings of the Accumulation to mankind. But as before, there was al- ternately a glut and dearth of things, and it often happened that when starving men went ragged through the streets, the storehouses were piled full of rotting har- vests that the farmers toiled from dawn till dusk to grow, and the warehouses fed the moth with the stuffs that the operative had woven his life into at his loom. Then followed, with a blind and mad succession, a time of famine, when money could not buy the superabundance that vanished, none knew how or why. ‘« The money itself vanished from time to time, and disappeared into the vaults of
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A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA. the Accumulation, for no better reason than that for which it poured itself out at other times. Our theory was that the people, that is to say the government of the people, made the people's money, but, as a matter of fact, the Accumulation made it, and controlled it, and juggled with it; and now you saw it, and now you did not see it. The government made gold coins, but the people had nothing but the paper money that the Accumula- tion made. But whether there was scarcity or plenty, the failures went on with a con- tinuous ruin that nothing could check, while our larger economic life proceeded in a series of violent shocks, which we called financial panics, followed by long periods of exhaustion and recuperation. There was no law in our economy, but as the Accumulation had never cared for the nature of law, it did not trouble itself for its name in our order of things. It had always bought the law it needed for its own use, first through the voter at the polls in the more primitive days, and then, as civilization advanced, in the leg- islatures and the courts. But the corrup- tion even of these more enlightened meth- ods was far surpassed when the era of consolidation came, and the necessity for statutes and verdicts and decisions be- came more stringent. Then we had such a burlesque of —"’ ‘‘Took here!’’ a sharp nasal voice snarled across the rich, full pipe of the Altrurian, and we all instantly looked there. The voice came from an old farmer, holding himself stiffly up, with his hands in his pockets and his lean frame bent toward the speaker. ‘ When are you goin’ to git to Altrury? We know all about Ameriky.”’ He sat down again, and it was a mo- ment before the crowd caught on. Then a yell of delight and a roar of volleyed laughter went up from the lower classes, in which, I am sorry to say, my friend, the banker, joined, so far as the laughter was concerned. ‘‘Good! That's it! First- rate!’’ came from a hundred vulgar throats. “TIsn’t it a perfect shame?’ Mrs. Makely demanded. «I think some of you gentlemen ought to say something ! What will Mr. Homos think of our civili- zation if we let such interruptions go un- rebuked !”’ 637 She was sitting between the banker and myself, and her indignation made him laugh more and more. ‘Oh, it serves him right,’’ he said. ‘Don’t you see that he is hoist with his own petard? Let him alone. He’s in the hands of his friends.”’ The Altrurian waited for the tumult to die away, and then he said, gently: «I don’t understand.’’ The old farmer jerked himself to his feet again: ‘It’s like this: I paid my dolla’ to hear about a country where there wa'n’t no co’perations, and no monop' lies, nor no buyin’ up cou’ts ; and I ain't agoin’ to have no allegory shoved down my throat, instead of a true history, noways. I know all about how it is seve. Fi'st, run their line through your backya’d, and then kill off your cattle, and keep kerryin’ on it up from cou’t to cou't, till there ain’t hide or hair of ’em left—’’ «Oh, set down, set down! Let the man go on! He'll make it all right with you,’’ one of the construction gang called out; but the farmer stood his ground, and I could hear him through the laughing and shouting, keep saying something, from time to time, about not wanting to pay no dolla’ for notalk about co’perations and monop’lies that we had right under our own noses the whole while, and you might say in your very bread-troughs ; till, at last, I saw Reu- ben Camp make his way towards him, and, after an energetic expostulation, turn to leave him again. Then he faltered out, «I guess it’s all right,’’ and dropped out of sight in the group he had risen from. I fancied his wife scolding him there, and all but shaking him in public. ‘‘ T should be very sorry,’’ the Altrurian proceeded, «‘ to have anyone believe that I have not been giving you a bona fide ac- count of conditions in my country before the evolution, when we first took the name of Altruria in our great, peaceful campaign against the Accumulation. As for offering you any allegory or travesty of your own conditions, I will simply say that I do not know them well enough to do so intelligently. But, whatever they are, God forbid that the likeness which you seem to recognize should ever go so far as the desperate state of things which we finally reached. I will not trouble you
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638 with details; in fact, I have been afraid that I had already treated of our affairs too abstractly; but, since your own experi- ence furnishes you the means of seizing my meaning, I will go on as before. ‘« You will understand me when I ex- plain that the Accumulation had not erected itself into the sovereignty with us unopposed. The workingmen who suffered most from its oppression had early begun to band themselves against it, with the instinct of self-preservation, first trade by trade, and art by art, and then in congresses and federations of the trades and arts, until finally they enrolled themselves in one vast union, which in- cluded all the workingmen whom their necessity or their interest did not leave on the side of the Accumulation. This beneficent and generous association of the weak for the sake of the weakest did not accomplish itself fully till the baleful in- stinctof the Accumulation had reduced the monopolies to one vast monopoly, till the stronger had devoured the weaker among its members, and the supreme agent stood at the head of our affairs, in everything but name our imperial ruler. We had hugged so long the delusion of each man for himself, that we had suffered all realty to be taken from us. The Accu- mulation owned the land as well as the mines under it and the shops over it ; the Accumulation owned the seas and the ships that sailed the seas, and the fish that swam in their depths; it owned transportation and distribution, and the wares and products that were to be carried to and fro; and, by a logic irresistible and inexorable, the Accumulation was, and we were zot. ‘«‘But the Accumulation, too, had for- gotten something. It had found it so easy to buy legislatures and courts, that it did not trouble itself about the polls. It left us the suffrage, and let us amuse ourselves with the periodical election of the political clay images which it manipulated and moulded to any shape and effect, at its pleasure. The Accumulation knew that it was the sovereignty, whatever figure-head we called president, or governor, or mayor : we had other names for these officials, but I use their analogues for the sake of clear- ness, and I hope my good friend over there will not think I am still talking about America.”’ A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA. ‘««No,’’ the old farmer called bac! without rising, ‘we hain’t got ther quite, yit.”’ ‘No hurry,’’ said a trainman. « All in good time. Goon!’’ he called to the A! trurian. The Altrurian resumed : ‘« There had been, from the beginning an almost ceaseless struggle between th Accumulation and the proletariate. Th: Accumulation always said that it was th best friend of the proletariate, and it cd nounced, through the press which it con trolled, the proletarian leaders who taught that it was the enemy of the proletariate, and who stirred up strikes and tumults of all sorts, for higher wages and fewe: hours. But the friend of the proletariate, whenever occasion served, treated the prol- etariate like a deadly enemy. In seasons of over-production, as it was called, it locked the workmen out, or laid them off, and left their families to starve, or ran light work, and claimed the credit of pub- lic benefactors for running at all. It sought every chance to reduce wages ; it had laws passed to forbid or cripple the workmen in their strikes ; and the judges convicted them of conspiracy, and wrest ed the statutes to their hurt in cases where there had been no thought of embarrassing them even among the legislators. God for- bid that you should ever come to such a pass in America ; but, if you ever should, God grant that you may find your way out as simply as we did at last, when free- dom had perished in everything but name among us, and justice had become a mockery. ‘«The Accumulation had advanced so smoothly, so lightly, in all its steps to the supreme power, and had at last so thor- oughly quelled the uprisings of the prol- etariate, that it forgot one thing: it for- got the despised and neglected suffrage. The ballot, because it had been so easy to annul its effect, had been left in the peo- ple’s hands ; and when, at last, the lead- ers of the proletariate ceased to counsel strikes, or any form of resistance to the Accumulation that could be tormented into the likeness of insurrection against the government, and began to urge them to attack it in the political way, the deluge that swept the Accumulation out of exist- ence came trickling and creeping over thc land. It appeared first in the country
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"A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA. a spring from the ground ; then it gath- ered head in the villages ; then it swelled to a torrent in the cities. I cannot stay to trace its course; but suddenly, one day, when the Accumulation’s abuse of a certain power became too gross, it was voted out of that power. You will perhaps be interested to know that it was with the telegraphs that the rebellion against the Accumulation began, and the government was forced by the over- whelming majority which the proletari- ate sent to our parliament, to assume a function which the Accumulation had impudently usurped. Then the trans- portation of smaller and more perishable wares—”’ ‘ Yes,’’ a voice called out, business. Goon!’’ ‘«« Was legislated a function of the post- office,’ the Altrurian went on. ‘‘ Then all transportation was taken into the hands of the political government, which had always been accused of great cor- ruption in its administration, but which showed itself immaculately pure, com- pared with the Accumulation. The com- mon ownership of mines necessarily fol- lowed, with an allotment of lands to ‘“ express anyone who wished to live by tilling the land ; but not a foot of the land was re- mitted to private hands for purposes of selfish pleasure or the exclusion of any other from the landscape. As all busi- nesses had been gathered into the grasp of the Accumulation, and the manufact- ure of everything they used and the pro- duction of everything that they ate was in the control of the Accumulation, its transfer to the government was the work of a single clause in the statute. ‘« The Accumulation, which had treated the first menaces of resistance with con- tempt, awoke to its peril too late. When it turned to wrest the suffrage from the proletariate, at the first election where it attempted to make head against them, it was simply snowed under, as your pict- uresque phrase is. The Accumulation had no voters, except the few men at its head, and the creatures devoted to it by interest and ignorance. It seemed, at one moment, as if it would offer an armed resistance to the popular will, but, hap- pily, that moment of madness passed. Our evolution was accomplished without a drop of bloodshed, and the first great 639 political brotherhood, the commonwealth of Altruria, was founded. ‘IT wish that I had time to go intoa study of some of the curious phases of the transformation from a civility in which the people lived upon each other to one in which they lived for each other. There is a famous passage in the inaugu- ral message of our first Altrurian presi- dent, which compares the new civic con- sciousness with that of a disembodied spirit released to the life beyond this and freed from all the selfish cares and greeds of the flesh. But perhaps I shall give a sufficiently clear notion of the triumph of the change among us, when I say that within half a decade after the fall of the old plutocratic oligarchy one of the chief directors of the Accumulation publicly expressed his gratitude to God that the Accumulation had passed away forever. You will realize the importance of such an e~pression in recalling the declarations sonic of your slaveholders have made since the civil war, that they would not have slavery restored for any earthly con- sideration. ‘« But now, after this preamble, which has been so much longer than I meant it to be, how shall I give you a sufficiently just conception of the existing Altruria, the actual state from which I come?’’ ‘«‘Yes,’’ came the nasal of the old farmer, again, ‘‘ that’s what we are here fur. I wouldn’t give a copper to know all that you went through beforehand. It’s too dumn like what we have been through ourselves, as fur as heard from.”’ A shout of laughter went up from most of the crowd, but the Altrurian did not seem to see any fun in it. «« Well,’’ he resumed, «I will tell you, as well as I can, what Altruriais like, but, in the first place, you will have to cast out of your minds all images of civiliza- tion with which your experience has filled them. Fora time, the shell of the old Accumulation remained for our social habitation, and we dwelt in the old com- petitive and monopolistic forms after the life had gone out of them. That is, we continued to live in populous cities, and we toiled to heap up riches for the moth to corrupt, and we slaved on in making utterly useless things, merely because we had the habit of making them to sell. For a while we made the old sham things,
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640 which pretended to be useful things and were worse than the confessedly useless things. I will give you an illustration in one of the trades, which you will all understand. The proletariate, in the competitive and monopolistic time, used to make a kind of shoes for the prole- tariate, or the women of the proletariate, which looked like fine shoes of the best quality. It took just as much work to make these shoes as to make the best fine shoes ; but they were shams through and through. They wore out in a week, and the people called them, because they were bought fresh for every Sunday—”’ ‘««Sat’d’y night shoes !’’ screamed the old farmer. “I know’em. My gals buy ‘em. Half dolla’ a pai’, and not wo’th the money.”’ ‘Well,’ said the Altrurian, «they were a cheat and a lie, in every way, and under the new system it was not possible, when public attention was called to the fact, to continue the falsehood they em- bodied. As soon as the Saturday night shoe realized itself to the public con- science, an investigation began, and it was found that the principle of the Saturday night shoe underlay half our industries and made half the work that was done. Then an immense reform took place. We renounced, in the most solemn convoca- tion of the whole economy, the principle of the Saturday night shoe, and those who had spent their lives in producing shams—”’ ‘«« Yes,’’ said the professor, rising from his seat near us, and addressing the speaker, ‘‘I shall be very glad to know what became of the worthy and indus- trious operatives who were thrown out of employment by this explosion of economic virtue.”’ ‘“Why,’’ the Altrurian replied, « they were set to work making honest shoes ; and as it took no more time to make a pair of honest shoes, which lasted a year, than it took to make a pair of shoes that lasted a week, the amount of labor in shoe- making was at once enormously reduced.’’ ‘«« Yes,’’ said the professor, «I under- stand that. What became of the shoe- makers ?"’ ‘* They joined the vast army of other A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA: laborers who had been employed, directly or indirectly, in the fabrication of fraudu- lent wares. These shoemakers—lasters, buttonholers, binders, andsoon—no longer wore themselves out over their machines. One hour sufficed where twelve hours were needed before, and the operatives were released to the happy labor of the fields, where no one with us toils killing- ly, from dawn till dusk, but does only as much work as is needed to keep the body in health. We had a continent to refine and beautify ; we had climates to change, and seasons to modify, a whole system of meteorology to readjust, and the public works gave employment to the multitudes emancipated from the soul-destroying ser- vice of shams. I can scarcely give you a notion of the vastness of the improve- ments undertaken and carried through, or still in process of accomplishment. But a single one will, perhaps, afford a sufficient illustration. Our southeast coast, from its vicinity to the pole, had always suffered from a winter of antarctic vigor ; but our first president conceived the plan of cutting off a peninsula, which kept the equatorial current from making in to our shores ; and the work was begun in his term, though the entire strip, twenty miles in width and ninety-three in length, was not severed before the end of the first Altrurian decade. Since that time the whole region of our southeastern coast has enjoyed the climate of your Mediterranean countries. ««Tt was not only the makers of fraudu- lent things who were released to these useful and wholesome labors, but those who had spent themselves in contriving ugly and stupid and foolish things were set free to the public employments. The multitude of these monstrosities and in- iquities was as great as that of the shams—”’ Here I lost some words, for the profes- sor leaned over and whispered to me: ‘‘He has got ¢hat out of William Morris. Depend upon it, the man is a humbug. He is not an Altrurian at all.’’ I confess that my heart misgave me; but I signalled the professor to be silent, and again gave the Altrurian—if he was an Altrurian—my whole attention.