Читать книгу Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1876 - Various - Страница 1

Compress it as you may, this globe of ours remains quite a bulky affair. The world in little is not reducible to a microscopic point. The nations collected to show their riches, crude and wrought, bring with them also their wants. For the display, for its comfort and good order, not only space, but a carefully-planned organization and a multiplicity of appliances are needed. Separate or assembled, men demand a home, a government, workshops, show-rooms and restaurants. For even so paternal and, within its especial domain, autocratic a sway as that of the Centennial Commission to provide all these directly would be impossible. A great deal is, as in the outer world, necessarily left to private effort, combined or individual.

Having in our last paper sketched the provision made by the management for sheltering and properly presenting to the eye the objects on exhibition, we shall now turn from the strictly public buildings to the more numerous ones which surround them, and descend, so to speak, from the Capitol to the capital.

Our circuit brought us back to the neighborhood of the principal entrance. Standing here, facing the interval between the Main Building and Machinery Hall, our eyes and steps are conducted from great to greater by a group of buildings which must bear their true name of offices, belittling as a title suggestive of clerks and counting-rooms is to dimensions and capacity exceeding those of most churches. Right and left a brace of these modest but sightly and habitable-looking foot-hills to the Alps of glass accommodate the executive and staff departments of the exposition. They bring together, besides the central administration, the post, police, custom-house, telegraph, etc. A front, including the connecting verandah, of five hundred feet indicates the scale on which this transitory government is organized. Farther back, directly opposite the entrance, but beyond the north line of the great halls, stands the Judges' Pavilion. In this capacious "box," a hundred and fifty-two by a hundred and fifteen feet, the grand and petit juries of the tribunal of industry and taste have abundant elbow—room for deliberation and discussion. The same enlightened policy which aimed at securing the utmost independence and the highest qualifications of knowledge and intelligence in the two hundred men who determine the awards, recognized also the advantage of providing for their convenience. Their sessions here can be neither cramped nor disturbed. So far as foresight can go, there is nothing to prevent their deciding quietly, comfortably and soundly, after mute argument from the vast array of objects submitted to their verdict, on the merits of each. The main hall of this building, or high court as it may be termed, is sixty by eighty feet, and forty-three feet high. In the rear of it is a smaller hall. A number of other chambers and committee-rooms are appropriated to the different branches as classified. Accommodation is afforded, besides, to purposes of a less arid nature—fêtes, receptions, conventions, international congresses and the like. This cosmopolitan forum might fitly have been modeled after

Bricks from Birs Nimroud would have been a good material for the walks. Perhaps, order being the great end, anything savoring of confusion was thought out of place.

Fire is an invader of peace and property, defence against whose destructive forays is one of the first and most constant cares of American cities, old and new, great and small. Before the foundations of the Main Building were laid the means of meeting the foe on the threshold were planned. The Main Building alone contains seventy-five fire-plugs, with pressure sufficient to throw water over its highest point. Adjacent to it on the outside are thirty-three more. Seventy-six others protect Machinery Hall, within which are the head-quarters of the fire service. A large outfit of steam fire-engines, hose, trucks, ladders, extinguishers and other appliances of the kind make up a force powerful enough, one would think, to put out that shining light in the records of conflagration—Constantinople. Steam is kept up night and day in the engines, which, with their appurtenances, are manned by about two hundred picked men. The houses for their shelter, erected at a cost of eight thousand dollars, complete, if we except some architectural afterthoughts in the shape of annexes, the list of the buildings erected by the commission.

Place aux dames! First among the independent structures we must note the Women's Pavilion. After having well earned, by raising a large contribution to the Centennial stock, the privilege of expending thirty-five thousand dollars of their own on a separate receptacle of products of the female head and hand, the ladies selected for that a sufficiently modest site and design. To the trait of modesty we cannot say that the building has failed to add that of grace. In this respect, however, it does not strike us as coming up to the standard attained by some of its neighbors. The low-arched roofs give it somewhat the appearance of a union railway-depot; and one is apt to look for the emergence from the main entrances rather of locomotives than of ladies. The interior, however is more light and airy in effect than the exterior. But "pretty is that pretty does" was a favorite maxim of the Revolutionary dames; and the remarkable energy shown by their fair descendants, under the presidency of Mrs. E. D. Gillespie, in carrying through this undertaking will impart to it new force. The rule is quite in harmony with it that mere frippery should be avoided within and without, and the purely decorative architect excluded with Miss McFlimsey. The ground-plan is very simple, blending the cross and the square. Nave and transept are identical in dimensions, each being sixty-four by one hundred and ninety-two feet. The four angles formed by their intersection are nearly filled out by as many sheds forty-eight feet square. A cupola springs from the centre to a height of ninety feet. An area of thirty thousand square feet strikes us as a modest allowance for the adequate display of female industry. For the filling of the vast cubic space between floor and roof the managers are fain to invoke the aid of an orchestra of the sterner sex to keep it in a state of chronic saturation with music.

Reciprocity, however, obtains here. The votaries of harmony naturally seek the patronage of woman. Her territorial empire has accordingly far overstepped the narrow bounds we have been viewing. The Women's Centennial Music Hall on Broad street is designed for all the musical performances connected with the exposition save those forming part of the opening ceremonies. This is assuming for it a large office, and we should have expected so bold a calculation to be backed by floor-room for more than the forty-five hundred hearers the hall is able to seat. A garden into which it opens will accommodate an additional number, and may suggest souvenirs of al-fresco concerts to European travelers.

Nor does the sex extend traces of its sway in this direction alone. A garden of quite another kind, meant for blossoms other than those of melody, and still more dependent upon woman's nurture, finds a place in the exposition grounds near the Pavilion. Of the divers species of Garten—Blumen-, Thier-, Bier-, etc.—rife in Vaterland, the Kinder– is the latest selected for acclimation in America. If the mothers of our land take kindly to it, it will probably become something of an institution among us. But that is an If of portentous size. The mothers aforesaid will have first to fully comprehend the new system. It is not safe to say with any confidence at first sight that we rightly understand any conception of a German philosopher; but, so far as we can make it out, the Kindergarten appears to be based on the idea of formulating the child's physical as thoroughly as his intellectual training, and at the same time closely consulting his idiosyncrasy in the application of both. His natural disposition and endowments are to be sedulously watched, and guided or wholly repressed as the case may demand. The budding artist is supplied with pencil, the nascent musician with trumpet or tuning-fork, the florist with tiny hoe and trowel, and so on. The boy is never loosed, physically or metaphysically, quite out of leading-strings. They are made, however, so elastic as scarce to be felt, and yet so strong as never to break. Moral suasion, perseveringly applied, predominates over Solomon's system. It is a very nice theory, and we may all study here, at the point of the lecture-rod wielded by fair fingers, its merits as a specific for giving tone to the constitution of Young America.

At the side of the Kindergarten springs a more indigenous growth—the Women's School-house. In this reminder of early days we may freshen our jaded memories, and wonder if, escaped from the dame's school, we have been really manumitted from the instructing hand of women, or ever shall be in the world, or ought to be.

Is the "New England Log-house," devoted to the contrasting of the cuisine of this and the Revolutionary period, strictly to be assigned to the women's ward of the great extempore city? Is its proximity to the buildings just noticed purely accidental, or meant to imply that cookery is as much a female art and mystery as it was a century ago? However this may be, the erection of this temple to the viands of other days was a capital idea, and a blessed one should it aid in the banishment of certain popular delicacies which afflict the digestive apparatus of to-day. This kitchen of the forest epoch is naturally of logs, and logs in their natural condition, with the bark on. The planking of that period is represented by clap-boards or slabs. Garnished with ropes of onions, dried apples, linsey-woolsey garments and similar drapery, the aspect of the walls will remind us of Lowell's lines:

The log-house is not by any means an abandoned feature of antiquity. It is still a thriving American "institution" North, West and South, only not so conspicuous in the forefront of our civilization as it once was. It turns out yet fair women and brave men, and more than that—if it be not treason to use terms so unrepublican—the highest product of this world, gentlemen and gentlewomen.

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

The sentiments prevalent in this era of perfect peace, harmony and balance of rights forbids the suspicion of any significance in the fact that the lordly palace of the Federal government at once overshadows and turns its back upon the humbler tenements of the States. A line of these, drawn up in close order, shoulder to shoulder, is ranged, hard by, against the tall fence that encloses the grounds. The Keystone State, as beseems her, heads the line by the left flank. Then come, in due order, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Delaware. New Jersey and Kansas stand proudly apart, officer-like, on the opposite side of the avenue; the regimental canteen, in the shape of the Southern Restaurant, jostling them rather too closely. Somewhat in keeping with the over-prominence of the latter adjunct is the militia-like aspect of the array, wonderfully irregular as are its members in stature and style. Pennsylvania's pavilion, costing forty thousand dollars, or half as much as the United States building, plays the leading grenadier well; but little Delaware, not content with the obscure post of file-closer, swells at the opposite end of the line into dimensions of ninety by seventy-five feet, with a cupola that, if placed at Dover, would be visible from half her territory.

These buildings are all of wood, with the exception of that of Ohio, which exhibits some of the fine varieties of stone furnished by the quarries of that State, together with some crumbling red sandstone which ought, in our opinion, to have been left at home. All have two floors, save the Massachusetts cottage, a quaint affair modeled after the homes of the past. Virginia ought to have placed by its side one of her own old country-houses, long and low, with attic windows, the roof spreading with unbroken line over a portico the full length of the front, and a broad-bottomed chimney on the outside of each gable. The State of New York plays orderly sergeant, and stands in front of Delaware. She is very fortunate in the site assigned her, at the junction of State Avenue with several broad promenades, and her building is not unworthy so prominent a position.

From the Empire State we step into the domain of Old England. Three of her rural homesteads rise before us, red-tiled, many-gabled, lattice-windowed, and telling of a kindly winter with external chimneys that care not for the hoarding of heat. It is a bit of the island peopled by some of the islanders. They are colonized here, from commissioner in charge down to private, in a cheek-by-jowl fashion that shows their ability to unbend and republicanize on occasion. Great Britain's head-quarters are made particularly attractive, not more by the picturesqueness of the buildings than by the extent and completeness of her exhibit. In her preparations for neither the French nor the Austrian exposition did she manifest a stronger determination to be thoroughly well represented. Col. H.B. Sanford, of the Royal Artillery, heads her commission.

Japan is a common and close neighbor to the two competitors for her commercial good-will, England and New York. Modern Anglo-Saxondom and old Cathay touch eaves with each other. Hemlock and British oak rub against bamboo, and dwellings which at first sight may impress one as chiefly chimney stand in sharp contrast with one wholly devoid of that feature. The difference is that of nails and bolts against dovetails and wooden pins; of light and pervious walls with heavy sun-repelling roof against close and dense sides and roofs whose chief warfare is with the clouds; of saw and plane that work in Mongol and Caucasian hands in directions precisely reversed. To the carpenters of both England and Japan our winter climate, albeit far milder than usual, was alike astonishing. With equal readiness, though not with equal violence to the outer man, the craftsmen of the two nations accommodated themselves to the new atmospheric conditions. The moulting process, in point of dress, through which the Japanese passed was not untypical of the change the institutions of their country have been undergoing in obedience to similarly stern requirements. It did not begin at quite so rudimental a stage of costume as that of the porters and wrestlers presented to us on fans, admirably adapted as that style might be to our summer temperature. In preparing for that oscillation of the thermometer the English are called on for another change, whereas the Orientals may meet it by simply reverting to first principles.

The delicacy of the Asiatic touch is exemplified in the wood-carving upon the doorways and pediments of the Japanese dwelling. Arabesques and reproductions of subjects from Nature are executed with a clearness and precision such as we are accustomed to admire on the lacquered-ware cabinets and bronzes of Japan. With us, wood has almost completely disappeared as a glyptic material. The introduction of mindless automatic machinery has starved out the chisel. Mouldings are run out for us by the mile, like iron from the rolling-mill or tunes from a musical-box, as cheap and as soulless. Forms innately beautiful thus become almost hateful, because hackneyed. If all the women we see were at once faultlessly beautiful and absolute duplicates of each other in the minutest details of feature, complexion, dress and figure, we should be in danger of conceiving an aversion to the sex. So there is a certain pleasure in tracing in a carven object, even though it be hideous, the patient, faithful, watchful work of the human hand guided at every instant by the human eye. And this Japanese tracery is by no means hideous. The plants and animals are well studied from reality, and truer than the average of popular designs in Europe a century ago, if not now. It is simple justice to add that for workmanlike thoroughness this structure does not suffer in comparison with those around it.

Besides this dwelling for its employés, the Japanese government has in a more central situation, close to the Judges' Pavilion, another building. The style of this is equally characteristic. Together, the two structures will do what houses may toward making us acquainted with the public and private ménage of Japan.

In the neat little Swedish School-house, of unpainted wood, that stands next to the main Japanese building, we have another meeting of antipodes. Northern Europe is proud to place close under the eye of Eastern Asia a specimen of what she is doing for education. Sweden has indeed distinguished herself by the interest she has shown in the exposition. At the head of her commission was placed Mr. Dannfeldt, who supervised her display at Vienna. His activity and judgment have obviously not suffered from the lapse of three years. This school-house is attractive for neatness and peculiarity of construction. It was erected by Swedish carpenters. The descendants of the hardy sea-rovers, convinced that their inherited vigor and thrift could not be adequately illustrated by an exclusively in-doors exhibition, sent their portable contributions in a fine steamer of Swedish build, the largest ever sent to sea from the Venice of the North, and not unworthy her namesake of the Adriatic. To compete in two of its specialties with the cradle of the common school and the steamship is a step that tells of the bold Scandinavian spirit.

The contemporaries and ancient foes of the Northmen, who overthrew the Goths on land and checkmated the Vikings in the southern seas, have a memorial in the beautiful Alhambra-like edifice of the Spanish government. Spain has no architecture so distinctive as that of the Moors, and the selection of their style for the present purpose was in good taste. It lends itself well to this class of building, designed especially for summer use; and many other examples of it will be found upon the grounds. The Mohammedan arch is suited better to materials, like wood and iron, which sustain themselves in part by cohesion, than to stone, which depends upon gravitation alone. Although it stands in stone in a long cordon of colonnades from the Ganges to the Guadalquivir, the eye never quite reconciles itself to the suggestion of untruth and feebleness in the recurved base of the arch. This defect, however, is obtrusive only when the weight supported is great; and the Moorish builders have generally avoided subjecting it to that test.

Spain also has taken the liberty of widening the range of her contributions. Soldiers, for instance, find no place in the official classification of subjects for exhibition. She naturally thought it worth while to show that the famous infanteria of Alva, Gonsalvo, and Cuesta "still lived." So she sends us specimens of the first, if not just now the foremost, of all infantry. This microscopic invasion of our soil by an armed force will be useful in reminding us of the untiring tenacity which takes no note of time or of defeat, and which, indifferent whether the struggle were of six, fifty, or seven hundred years, wore down in succession the Saracens, the Flemings and the French.

Samples in this particular walk of competition come likewise from the battle-ground of Europe, Belgium sending a detachment of her troops for police duty. We may add that the Centennial has brought back the red-coats, a detachment of Royal Engineers, backed by part of Inspector Bucket's men, doing duty in the British division.

After these first drops of the military shower one looks instinctively for the gleam of the spiked helmet at the portals of the German building, seated not far from that of Spain, and side by side with that of Brazil. It does not appear, however. Possibly, Prince Bismarck scorns to send his veterans anywhere by permission. Neither does he indulge us, like Brazil, with the sight of an emperor, or even with cæsarism in the dilute form of a crown prince. Such exotics do not transplant well, even for temporary potting, in this republican soil. It is impossible, at the same time, not to reflect what a capital card for the treasury of the exposition would have been the catching of some of them in full bloom, as at the openings of 1867 and 1873. A week of Wilhelm would have caused "the soft German accent," with its tender "hochs!" to drown all other sounds between Sandy Hook and the Golden Gate.

Let us step over the Rhine, or rather, alas! over the Moselle, and look up at the tricolor. It floats above a group of structures—one for the general use of the French commission, another for the special display of bronzes, and a third for another art-manufacture for which France is becoming eminent—stained glass. This overflowing from her great and closely-occupied area in Memorial Hall, hard by, indicates the wealth of France in art. She is largely represented, moreover, in another outlying province of the same domain—photography.

Photographic Hall, an offshoot from Memorial Hall, and lying between it and the Main Building, is quite a solid structure, two hundred and fifty-eight feet by one hundred and seven, with nineteen thousand feet of wall-space. Conceding this liberally to foreign exhibitors, an association of American photographers erected a hall of their own in another direction, upon Belmont Avenue beyond the Judges' Pavilion. This will serve to exhibit the art in operation under an American sun, and enable our photographers to compare notes and processes with their European fellows, who treat under different atmospheric conditions a wider range of subjects. This is the largest studio the sun, in his capacity of artist on paper, has ever set up, as the hall provided for him by the exposition is the largest gallery he has ever filled. Combined, they may reasonably be expected to bear some fruit in the way of drawing from him the secret he still withholds—the addition of color to light and shade in the fixed images of the camera. This further step seems, when we view within the camera the image in perfect panoply of all its hues, so very slight in comparison with the original discovery of Daguerre, that we can hardly refer it to a distant future.

Questions of finance naturally associate themselves with sitting for one's portrait, even to the sun. A national bank becomes a necessity to their readier solution, be they suggested by this or any other item of expense. Such an institution has consequently a place in the outfit of the Centennial. Here it stands within its own walls, under its own roof and behind its own counter. The traditional cashier is at home in his parlor, the traditional teller observes mankind from his rampart of wire and glass, and the traditional clerk busy in the rear studies over his shoulder the strange accent and the strange face. Over and above the conveniences for exchange afforded by the bank, it will introduce to foreigners the charms of one of our newest inventions—the greenback. This humble but heterodox device, not pleasant in the eyes of the old school of conservative financiers, is yet unique and valuable as having accomplished the task of absolutely equalizing the popular currency of so large a country as the Union. That gap of twelve or thirteen per cent. between greenbacks and gold is no doubt an hiatus valde deflendus—a gulf which has swallowed up many an ardent and confident Curtius, and will swallow more before it disappears; but the difference is uniform everywhere, and discounts itself. Whatever the faults of our paper-money, it claims a prominent place among the illustrations of the close of the century, for it is the only currency save copper and Mr. Memminger's designs in blue that a majority of American youth have ever seen. Should these young inquirers wish to unearth the money of their fathers, they can find the eagles among other medals of antiquity in the Mint department of the United States Government Building.

His fiscal affairs brought into comfortable shape, the tourist from abroad may be desirous of seeing more of the United States than is included in the view from the great Observatory. The landscape visible from that point, as he will find after being wound to the top by steam, is not flecked with buffaloes or even the smoke of the infrequent wigwam, as the incautious reader of some Transatlantic books of travel might expect. For the due exploration of at least a portion of the broad territory that lies inside of the buffalo range he needs a railway-ticket and information. These are at his command in the "World's Ticket and Inquiry Office," the abundantly comprehensive name of a building near the north-east corner of Machinery Hall. In a central area sixty feet in diameter tickets to every known point are offered to him by polyglot clerks. Here, too, a wholesome interchange of ideas in regard to the merits of the various traveling regulations of different countries may be expected. Baggage-checks or none, compartment or saloon cars, ventilation or swelter in summer, freezing or hot-water-pipes in winter, and other like differences of practice will come under consideration with travelers in general council assembled. Give and take will prevail between our voyagers and railway officials and those of the Old World. Both sides may teach and learn. Should the carriage of goods instead of persons be in question, the American side of the materials for its discussion will be found in the building of the Empire Transportation Company, where the economies of system and "plant," which have for a series of years been steadily reducing the expenses of railway-traffic until the cost of carrying a ton one mile now falls within one cent, will be fully detailed. A further reduction of this charge may result from the exposition if exhibitors from Europe succeed in explaining to our engineers and machinists how they manage to lighten their cars, and thereby avoid carrying the excess of dead weight which contributes so much to the annihilation of our tracks and dividends.

The telegraph completes the mastery over space in the conveyance of thought that the railway attains in that of persons and property. Its facilities here are commensurable with its duty of placing thousands of all countries in instantaneous communication with their homes. Those from over-sea will find that, instead of dragging "at each remove a lengthening chain," they are, on the exposition grounds, in point of intercourse nearer home than they were when half a day out from the port of embarkation, and ten days nearer than when they approached our shores after a sail of three thousand miles. To get out of call from the wire it is necessary to go to sea—and stay there. Another hundred years, and even the seafarer will fail of seclusion. Floating telegraph-offices will buoy the cable. Latitude 40° will "call" the Equator, and warn Grand Banks that "Sargasso is passing by." Not only will the march of Morse be under the mountain-wave, but his home will be on the deep.

The submarine and terrestrial progress of the telegraph was in '67 and '73 already an old story. At the Centennial it presents itself in a new role—that of interpreter of the weather and general storm-detector. This application of its powers is due to American science. Indeed, the requisites for experiments were not elsewhere at command. A vast expanse of unbroken territory comprising many climates and belts of latitude and longitude, and penetrated throughout by the wire under one and the same control, did not offer itself to European investigators. These singular advantages have been well employed by the United States Signal Service within the past five years. Its efforts were materially aided by the antecedent researches of such men as Espy and Maury, the latter of whom led European savants into the recognition of correct theories of both air- and ocean-currents. Daily observations at a hundred stations scattered over the continent, exactly synchronized by telegraph, yielded deductions that steadily grew more and more consistent and reliable, until at length those particularly fickle instruments, the weather-vane, the thermometer, the barometer and the magnetic fluid, have formed, in combination, almost an "arm of precision." The predictions put forth in the "small hours" each morning by the central office in Washington assume only the modest title of "Probabilities." Some additional expenditure, with a doubling of the number of stations, would within a few years make that heading more of a misnomer. Meanwhile, the saving of life and property on sea and land already effected is a solid certainty and no mere "probability." At the station on the exposition grounds the weather of each day, storm or shine, in most of the cities of the Old and New Worlds will be bulletined. "Storm in Vlaenderlandt" will be as surely announced to the Dutch stroller on Belmont Avenue as though he were within hearing of his cathedral bell. Should such a "cautionary signal" from beyond the ocean reach him, he may ascertain in what, if any, danger of submergence his home stands, by stepping into one of the branch telegraph-offices dispersed over the grounds. Or he may satisfy all possible craving for news from that or any other quarter in the Press Building. This metropolis of the fourth estate occupies a romantic site on the south side of the avenue and the north bank of the lake. Such a focus of the news and newspapers of all nations was not paralleled at either of the preceding expositions. American journalism will be additionally represented in the different State buildings, where files of all the publications of each commonwealth will be found, embracing in most cases a greater number of journals than the entire continent boasted in 1776, and in each of the States of Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania more than the extra-metropolitan press of either France, Austria, Prussia or Russia can now boast.

The commercial idea is so prominent in this, as in all expositions, that it is difficult to draw the line between public and private interest among its different features, and particularly among what may be called its outgrowths, overflowings or addenda. Here is half a square mile dotted with a picturesque assemblage of shops and factories, among which everything may be found, from a soda-fountain or a cigar-stand up to a monster brewery, all devoted at once to the exemplification and the rendering immediately profitable of some particular industry. In one ravine an ornate dairy, trim and Arcadian in its appurtenances and ministers as that of Marie Antoinette and her attendant Phillises at the Petit Trianon, offers a beverage presumably about as genuine as that of '76, and much above the standard of to-day. A Virginia tobacco-factory checkmates that innocent tipple with "negrohead" and "navy twist." A bakery strikes the happy medium between the liquid sustenance and the narcotic luxury by teaching Cisatlantic victims of baking-powders and salæratus how to make Vienna bread. Recurring to fluids, we find unconquered soda popping up, or down, from innumerable fonts—how many, may be inferred from the fact that a royalty of two dollars on each spigot is estimated to place thirty-two thousand dollars in the strong box of the exposition. Nor does this measure the whole tribute expected to be offered at these dainty shrines of marble and silver. The two firms that bought the monopoly of them pay in addition the round sum of twenty thousand dollars. It speaks well for the condition of the temperance cause that beer is the nearest rival of aerated water. An octroi of three dollars per barrel is estimated to yield fifty thousand dollars, or two thousand dollars less than soda-water. Seventy-five thousand dollars is the aggregate fee of the restaurants. Of these last-named establishments, the French have two. The historic sign of the Trois Frères Provençaux is assumed by a vast edifice in one of the most conspicuous parts of the enclosure, sandwiched between the Press and the Government. The "Sudreau" affects the fine arts and cultivates with like intimacy the society of Memorial Hall. The German refectory, Lauber's, a solid, beery sort of building, shows a fine bucolic sense by choosing a hermitage in the grove between Agricultural and Horticultural Halls. A number of others, of greater or less pretensions, will enable the visitor to exclaim, with more or less truth, toward the dusty evening, "Fate cannot harm me: I have dined to-day."

"Dusty," did we say? The ceaseless sob of engines that rob the Schuylkill daily of six millions of gallons to sprinkle over asphaltum, gravel and greensward demands recantation of the word. Everything has been foreseen and considered, even the dust of the earth. George's Hill Reservoir can, on occasion, give the pumps several days' holiday, and keep all fresh and dewy as the dawn.

Some industries meet us in the Centennial list that are not to be detected in the United States census or any other return we are acquainted with. What train of ideas, for example, is suggested to the average reader by the Roll-Chair Company? The rolling-stock of this association turns out, on inquiry, to be an in-door variety of the conveyance wherein Mrs. Skewton was wont to take the air under the escort of Major Bagstock. It is meant for the relief of those who wish to see everything in the Main Building without trudging eleven miles. Given an effective and economical motive-power, the roll-chair system would seem to meet this want. The reader of Dombey and Son will recollect the pictorial effect, in print and etching, of the popping up of the head of the propellent force when Mrs. S. called a halt, and its sudden disappearance on her directing a resumption of movement. The bobbing up and down of four hundred and fifty heads, like so many seals, will impart a unique aspect to the vista from one of the interior galleries of the great hall. The stipulated tax of forty dollars on each of these vehicles will necessitate a tolerably active undulation of polls if the company is to make both ends meet—granting that a rotatory movement can have an end.

Another startling item is the pop-corn privilege. A business-man of Dayton, Ohio, finds himself justified in venturing the heavy sum of seven thousand dollars on this very light article. Parched corn was well known in Ohio in 1776. The Miamis and Shawnees had, however, a monopoly of it. It composed their commissariat for a campaign against the whites. Such is the progress of the century.

This explosive cereal does not satiate the proverbially sweet tooth of our people. Their craving for confectionery is laid under further contribution by the financial managers of the exposition to the tune, for instance, of five thousand dollars for the privilege of manufacturing chocolate and candy. Dyspepsia insists on asserting its position among the other acquisitions of the century. The treasures of the American bonbonnière are said to be richer and more varied than in any other country. Paris gets up her delicacies of this kind in more tasteful and tempting style, but our consumers care little for such superficial vanities. They look for solid qualities in everything—even in their lollipops.

Another description of fuel, employed for the external and not the internal feeding of the animal machine, and quite as evanescent as candy, claims a factory to itself. This is a French invention called the Loiseau Compressed Fuel. To bring it to Philadelphia, the mart of the anthracite region, would seem to be carrying coals to Newcastle. The relation between demand and supply in fuel is happily, for the present, on too sound a basis to leave much room for artificial substitutes. Our anthracite deposits are circumscribed, but bid fair to last until the virtually untouched seams of bituminous and semibituminous coal shall be made amply accessible to every point of consumption. We are not yet in the slightest perceptible danger of the coal-famine that threatens Great Britain.

In regard to the accommodations provided outside of the exhibition buildings by individual enterprise for the display of various products and processes of manufacture, it will here suffice to say that they notably exceed the corresponding array at any of the European expositions. Illustrations of the social and industrial life of different races and nations are, on the other hand, inferior to what was seen at Vienna and Paris. Mankind and their manners are more homogeneous within an available circle around Philadelphia than around either of those capitals. The rude populations of the lower Danube, the Don, the Caucasus, the Steppes, Albania, Syria, Barbary, etc. cannot be so fully represented here. That they should be, were it practicable, would be more to their advantage than to ours perhaps, the probability being slight that we should deem it desirable to adopt many of their methods. Nor will the eating and drinking of the nations be so variously illustrated as in the cordon of restaurants that so largely contributed to the spectacular effect at Paris. The French genius for the dramatic was quite at home in arranging that part of the display; and they did not allow the full effect to suffer for want of some artificial eking out. The kibaubs, pilau and sherbet that were served up in fine Oriental style were not in all cases prepared by Turks, Persians and Tunisians. The materials were abundant in Paris for these and any other outlandish dainties that might be called for. So were costumers. There was no reason, therefore, why imitations should not be got up capable of serving every purpose, and of giving more amusement than the genuine dishes and divans of Islam would have done. The negro waiters in the American saloon doubtless outnumbered all the other representatives of the dark or semi-civilized races that appeared in a similar character. They proved a success, their genial bearing and ever-ready smile pleasing the mass of the guests more than did the triste and impassive Moslem. The theatrical can just as well be done here, and quant. suff. of Cossacks and Turks be manufactured to order. Then we have John and Sambo in unadulterated profusion; the former ready at the shortest notice and for very small compensation to indoctrinate all comers in the art of plying the chopsticks, and the latter notoriously in his element in the kitchen and the dining-room, and able to aid the chasse-café with a song—lord alike of the carving-knife, the cocktail and the castanets.

Water, the simplest, most healthful and most indispensable of all refreshments, is provided without stint and without price. Foreigners are struck with the immense consumption of water as a beverage in this country. They do not realize the aridity of our summer climate, which makes it sometimes as much of a luxury here as it is in the desert. A rill of living water, let it issue from a mossy rift in the hillside or the mouth of a bronze lion, comes to us often like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. We lead fevered lives, too, and this is the natural relief. Fountains are among the first decorations that show themselves in public or private grounds. They give an excuse and a foothold for sculpture, and thus open the way for high art. In the Centennial grounds and in all the buildings upon them, of whatever character, the fountain, in more or less pretentious style, plays its part. Led from the bosom of a thousand hills, drawn from under the foot of the fawn and the breast of the summer-duck, it springs up into the midst of this hurly-burly of human toil and pleasure, the one unartificial thing there, pure and pellucid as when hidden in its mother rock.

It is not remarkable, then, that the most ambitious effort of monumental art upon the exposition grounds should have taken the shape of a fountain. The erection is due to the energy and public spirit of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union. The site chosen is at the extreme western end of Machinery Hall. It looks along Fountain Avenue to the Horticultural Building. Mated thus with that fine building, it becomes a permanent feature of the Park. The central figure is Moses—not the horned athlete we are apt to think of when we associate the great lawgiver with marble, but staid and stately in full drapery. He strikes the rock of Meribah, and water exudes from its crevices into a marble basin. Outside the circular rim of this are equidistantly arranged the rather incongruous effigies of Archbishop Carroll, his relative the Signer, Commodore Barry and Father Mathew. Each of these worthies presides over a small font designed for drinking purposes—unless that of the old sea-dog be salt. The central basin is additionally embellished with seven medallion heads of Catholics prominent in the Revolution, the selections being La Fayette, his wife, De Grasse, Pulaski, Colonel S. Moylan, Thomas Fitzsimmons and Kosciusko. The artist is Hermann Kirn, a pupil of Steinhäuser, one of the first of the modern romantic school of German sculptors. Kirn is understood to have enjoyed his instructor's aid in completing the statues in the Tyrol.

Another religious body ranges itself in the cause of art by the side of one with which it does not habitually co-operate. Dr. Witherspoon, the only clerical Signer, is its contribution in bronze. The Geneva gown supplies the grand lines lacking in the secular costume of the period, and indues the patriot with the silken cocoon of the Calvinist. The good old divine had well-cut features, which take kindly to the chisel. The pedestal is of granite.

Of other statues we shall take another occasion to speak. The tinkle of fountains leads us on to Horticultural Hall, where they give life and charm to the flowers. Painted thus in water-colors, the blossoms and leaves of the tropics glow with a freshness quite wonderful in view of the very short time the plants have been in place and the exposure they unavoidably encountered in reaching it. From the interior and exterior galleries of this exquisite structure one can look down, on one side, upon the palms of the Equator and on the other upon the beech and the fir, which interlock their topmost sprays at his feet. Beyond and beneath the silvery beeches railway-trains whisk back and forth, like hares athwart the covert—the tireless locomotive another foil to the strangers from the land of languor and repose.

The manufacture of a torrid climate on so large a scale will strike the visitor as one of the most curious triumphs of ingenuity in the whole exposition. Moisture is an essential only second in importance to heat. The two must be associated to create the normal atmosphere of most of the vegetation of the central zone. Art, in securing that end, reverses the process of Nature. The heat here is supplied from below and moisture from above, thus transposing the sun and the swamp. In summer, indeed, the sun of our locality, reinforced by glass, will as a rule furnish an ample supply of warmth. Very frequently it will be in excess, and allow the imprisoned strangers the luxury of all the fresh air they can crave. Our summer climate is in this way more favorable than that of Kew, which in turn has the advantage in winter. The inferior amount of light throughout the year and the long nights of winter in a high latitude again operate against the English horticulturists, and leave, altogether, a balance in our favor which ought to make the leading American conservatory the most successful in the world.

Standing by the marble fountain in the great hall, with its attendant vases and statuary, the visitor will not suspect that the pavement beneath his feet is underlaid by four miles of iron pipe four inches in diameter and weighing nearly three hundred tons. Through this immense arterial and venous system circulates the life-blood of the plants, hot water being the vehicle of warmth in winter. These invisible streams will flow when the brooks at the foot of the hill are sealed by frost and the plash of the open-air fountains is heard no longer.

Another current, more conspicuous and abounding—that of hurrying human feet—will make this magnificent conservatory the centre of one of its principal eddies. A second will be the Japanese head-quarters, and a third Memorial Hall. The outlandish and the beautiful in Nature and in art take chief hold of our interest. It wanders elsewhere, but reverts to what typifies the novel and the charming. From the Mongols and the palms it will drift to the granite portals that are flanked by the winged Viennese horses and the colossal figures of Minerva in the act of bridling them. Pegasus is not very worthily represented by these bronzes. The horses, however, are the better part of the two groups; the goddesses being too tall in proportion and heavy and ungraceful in build. The finer things which they sentinel, in bronze, marble or canvas, do not belong to the scope of this article. Yet we cannot postpone to the occasion of their notice in detail a tribute to him to whose energy and judgment we owe the filling of the Art Building with works fit to be there. For the accomplishment of this task the principal credit is due to John Sartain of Philadelphia, the Nestor of American engravers. But for Mr. Sartain's efforts, the studios of the best artists of America, especially, would have been much less adequately represented, while the walls would have been in danger of defacement by a flood of inferior productions. To secure the best, and the best only, of what artists and collectors could give, committees were appointed to inspect the offerings of the principal cities and select works of real merit. The difficulties in the way are appreciable only by those familiar with the diversities of feeling and opinion which are apt to make shipwreck of art-exhibitions. They have been overcome, and American artists have united in the practical measures needed to ensure them as fair a position by the side of foreign competitors as their actual merits can sustain.

It could hardly have been a recognition of carriage-making as one of the fine arts that caused the placing of an immense receptacle for such vehicles in so prominent a position near Memorial Hall. This structure stands opposite the western half of the Main Building. Combined with the annex erected for a like purpose by the Bureau of Agriculture, which covers three acres, it would seem to afford room for specimens of every construction ever placed on wheels since Pharaoh's war-chariots limbered up for the Red Sea campaign. These collections have no trifling significance as a sign of progress. They are the product of good roads, one of the surest traces of civilization. A century ago, a really good road was almost an unknown thing. So recently as half so long since one of the light equipages now so familiar to us would have been a simple impossibility. What words of ecstasy Dr. Johnson, who pronounced the height of bliss to be a drive over a turnpike of his day in a cranky post-chaise, would have applied to a "spin" in one of these wagons, no imagination can guess.

Let us not boast ourselves over the sages who had the misfortune of living too soon. It would be falling into the same blunder Macaulay ascribed to Johnson in alleging that the philosopher thought the Athenian populace the inferiors of Black Frank his valet, because they could not read and Frank could. Our heads are apt to be turned by our success in throwing together iron, timber, stone and other dead matter. Let us remember that we are still at school, with no near prospect of graduating. Many of our contemporary nations, to say nothing of those who are to come after us, claim the ability to teach us, as their being here proves. The assumption speaks from the stiff British chimneys, the pert gables of the Swedes and the laboriously wrought porticoes of the Japanese. This is well. It would be a bad thing for its own future and for that of general progress could any one people pronounce itself satisfied with what it had accomplished and ready to set the seal to its labors.