"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.
GLIMPSES OF CONSTANTINOPLE
TWO PAPERS.—I
We sailed from Trieste in the Venus, one of the Austrian Lloyds, with a very agreeable captain, who had been all over the world and spoke English perfectly. There were very few passengers—only one lady besides myself, and she was a bride on her way to her new home in Constantinople. She was a very pretty young Austrian, only seventeen, but such an old "Turk of a husband" as she had! Her mother was a Viennese, and her father a wealthy Englishman: what could have induced them to marry their pretty young daughter to such a man? He was a Greek by descent, but had always lived in Constantinople. Short, stout, cross-eyed, with a most sinister expression of countenance, old enough to be her father, the contrast was most striking. His wife seemed very happy, however, and remarked in a complacent tone that her husband was quite European. So he was, except that he wore a red fez cap, which was, to say the least, not "becoming" to his "style of beauty."