some master singer. It was a dream of beauty which blended the memory of classic greatness with the sense of Alpine snows. It was an Apocalypse of the architectural imagination. The wildness of the day lent its own Apocalyptic setting to the scene. A swaying, drifting curtain of cloud shut in the horizon, blurring lake and sky on the one side in an indistinguishable haze, and on the other shrouding the city in a gloom of smoke and rain. Ever and again the towers of the Fair were draped with wreaths of trailing cloud, while the beating rain and chilling wind added to the elemental effect. The cluster of buildings hung together there a sort of city in the clouds, yet severe and unmistakable in outline. It was a vision of the ideal, enhaloed with mystery. The dreams of Columbus, the aspirations of the Pilgrim Fathers, the boundless possibilities of the American continent itself, all seemed to have been crystallized in this mute world of hall and peristyle, of column and capital. It stood there one colossal temple of temples, awaiting in silence the presence of the supernal glory.

THE INAUGURAL MORNING.

Of a piece with the dreamlike spirit of the spot was the marvelous transformation which took place during the next twenty-four hours. The storm had passed. With a wild outburst of fury shortly after dawn it spent itself. The air grew less keen. About ten o'clock, as the crowds began to fill the grounds, the sun came out and stayed out for the day. Yet even his beams did not at once dispel the vaporous tracery which hung over the park. Floating folds of cloud still draped the higher towers; some time elapsed before they slowly rose and melted in the sunlight. Then the white and gold of the great buildings stood out resplendent, and the cold severity of outline, as seen on the previous day, was mellowed by the warmth of the new glow. Thus silently and auspiciously Nature unveiled the Exhibition.

Man, meanwhile, had been producing in his sphere a change not less striking than that wrought by the elements. Chicago had afforded her visitors a characteristic example of the rapidity with which she can work on occasion. Preparations which seemed to demand weeks or even months had been packed into hours. The impression of general unfinishedness which was prominent yesterday had sunk into the background. The roads had become passable. The contrast effected in the interior of the Administration Building alone was a monument of swift industry. It was evident that the Fair, whether or not it be closed to Sunday leisure, owed its successful opening to Sunday labor.

THE CEREMONY,

The inaugural ceremony was a deed worthy of the occasion. To any lover of his kind a great crowd offers a much more imposing spectacle than heraldic or military pageantry of any kind, and this essential element was by no means wanting. About half a million human beings were, it is computed, present in the Park during the day. Perhaps a moiety of that

number was packed into the space known as the Plaza, which was the scene of the official proceedings. It was only when this space was filled with people that one saw how skillfully the intendant had designed the collocation of land and water, of bridge and terrace and hall. The black acres of humanity which not merely stretched from the eastern face of the Administration Building to the water of the basin, but also crowded the bridges to the right and left, and lined the basin on either side down to the magnificent colonnade that screens the lake from view, showed up in effective contrast the snowy whiteness of the masonry and deepened the outlines of the local configuration. It was about the most successful example I have known of what may be called the carpet-bedding of a multitude. At a short distance in front of the Administration Building stood the presidential platform, behind which rose the tiers of seats reserved for invited guests. Between these and the crowd were the low benches whence, through the eyes of a few hundred pressmen, the entire circle of civilized lands watched the display. In the middle of the platform was a table draped with the Stars and Stripes, on the center of which stood a sort of miniature Calvary in crimson velvet. On the summit of this stand, shortly before the beginning of the ceremony, an electrician, who was loudly cheered by the crowd, placed the wonder-working button, if so vulgar a name as button can be applied to the elaborate piece of jewelry which the presidential finger was to press. Directly facing this point, near the foot of the basin, and forming, as it were, the other focus in the irregular ellipse, stood the colossal gilded statue of the Republic, still bratticed round with scaffolding and veiled, not as is usual in such cases, over its entire figure, but only over its face and bust, in a manner to suggest that the majestic dame was playing bo-peep with her children.

THE EXPECTANT CROWD.

Looking round upon the crowd, one was glad to note the almost entire absence of loud color. The Columbian Guards, as the two thousand young men are called who play police in the Park, wore a light blue uniform, which formed the principal—and a picturesque-contrast to the usual civilian garb. The vendors of the "Official Guide," whom some evil genius has tricked out in screaming red of the most excruciating tint, were as yet mercifully absent. The dress of the women was singularly unobtrusive. Even in the reserved seats and around the President, where display might have been expected, there was a marked absence of any feminine attempt to vie with peacock or rainbow. It was also gratifying to observe that that abomination of male civilization, known as the "chimney pot," was affected by only a very small minority. It was worn by about one man in a thousand of the crowd that stood and even of those favored with seats by perhaps one man out of a score. The headgear most popular was a soft feltsomewhat of the Alpine type. Imagine a similar

gathering in London, and let the contrast attest the superior wisdom of the West.

The heat in the crowd must have been intense. From the platform one could see the air above the heads of the people vibrating like the air above a furnace. The Columbian Guards are, it is said, chiefly students who do not despise a job of this kind during the long vacation. Though extremely obliging and eager to give all information to the inquiring stranger, they were not yet equal to the handling of great masses of people. Instead of commanding, they harangued; and when guardians of public order take to arguing with a mob, the mob has generally the best of the argument. It was small wonder that ladies fainted by the score, or that the ambulance wagons dispatched for their relief soon failed to penetrate the dense mass.

A suggestive feature in the crowd was a group of American Indians, apparently in full war paint, their heads crested with plumes. At a festival designed to celebrate the discovery of the New World by the white man, this melancholy memento of the almost vanished race to which four hundred years ago the hemisphere had exclusively belonged, was tragically in place. It was a seasonable reminder of the great blot on the Western escutcheon-it was the mummy at the feast.

THE ARRIVAL OF THE PRESIDENT.

The arrival of the President and his party called forth what to my British ears was a most unexpected vocal demonstration. The people not only cheered as British crowds are wont to cheer. They indulged in sounds which are to us expressive of strong derision. They literally caterwauled. I was almost as surprised as Milton makes out his fallen hero to be when, instead of the applause he anticipated, he was greeted with one vast hiss. I suppose every nation develops its own style of plaudit. The Germans have their short staccato "hoch," the British their sonorous "hurrah," while the Americans have selected the shrill feline yell. Asking a fair Chicagoan the reason of this strange preference, I got for answer, " I guess they want to make as much noise as they can; and they find they make most noise that way."

Making allowance for this peculiarity in cheering, no royal personage could have been more rapturously received than was the plain citizen, Grover Cleveland. In the simple morning dress of the ordinary civilian, without ribbon, or medal, or other decoration on his breast, with nothing in his garb to distinguish him from other men, this ruler of more than three score million men stood out in instructive contrast to the brilliantly uniformed representatives of European royalty behind him. It was an object lesson which could hardly be lost on the hundreds present from monarchical states. A yet more progressive sign was the presence, on a seat of honor near the President, of Mrs. Bertha Palmer. She was there, not as the ceremonial appanage of any man, she was there as virtually Lady President of the World's Fair. the queen of the occasion. American women are

rightly proud of her. The wife of a successful hotel proprietor in Chicago, she has managed the difficult negotiations involved in engineering into actuality the women's department of the Exposition, with a tact and a grace which many a born princess might envy.

THE BLIND CHAPLAIN'S PRAYER.

The official proceedings were happily largely spectacular; to the multitude wholly so. It was a touching sight to behold the blind chaplain of Congress (Rev. W. H. Milburn) led forward to offer the invocatory prayer. As he stretched out his hands, the enormous assemblage before him endeavored to assume a reverential demeanor. Most of the men bared their heads; and could some means have been found for synchronizing the thought of the crowd with the thought of the good man who prayed, the effect would have been overpowering. Imagine 100,000 human beings actually joining in simultaneous prayer. The conception is stupendous. As it was, however, the voice of the supplicant carried but a very little way, and the length of his utterance made sympathetic silence on the part of the unhearing multitude almost a physical impossibility.

That the head of the British Empire stood next in the order of this supplication to the rulers of the Republic itself is an incident which every Englishspeaking man who has an eye to the future will note with pleasure. The recitation of W. D. Croffut's "Prophecy," or poem descriptive of Columbus's vision of the wonders to be wrought by his hoped-for discovery of the New World, was even less audible that the prayer. Its real significance was the fact that a woman (Miss Jessie Couthoui, who recited it) was seen by the vast multitude to take a prominent and lengthy part in the inaugural programme.

THE MAGIC TOUCH.

President Cleveland showed himself in more than the mere official sense the king of the situation. Knowing the vanity of addressing long speeches to a multitude numbered by the hundred thousand, he spoke but for a few minutes. And he alone of all the speakers made himself heard by any considerable portion of the crowd. His person, which boasts a somewhat extensive periphery, claimed attention. His office commanded it. His voice retained it. His closing words were:

"Let us hold fast to the meaning that underlies this ceremony, and let us not lose the impressiveness of this moment. As by a touch the machinery that gives life to this vast Exposition is now set in motion, so at the same instant let our hopes and aspirations awaken forces which in all time to come shall influence the welfare, the dignity, and the freedom of mankind."

The scene which followed on the President's hand touching the magical button, was probably as impressive a combination of sight and sound as any person in the great spectatorium had ever experienced. Down fell the veil from the face of the gilded Republic. Up rose the enormous jets of water which make the sea of fountains. Salvos of artillery boomed from the

lake side. Every kind of craft afloat tolled its bell or shrieked its whistle, or blew its hoarse bass note. Slowly the folds of the American standard unfurled to the breeze, and from every flagpole on every building in the Fair swung out its particular ensign. A quarter of a million voices ascended in a wild chorus of jubilation, through all the gamut of cries, from a roar to a screech. The scene, though without verging on the theatrical, was intensely dramatic. The World's Fair had been fittingly ushered into history.

As the unprecedented noise began to subside the band struck up. What was my surprise at this climax of American patriotism to hear the instruments crash out the familiar strains of our own "God Save the Queen!" Then I remembered that the same melody was the National Anthem of the Kingdom of Saxony. We could hardly complain if the American Republic, claiming the common Saxon heritage, had set its own patriotic verse to this music, too. It is a pretty symbol of Britannico-American inter-relations. Our national sympathies beat to the same tune, although the syllables sung are, for the time, slightly different. As a matter of race as well as of art, we must admit that the music is of much more consequence than the words. It is to the music and not to the words that men and nations keep step.

IN SUMMER GUISE. .

The first week of the Exhibition was cursed with execrable weather. I had left London in all the glory of an early spring-to find Chicago scarcely emerging from winter. There was hardly a glint of green to be seen in the grass, or a sign of leaf on the boughs during the first seven days of May. Icy winds swept the city, often accompanied by penetrating small rain.

One was glad to revert to the heaviest winter clothing. But at last the season relented, and with a suddenness quite embarrassing. In three days we passed from the temperature of London in January to that of London in June. The dull sward of the boulevards donned with almost visible rapidity its summer robe. The trees literally leaped into leaf. Even Nature seemed bitten with the local frenzy for speed. In Chicago she does not proceed ohne Hast. In ten days from its opening Jackson Park was once more transformed. The approaches to it had been made roads in fact as well as in name. It is interesting to watch the feverish pace at which these ways are laid. In Chicago they re-make roads by the mile at a time. On the swamp which has marked the bed of the road, a succession of hurrying wagons shoot tons of stone chippings which are leveled by an army of laborers, just in time for the load of circular cedar blocks, which are couped, placed, packed, and spread with pitch and gravel, and the road opened for traffic in an incredibly short space of time. Inside the grounds the painters had been busy, variegating the stern whiteness of the buildings with fresco, gilding, and paneling of a warmer color. The lawns were laid, the shrubs were planted, the trees were breaking into a haze of green, the lagoons and the

lake reflected the cloudless blue, and the splendor of a summer sun gave vividness and depth to every variety of hue. The stream of visitors perceptibly thickened. The wheeled chairs, pushed by guards in blue, were in growing request for hot and weary pedestrians. The World's Fair was in holiday trim. By far the best views in any season are obtained from the north and east balconies of the Administration Building, that from the east is more imposing, that from the north more picturesque. The prospect now suggested much more the Summer Palace than the austere Temple of the Nations.

THE BUILDINGS.

Outside the buildings there was a slight sign of the unfinishedness which was so manifest on the end of the first day. Inside, though gigantic strides had been made toward completion, the ruling impression was that only half the exhibits were in position. The Transportation Hall was fairly filled. The Palace of Horticulture, with its lavish and luscious display of fruit, was tolerably complete. The United States building had passed from chaos to cosmos in little more than the traditional six days. Several of the houses representing the various States-a group which make the northern reaches of the park charmingly picturesque-seemed to have got beyond the imperfect tense. The Woman's Building was slowly gathering in its displays of female industry and ingenuity. In the Mining Hall there was much to see, but the interior of the Palace of Electricity was scarcely more than a suggestion of future possibilities. The Palace of Mechanic Arts, beyond "the. greatest piece of machinery in the world," contained little but spaces for coming exhibits. The Hall of Agriculture seemed as far from its intended fullness as spring from harvest. "The greatest building in the world," designed for manufactures and liberal arts, which is so symmetrically arranged as scarcely to suggest its mammoth proportions, presented to view whole acres of packing boxes and galleries of emptiness. There seemed to be a general agreement that the show proper will not be complete until the beginning of July. A less sanguine Chicagoan said he “guessed" the exhibits would not be all fixed up until October 31. But the terrific swiftness with which things can be put through in the lightning city makes conceivable a much earlier date than that usually accepted.

Not that there is any lack of show to be seen in the meantime. Even in the small moiety of exhibits now on view there is enough to give a conscientious sightseer six months' hard labor. It is only by comparing the actual with the anticipated that the actual seems small. A great exhibition is, after all, a kind of huge dictionary or encyclopædia in which the things themselves take the place of the printed matter; and a man would as soon think of reading Webster or the Britannica through at a sitting as of thoroughly "doing" a world show. What seems to me the only rational course is to look up the things you specially want to see, and for the rest simply turn over the leaves, as it were, hurriedly or languidly according