CHAPTER VI.

THE MARLOWES’ FIRST DAY AT THE FAIR. THE MOST USEFUL THING AT THE FAIR.

TAKING a Cottage Grove car, the Marlowes entered the Fair Grounds on one beautiful summer morning, by the long way of the Midway Plaisance, in search of the Funniest Thing, the Most Useful Thing, and the Grandest Thing.

The sky was as blue as the Lake, and the Lake as blue as the sky on this morning, and the sun filled the sky with living light, and under it shone the White City, the most beautiful city on which the sun ever shone,—the city of all the ideals of the past and the hopes of the future, the first city of the new order of the world.

They passed the turn-style, and looking round, saw the word _exit_.

“I will tell you a funny story which I heard at the boarding-house in regard to that word,” said young Ephraim. “There was an Illinois boy who had earned money enough to go to the Fair, and fifty cents to go in, and he planned to enter early and stay late, and so see all of the Fair in one day. He paid his fifty cents for a ticket, and passed through the turn-style, and looked up and read ‘E-x-i-t.’ ‘Does it cost anything to go in there?’ he asked of an officer. ‘Of course not,’ answered the officer. ‘Then I must see it,’ he said; ‘I want to see everything.’ _And he saw it._”

“I do not regard that as a funny story,” said Mr. Marlowe. “I could hardly think of anything more pathetic. How that poor boy must have felt when he found himself on the outside. It would be like entering a gate of Paradise, and going back by some by-way into the world again. I shall not put that among the funny stories in my note-book.”

The long Plaisance, which was an avenue where lived nearly all of the nations of the world in harmony, swept before them, and over it gleamed the towers and domes of the White City.

If young Ephraim’s story was pathetic rather than funny, an incident occurred at their first journey up the Plaisance which was comical.

A street performer was taking gold crowns or sovereigns out of his nose.

The trio stopped to witness the wonderful feat. When the wonder-worker wanted a gold piece, he had only to tap his nose, and out it would come.

Old Ephraim, whose quiet Quaker life had not made him much acquainted with such tricks, looked on with curious surprise.

“Where do those gold pieces come from?” he asked.

“Out of my nose!” said the juggler. “Don’t you see?”

“It does look so, but thee can’t trust experience always, so Kant says. Let me see thee do that again.”

“Here you see the gold pieces in my hand. See! Now I will close my hand. See! Now the coins are in my nose. You can’t see. Now I will take them out again. See!”

He did.

“That is a very wonderful thing to do, my friend. I never saw the like of it before. Suppose now you put those gold pieces into my pocket here, and see if you can take them out again!”

The man of wonders stared, and shook his head.

“Na, na. Where you come from? You be one Yankee. Goot day!”

The Plaisance was thronging with bright, happy faces. Orientals mingled with the people from all the States. Our trio stopped at the Indian Village, and thence went to the Dahomey Village. All the world seemed to be at home, and prosperous, happy, and hospitable. Here were Austrian houses; yonder Chinese pavilions, like golden air. Along one side of the avenue ran a sleighing track, where swift sleighs glided over a snow-scene under the burning sun. Here was the Roman Village; yonder the Tower of Babel loomed over the whole. Here was a Moorish palace, yonder Dutch settlements; here an ostrich farm, there Asian and African bazaars, and mid these neighboring families of the world, a glory of mosques and minarets.

The trio hurried on towards the gleaming minarets, the captive balloon, and the Ferris Wheel.

They stopped at the Ferris Wheel, and looked up into the air.

“That is the greatest merry-go-round in all the world,” said a clever-looking visitor.

“Let us go over,” said young Ephraim to his father.

“Had we better go over now, or had we better wait until another day?”

“Now,” said young Ephraim.

“Now,” said his grandfather. “I always wanted to see the world, and I shall when I circle sky in those hanging cars.”

The trio entered one of the cars, and sat down in the chairs.

“It is just like a room,” said old Mr. Marlowe. “I do believe that we are moving up.”

Slowly the earth began, as it seemed, to descend, and they found themselves in the air. The horizon grew; the great blue lake, the White City in dazzling whiteness, moved into view, and then sank downward; the smoky city of Chicago rose, and fell into the shadows. Slowly, slowly the car moved up towards the sky.

“We shall see the whole earth soon,” said Grandfather Marlowe.

But no—the car was descending, and Chicago, the White City, and the Lake and the merry Plaisance, all came back again. They went over a second time. The stranger was right,—it was the greatest merry-go-round in all the world.

As they passed the wheel the wonders grew. They stopped to see the Hagenback menageries, or animal shows. In the arena was a lion that drove a chariot and rode on horseback. Grandfather Marlowe said that he disapproved of all such “doin’s;” but his opinion grew out of sympathy for the horse.

Near the Blarney Castle and Irish Village was an old-time New England cottage, where meals were served in colonial style; and across the way was a model working-men’s house, after which pattern 172,000 houses had been built in the suburbs of Philadelphia, by a wise and worthy building association. These houses cost about twenty-two hundred dollars, and were paid for out of small savings, through co-operative banks and like means. The purpose of the noble Philadelphia Society was to make good citizens by such homes. It requires character to save money; it forms prudent habits to lay aside money for a home in early life.

The trio visited this model house. It was the perfection of home-like beauty and convenience.

“I think,” said Mr. Marlowe, “that I have found in this house the most _useful_ thing at the Fair. One would have to travel far to meet with anything more useful than that. The most useful thing on earth is a home. I think that I have found one thing to report to our Society, and I have not seen the Fair yet.

“Every city,” he added, “ought to do what Philadelphia has done, if it would make good citizens. Think of it, 172,000 houses for working-people, like that! The millennium must be near!”

“I think,” said Grandfather Marlowe, “that that is the most useful thing that we shall see. It is worth coming all the way here just to see that.”

“But,” said young Ephraim, “that is the most simple thing we have met.”

They went out of the house. The avenue seemed swarming.

“Pretty much all of the world must be here by this time,” said Grandfather Marlowe, “and there seems to be more coming. I declare it does beat all!”

The Ferris Wheel was turning in the bright air; the villages were filled with shouts and music.

Suddenly there was a great excitement among the crowds near. An Oriental wedding procession was coming out into the avenue from the “Street in Cairo.”

The trio stopped to gaze at the wonder. “Let us go into the Street of Cairo,” said young Ephraim.

“No, not to-day,” said Mr. Marlowe; “I have been reading about that street: we must take a whole day for that.” The trio passed under the long dark bridge. Slowly from the shadow they entered the White City.

Ephraim Marlowe the Quaker stopped and stamped three times on the ground as the dazzling splendor rose before him. He lifted his hand, and said, “Manton, Manton, _for pity’s sake_!”

They passed the Woman’s Building, and the Transportation Building with its dazzling entrance, which looked as though it were a sunrise of jewels, and came to the Administration Building, whose pale gold dome shone like a vision about to vanish into the air. They mounted the steps, turned, and looked down the Court of Honor, towards the Peristyle and Lake Michigan.

The three stood in silence. Mr. Marlowe laid his hand on his father’s shoulder, and shed tears. His son took him by the hand.

The white walls of the Court of Honor, with their heroic statues, and allegories in plaster, shone in the sun in blinding glory. Just below in the lagoon was the most beautiful fountain on earth. At the end of the lagoon rose the golden-hued Statue of Liberty, and beyond it the most beautiful and majestic structure in all the world, called the Peristyle, white as glistening marble, and surmounted by the Quadriga. Through the white arches of the Peristyle and its procession of heroic statues lay the Lake, blue as a June sky, and covered with boats, vessels, and steamers. Multiform and many-colored flags bloomed like flowers over and against all these colossal walls of white. Congresses of statued heroes were here and there assembled in the niches of immortality. Overhead rose the white allegories of the elements, controlled and uncontrolled. Bands played. Tens of thousands of people darkened the walks and avenues. There was happiness everywhere; continuance was all that was wanting. The trio stood there amazed, bewildered, and unable for a time to speak.

Grandfather Marlowe was the first to break the silence.

“Let us go away, and find some little corner and die. That is how I feel.”

“Let us sit down on the steps,” said Mr. Marlowe, “and thank God that we are alive.”

“Let us go into the Liberal Arts Building,” said young Ephraim.

“I have no wish to see any exhibits to-day,” said Mr. Marlowe. “I shall never again behold a vision like this,—I could gaze for weeks upon it.”

“There is only one thing that is wanting,” said Grandfather Marlowe.

“What is that?” asked Mr. Marlowe.

“A white-bordered flag!”

“They may raise one here some day,” said Mr. Marlowe.

“I hope that I may live to see that sight,” said the aged Quaker; “to me it would be a sign of the Second Coming. I could die content could I see the sight.”

They went to the Liberal Arts Building, and looked in upon its forty acres of floors. They then passed down to the long wharf, and sat down to rest on the seats of the movable Sidewalk; in which they might sit for hours for five cents each, and go around and around in the cool breezes of the Lake. Here they took the famous “whaleback” steamer for the City. They never had passed a day like that! No one ever passed such a day as one’s first day at the Exposition, and none ever will again.

The Past emptied itself there; the Future anticipated there her glory. The Fair! the Fair! It was all the world was, is, or ever could be.

“Father,” said young Ephraim, “across whose mind did the conception of the White City first pass?”

“I do not know.”

“We must ask Judge Bonney,” said Grandfather Marlowe.

When they asked this information, they were told that the White City was the product of the minds of an assembly of artists, each of whom promised to _give up in_ his own work “anything that might interfere with the beauty of the whole.”

“What a lesson!” said the old Quaker. “If all people would do that, how beautiful all the world would be!”

“I think,” said Mr. Marlowe, “that I have found the most useful exhibit at the Fair.”

“You still think that it is the Quaker City house?” said Grandfather Marlowe.

“I do.”

“And if I could only see the white-bordered flag floating over the Court of Honor,” said the Quaker, “I could show you the grandest sight on earth.”