DOORWAY OF THE TRANSPORTATION BUILDING.
DOORWAY OF THE TRANSPORTATION BUILDING.
DOORWAY OF THE TRANSPORTATION BUILDING.
After dinner other lights are fixed against the walls of an outer court, and a dozen or more of his retinue—Far-away and hisconfrère, Roberto Levy, count five hundred and fifty followers—with weird song and gesture, throw themselves with perfect abandon into one of their wild native dances.
This small army of the Faithful eat, sleep, and dress precisely as they do at home. The Bedouin women huddle in the dust outside their tents, baking their wafer-like bread over rounded pans covering heaps of live coals; the men smoke and lounge on the mats; the dancing-girls from Damascus andSyria, in the intervals of their stage work, shut themselves up in their curtain-closed rooms, attended only by their women.
They allow no difference in their surroundings or atmosphere; there is no hurry nor rush nor noise; only the indolent, lazy life of the East. Had the genie of the lamp been summoned from space to work these marvellous effects it could not have been better done.
But the picturesque does not end with the Turkish village, its mosques, bazaars, café, theatre, and attendants. Enter the gates leading to the little toy houses of the Javanese, and stop for a moment at one of the doors. Half a dozen of the dancing-girls are cuddled together in the middle of the floor. There is no light except through the open door. Some are smoking cigarettes. One is painting the eyebrows of a comrade, who in turn is combing the other’s hair. Two are stretched out on either side of the entrance lolling lazily. They smile courteously, and when one rises and trips away to the next miniature house, she drops you a slight deferential courtesy as she passes—not to attract your attention, but as challenging permission—to cross in front of you.
If you, an admirer of Western civilization, offer some one of its subjects a piece of silver, you receive either the customary gruff thanks or the incredulousstare. If you have doubts about the courtesy, the refinement, and the charm of the semi-barbarous East, try the same experiment on one of these little Javanese maidens, fully of age and yet hardly as tall as the curly haired daughter that you hold in your arms. When you tender her the coin she walks to where you stand without the slightest trace of either forwardness or timidity, drops on one knee—clasping the money in her right hand—crosses both arms over her bosom, places the piece on her head, and then bowing low, her face toward you, retraces her steps into the bungalow. With each gesture she intends some graceful service—she is your slave—her heart is always true, her head in subjection. It is only her way of saying thank you—this poor little half-clad, half-civilized, Javanese maid; but it is so gracefully, so charmingly done, it is so naïve and sincere, that if you leave the door of her hut with a cent in your pocket you should be sentenced to spend a month in her village to learn better manners.
As you are still in search of the picturesque, follow that barefooted Arab with fez and long yellow gown, who has just saluted with such respect and humility Roberto Levy (chief commissioner of all these Muhammedan people), touching his heart and lips and forehead after the manner of his race. He has some complaint to make or grievance to right. You note that the man enters a gate farther down
IN CAIRO STREET.
IN CAIRO STREET.
IN CAIRO STREET.
on the Plaisance, above which you catch the minaret of another mosque, overlooking “A Street in Cairo.” Later on you discover that this barefooted Arab drives a camel along this tortuous thoroughfare.
Here again the quality of the picturesque is inseparably joined to the quality of the genuine. The street itself is a fair reproduction of the original, with its overhanging latticed windows, iron gratings and decorations; but the motley crowd that throngs through its crookedness is the native element itself. Camels with the dust of the desert ground into their scarred hides, every knot in the harness a guarantee of long service; donkeys and donkey boys; women closely veiled or wearing theburgi—a wooden spool bound over the nose, with a heavy fringe of black thread falling below the chin; rows of idlers in dirty garments sprawled along the edges of the houses hugging the shade; Nubians, black as ink, in white burnoose and long gowns; pedlers, street venders in odd Eastern costumes, and scattered throughout the curious throng the man from Maine and the gentleman from Texas.
Everywhere you find the same element of the picturesque, everywhere is evident the same quality of the genuine. To accomplish these results space and time seem to have been annihilated.
“It is I who went up into the Soudan countryand brought out this family, come in and see,” says a dark, black-bearded man, who might have the blood of all the races of the East in his veins.
I thrust my head and shoulder through a narrow slit in the hut, shaped like an inverted teacup, and am confronted by a girl wearing a single garment of coarse cotton cloth, such as would cover a sack of salt. Behind her, squatting on the earth-floor, sit her husband and father, beating rude drums covered with skins. The girl instantly advances, lifts up her face and gazing into mine with half-closed eyes, gives herself up with slow movement of her feet to that peculiar spell which seems to possess all Eastern women when under the influence of the dance. The inmates are all uncleanly, unkempt, and, but for the earnest face and fawn-like eyes of the Soudanese girl-wife, forbidding and repulsive. Of one thing, however, you are sure: had you wandered into the heart of their country and entered any one of their huts, you would have found the exact counterpart of what is before you now.
So with the Algerians and Nubians, the Chinese and natives of Ceylon, Dahomey and the South Sea Islands, the Esquimaux even down to the glass-blowers from Murano: they are not a part of a show—they are the people themselves. How long this unconscious individuality will continue and what degrading effects our civilization will produce onthese strangers is a question which cannot be settled until the Fair is over.
It is safe to say that never in the lives of the present generation will these things be repeated. Before the summer comes again the beautiful city will fade away like the frost-work of an early morning. This broad highway, teeming with life and color, will be but a neglected waste, while the lovely lagoons will once more yield themselves up to the ever-encroaching lake. Every square foot of the wide inclosure should be sacred to every American, as marking for them and for the intelligent world a point in civilization never before reached by any people; as marking the dawn of a new era in the progress of the Republic; a new light in architecture, in mural decoration and sculpture; in the weaving of exquisite stuffs, in the glazing of porcelains, the making of glass and perfecting of all the lesser arts that serve to beautify our homes and gladden our lives; and in the proving, by comparison with the best work of the other nations of earth, the high standard reached by our own artists, and the fixing forever of that position in the art of the world.