image49"IS THEM THE FELLERS THAT THE FARMERS IS AFRAID OF?"
Uncle and family did not get around to the Board of Trade till nearly eleven o'clock the next morning. There was a wide entrance with a stairway on either side. Uncle saw the people in front of him, and he was accustomed to pass right in among the congregation and take his seat in the amen corner. He did not notice that the others had stopped at the door, but he plunged right ahead. The door-keeper evidently had his attention engaged at something else, for he let Uncle walk on in. Some one at the door spoke to the ladies and told them to take theleft stairway to the gallery. They reached there just in time to see Uncle in a difficulty below. A young man had him by the arm and was pointing very vigorously toward the door.
"Who do you want to see, sir?"
"I want to see the Board of Trade. Where is it?"
"Go outside and up the stairs into the galleries and you can see it all you want to, but not here."
Uncle did as he was bid, but found that he was quite widely separated from his family, because he had been sent up the opposite stairway from them.
"I came up to see the Board of Trade," he said, confidently, to a well-dressed stranger next to him.
"Well, there it is in all its glory," said the stranger.
"Oh, I see! The board is that table where them fellers is a tickin' them machines. You see I thought they would be a setting and a trading across a long, wide board like they used to do at the country stores for counters. But them fellers down there acts like a lot of lunatics. I don't see how they can ever come to a bargain, yelling and spewing around that way. And then I don't see the bulls and bears that change the market."
The stranger thought it a useless job to try to enlighten him.
When Uncle and his family came down, he went up to the doorkeeper and asked, "Say, do you belong here?" The keeper nodded. "Did you know Bill Simmons what lost five thousand dollars here last year?" The door keeper shook his head. "Well, say, I just want to ask one more question. Are them people down there the bulls and bears themselves, and are they the Board of Trade and are they the people that the farmers are so afraid of?" The keeper nodded.
"Well," continued Uncle, "I've got this to say; any set of farmers as is fools enough to be afraid of them yelling idiots, aint got no backbone at all."
Chicago was unsettling many of Uncle's ideas, and he began to decide that the only real, bonafide thing he could swear by was his own farm, and that the great outside world was only a great circus of art and extravagant genius.
Under promises of gorgeous sights and full protection, Fanny had concluded to visit the chief Midway Plaisance theaters with Johnny and Louis as escorts. The "Midway," as it is familiarly called, is undoubtedly the most unique and interesting pleasure-walk in the world. It is a thoroughfare of ever-shifting scenes and ever-recurring incidents. Fanny was not sure she ought to go, and Johnny could not comprehend why she did not go with him as readily wherever he proposed as she did on the wild free life of the big Jersey farm. But this was to her a supremely different existence, and she tried hard to recall all she had seen and heard and read of etiquette and the proprieties. Uncle and Aunt were not the only ones who were bewildered at every step by the amazing mixture of reality and art, of fact and fancy, of nature and imitation. They felt as if their souls were living apart, and that they were mere automatons in a panoramic world.
Johnny had seen the Soudanese and Nubian play actors just before his disastrous attempt to be informed concerning the Dahomey village. But some scoffers from the South had spoiled part of the novelty of it by alleging that the men of northern Africa were really natives of Mississippi or Louisiana, and were dancing only plantation hoe-downs in slow time and increased perpendicular action.
But without question the high histrionic art of the Chinese, Javanese, Turkish and Algerian actors ought to be seen. Maybeit was strangeness rather than excellence and novelty rather than entertainment that drew the people but strangeness and novelty are the greater excellence when people come to see wonders.
The Chinese theater is by far the most pretentious. It was pretty well advertised to the world at the advent of the actors in Vancouver and their encounter with the custom officers. They came to Chicago several hundred strong and are housed in the big blue-and-gilt structure with trim pagodas near the Cottage Grove end of the Midway. Entrance to the theater is through a big tea house, where decent-looking Chinamen who do not look like rats and whose fluent English proclaims their long sojourn in "Flisco," serve the cheering cup at from 10 to 60 cents, according to the pliability of the victim. They are doing a business worthy of a better cause. The tea house is but the ante-chamber to a joss house overhead, mendaciously advertised to be "the biggest outside of China," and to the theater proper. The latter is not so big as the Chinese theaters in San Francisco, but it smells sweeter, being over ground and not surrounded with the cooking-rooms and opium bunks of the actors. This is a concession to occidental taste which all but oriental enthusiasts will appreciate. Nor are visitors allowed, as in San Francisco, to inspect the green-room or sit on the stage.
image50"She visited the play and sincerely regretted it."
In other respects the theater is pure San Francisco Chinese. There is the orchestra, led by the man with the yard-wide cymbals, playing the leading part. There is the property man, always in evidence, who places a chair and says "This is a horse," or turns the chair around and calls it a mountain. And there is the female impersonator with deeply roughed cheeks, who is the pride and flower of histrionic art. Women are not allowed to walk the boards of the Chinese theater, but the male actor who best can mimic woman's tones and mincing airs is the Henry Irving. There is a whole chorus of these men-women in the JacksonPark theater—an all-star combination. As for the piece itself, they first play a little curtain-raiser of about two-months' duration and then the real play occupies the rest of the year. It will be all one to the American visitors, however, who enjoy the novelty, so that they are allowed to quit when they like. And there is no objection to that from the polite Chinamen in charge of the Jackson Park theater.
The Turkish theater is across the way and farther east than the Chinese. It is back from the beaten path and you might miss it—if you were deaf. Having ears to hear you will be apprised of its whereabouts at forty rods distance by the orchestra, which sits on the front steps and discourses horrors on a sort of flageolet and a bass drum. The orchestra plays only one tune and it plays that hard. When a respectable house has been gathered by these out-of-door allurements the curtain rises on a Turkish play. It is a sweet pastoral of a youth who is lovesick and cannot be cured by the doctor, by the soothsayer—by any one except his love, who comes in time, and there is a wedding.
When this play was ended, Fanny decided that she had seen enough of foreign theaters and declined to go further.
A Boston girl in spectacles sat near her through the Turkish play. She told Fanny that she and her mother had been venturesome enough to visit the other plays, and they sincerely regretted it. She found a mongrel horde of Turks, Arabs, Europeans, blacks, Greeks—everything applauding an interminable song, whose filthy motif it needs no knowledge of Arabic to discover. The singer was an Algerian woman, good enough looking, after the pasty style of oriental beauties, young, agile and mistress of the curious, droning guttural melody which constitutes oriental music. She plays her part with complete abandon, probably because she knows no better, and her audience applauds her wildly for the same reasons. The Boston girl said she had seenthese same girls, or their professional sisters, in the Algerian theater. But their performance had been modified to suit the western taste. They sing and dance, but their songs and dances are nothing more dangerous than a languorous drone. But there are also some funny parts, according to the Algerian idea. They are played by a jet black Somauli woman who joins in the dance and a jet black Somauli boy in the orchestra who has a face of India rubber and a gift for "facial contortion" that would make the fortune of an American minstrel.
image51"FACIAL CONTORTION THAT WOULD MAKE THE FORTUNE OF AN AMERICAN MINSTREL."
A look at the outside of the Soudanese theater is enough for the ordinary curiosity-seeker. It is a little round hut of bark in a dark corner of the Egyptian enclosure. Mahomet Ali sits at the receipt of custom exchanging pleasantries with dusky flower girls whose home is by the orange market beyond the Kase el Nil, who know more French than English, and more deviltry than either; who sing "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay," and know how to solicit backsheesh to perfection. The theatricals here are simplicity brought to perfection. It is said their language consists of only a hundred words. If you were to paint your face black, look wild-eyed, stiffen your hair in many strands, array yourself in a cotton garment that revealed more than it concealed, and then were to jump straight up and down to the music of a dolorous chant you would not be far astray. Add to this a whining and interminable appeal for backsheesh and you might be very near the mark indeed. But there is one Soudanese performance you could scarcely hope to equal, unless you were to learn some sort of devil's chant, gird your loins with a loose belt of shells and by rapid contortions of your body make these primitive cymbals accompany your chant. This is the star of the troupe.
Romantic people, who like to think of dancing as the poetry of motion, can get a liberal education in muscular poesy by making the rounds of the Midway Plaisance. They may see sonnets in double-shuffle metre, doggerels in hop-skip iambics, and ordinary newspaper "ponies" with the rhythm of the St. Vitus dance. Slices of pandemonium will be thrown in by the orchestras for the one price of admission, and if the visitor objects to taking his pandemonium on the installment plan, he may get it in job lots down at the Dahomeyan village.
In their "dance," as it is termed, they take a step forward with the right foot, and drag the left after it. This is repeated until they stub their toes on the orchestra, when they swarm backand go through the difficult feat of advancing by a series of hops on one foot. All of this is to the discordant pounding of drums and scrap-iron, where tune could not be discovered with a search warrant.
That evening Fanny visited the C. C. of C. C. and arranged for a family picnic at Washington Park the next day. She was to be hostess, and they were to have an outing with her in the city's artificial fields and forests that would recall the merry life of the country, and yet they would be surrounded by all the artistic embellishments that money and genius could secure.
Johnny went post haste for Louis, and the two boys were made bearers of the lunches, guides of the expedition, the vanguard of the march and the responsible protection of the company. They were eight merry young folks who took possession of the grip-car on the Cottage Grove Avenue cable line that morning. They stopped at the park hot-house and spent two delightful hours in the wilderness of flowers and of palm forests. On the outside were rustic seats about a pond where, in waters made tepid by steam heat through iron pipes, all kinds of tropical plants flourished in a profusion perhaps not excelled anywhere on the equator or along the banks of the Amazon. The great flower clock and the immense flower globe showing the geography of the earth, the old English castle gate and the carpeted lawns showed them the skill of the gardener's art. A quiet nook was found near the water's edge of one of the ponds. With a newspaper for a table-spread they enjoyed a lunch where hunger was a sauce better than Worcestershire, and the sod a better resting place than a throne.
After their lunch and a good rest they returned to the business part of the city and spent the remainder of the day in the Mystic Maze, the Labyrinth and the Panoptican. These were places where electricity and mirrors were arranged with the object of reversing every conception the eye had ever given to the mind. Inone place the visitors entered a triangular room in one corner of which there was a large vase of flowers. The walls were solid mirrors and the six girls found themselves as if in a host of people and a wilderness of flowers. From this they passed on into a room which the attendant said was forty feet square and contained thirty-eight mirrors six feet by eight set at different angles between posts evenly distributed about the room. As they stepped forward they found themselves among countlesshordesof people, again they were alone, all at once they found themselves in a line of girls that stretched on either side apparently for miles. One time they would be brushing around among people about two feet high and two feet thick; again they would be surrounded by thousands of girls eight or ten feet high and correspondingly thin. It was exasperating to say the least. When they became weary of this novelty they looked about them for the attendant but he had mysteriously disappeared. Leila said she knew the way out and she started with all the confidence that a usually level headed girl can have, but alas! she nearly broke her head by running into one of the big mirrors. Nannie happened to look in a certain direction when she saw the door and the curtains about it as plainly as she ever saw anything in her life.
"There I see the door," she cried, "come this way," and she started with her hands out before her like some one feeling his way in the dark, though it was as bright about them as the electric lights could make it. All at once the door she had in view disappeared like magic and she stood before herself in a mirror ducking her head backwards and forwards like two young chickens with their beaks just touching in the preliminaries of a fight. The situation was becoming too serious to be amusing any longer.
"What shall we do?" said Fanny, who had read of death in the mysterious labyrinths in ancient times. The roof was low, and even if the sky had been their roof they had no wings, likeDaedalus, whereby they might escape.
The girls began to get nervous, and several million of them seemed to huddle together as they discussed the situation.
"I say, let's yell!" said Mary.
"But what is the use to yell," one said, "if they have determined that we are to die here?"
image52"THEY HELD TO ONE ANOTHER, AS IF FOR LIFE OR DEATH."
Now they were becoming really frightened. The picture of their lingering death in that frightful crowd of specters was most horrifying. Their voices were becoming tremulous and hollow, and the terra-cotta figures of wild Bedouins that sat in a niche of the far wall and was multiplied a thousand times, seemed to grinat them maliciously, as if in anticipation of seeing their agonizing struggles against death by hunger. The suspense was becoming something terrible.
"I say somebody must yell."
"Let Kate yell, she's got a strong voice that might reach the street."
Kate tried to do her duty, and she said, "Oh, Say!" in a voice that would not have wakened a rabbit from its slumber.
She tried again, "Oh, say, we want to get out!" in a voice so hollow that none of the girls recognized it as hers.
"Is ze ladies seen eet all they want?" said the polite attendant, as he seemed to come before them at one step.
"Where were you?" they all cried.
"Why, I vas by ze glass about tree feet away."
"And you were listening to all we said?"
"Oh, I do not leesen. Eet ese my beesness to go out weeth you ven you ask eet."
And then they followed him out.
"What a horrid place that was and we thought at first it was so nice," said one.
"In all our lives we can never have a dream half so frightful as that was," said a third.
"One thing sure," said Mary, "this terrible experience has bound us forever and forever together; and because of our common experience in this awful adventure we must initiate Fanny into the mysteries of the noble order of progressive girls, C. C. of C. C."
Foreign theaters, mazes, labyrinths, panopticons, spectatoriums and their ilk had no more charms for the girls, but with Uncle and Aunt they spent the next day in the museums, casinos and panoramas of the city. But wax figures and brain-muddling deceptions were still the value they received for their money.
"I will be contented," said Aunt, "never to leave the farm again. I can be happy there the rest of my born days in knowing that when I look at a cow it is not a stuffed cow, that the calf by her side can move; that the man on the barn floor with his pitchfork in the hay can really lift it over into the manger for the cattle. This mornin' I see a lady standin' on one of the stairs tryin' to tie her shoes. She was having a time of it, I knew, so I says, says I, 'leddy, let me help you.' She didn't say nothing, so I jest stooped down to help her. I pulled the tongue of the shoe up and tapped the sides together over it, when a perfect chill came over me, for I pressed the lady's ankle, and it felt just like sawdust. Poor woman! I thought some terrible accident had cut off her leg and she had a false one. I looked up into her face, and she looked so pale like and deathly that I was awful scared, then I looked more and more and I see she was dead, died maybe of heart disease while she was a stooping over. O what a shock! I can not get over it to my dying day. I nearly screamed but I knew I must not, so I just called to the feller sitting at the table writing visiting cards to come there quick; buthe just set there stock still and never moved. I didn't want to attract attention from the folks around so I just picked up a nail a lying there and hit him square on the cheek but he never flinched. I spoke then to the woman leaning over the railing laughing at the little girl down below but she never changed her smile at all. I couldn't tell what to make of it when a feller came up to me an' says, 'Do you want anything, old lady?' I stared at him and says 'Hist, sir, don't you see this poor woman is dead. Died a stooping over too sudden.'"
image53"SO I SAYS, SAYS I, 'LEDDY, LET ME HELP YOU.'"
Then he just laughed at me a little, and pulled her dress to one side and showed me that she was only a wax head and a stuffedbody. That made me mad, for it is a sin and a shame for to deceive people that way, and defraud 'em of their hard earned money. I told him to show me the way out, and I would report how he was defrauding the public to the humane society or somebody. He just laughed at me again and invited me to take a chair in the office if I wanted to wait for my folks. I went in there and an awful nice woman talked to me and explained things till I wasn't so mad as I was; but I still think it is a shame that a Christian city should allow such awful frauds on peoples' eyes and nerves. Anyhow, when I get home I want to go around and touch everything and make sure that there is no more foolin', so I can live in peace and facts."
Aunt was very indignant. She could stand the deceptions that Uncle had been so opposed to at the Fair, but when she was deceived in her acts of kindness, it was carrying things entirely too far.
The places of interest, as the guide books said, had now all been visited, and they were walking down the street fully satisfied that they had seen all the sights of the city from the skyscrapers to the organ grinders. The police courts and the stock yards were not considered as places of interest by them.
John and Fanny were in the lead, with the five girls just behind them, and Uncle and Aunt bringing up the rear. As they reached the corner there was a clamor and a scattering of people crossing the street, and a rumbling that jarred the earth as two great fire engines dashed by rolling smoke upward and clanging a bell in a way that was frightful.
"Fire, fire!" shouted Johnny.
"Oh that's what we want to see, a fire, a big fire," echoed the girls.
In a moment they were all running pell mell after the engines, jostling against the people and exciting the merriment and wonderof every body. The engines were running in the direction of their hotel and very likely it was on fire and they would lose all their clothing.
"Come on girls," shouted John as he led the way like a foxhound. "Come on, I know it's only just around the corner. I see the smoke rolling up from the house."
The engines had turned another corner and Johnny felt a great pride in being the guide and encyclopedia of ready information for six girls. Out of breath they reached the corner where they supposed they would see a terrible fire with people jumping out of the windows twelve or fourteen stories high, perhaps safely into blankets, possibly to their death. Or, brave firemen scaling ladders and bearing lovely girls out of the horrible flames. But they discovered that the smoke they had seen was coming out of a tall chimney, and that far down the street almost a mile away they could get glimpses of the fire engines still forging straight ahead. But they were not to be daunted thus. There must be a great fire somewhere down there that it would take many hours for the engines to get under control. On and on they ran, out of breath, to be sure, but determined to see the great Chicago fire that required two such great engines to bring under control. They had run several blocks, when they became so tired they could only walk. Another block or two was traversed, when they met the engines coming leisurely back. It was a bitter deception, there was no fire. They turned back; and, when they met Uncle and Aunt, also entirely out of breath with the chase, Aunt declared that this was only another case of Chicago's base deceptions. It could joke with dead people and jest with fires and make a playhouse exhibition costing many millions of dollars, and fool old people and the young alike and with equal conscience.
Uncle observed that it proved to him that Barnum was right when he said that a fool was born every minute, and that theAmericans were a people who delighted in being deceived.
The girls decided to remain that night with Fanny, and to visit the Fair together the next day. A pleasant evening was spent, but the subject of fire and fire escapes were the chief topic of conversation. Each of the windows of their room had a fire-escape fastened to the facing, and the instructions printed underneath were carefully studied and mastered by all before retiring.
The next morning they were gathered in the main room awaiting the time for breakfast. Johnny raised a window to get a look outside, when the well known clang! clang! clang! of the Chicago fire engine was heard. Instantly all was excitement. Clang! clang! clang! and another came by. Then there were two or three more, and they seemed to stop right under the window. People across the street, even up to the top stories, were complacently sitting in the windows and looking into the street as if such a thing as great flames lapping upward and smothering them to death, were unknown. Johnny, who was looking out of the window, yelled: "O Lord! it's our house on fire, and we are five stories high!"
The streets began to fill with people. Uncle, panic-stricken, looked out and saw the engines puffing below. The cool audacity of the people at the windows across the street was appalling. They did not care for death. All at once Uncle recovered himself and yelled: "Everybody to the life preservers! Git into the fire escapes and save yourselves!"
But the room was empty. "Oh Lord," Uncle groaned, "they have gone insane and run down into the flames below."
Wringing his hands he ran to the door and cried, "Oh Sarah, Sarah, come back and let us die together." But neither Sarah nor the rest were anywhere to be seen. He was alone.
Remembering the instructions regarding the fire escape, he ran to the window, fastened the straps about his waist and climbed outof the window. He pulled the string that was to unreel the rope and let him down. Down, down, he went expecting every moment to feel the fierce heat about him. He seemed to be half way down when the reel ceased to work and he hung there suspended in mid air awaiting an awful death. He gave adespairingjerk when down he went within three feet of the pavement with a sudden stop that took his breath away. A crowd of people began to gather about him.
image54"HE HUNG SUSPENDED IN MID AIR, AWAITING AN AWFUL DEATH."
"What's the matter old man," said a man who had seen all the performance.
"Where's the fire," said Uncle wildly.
"It is two blocks further up," he answered.
"And ain't my folks all burnt up?" he said pathetically.
The answer was at once before him for he had let himself down directly over the entrance of the hotel and his family just then arriving at the bottom of the stairway came out to him. There never was a more happy meeting for Uncle than that one. His ridiculous adventure was not clear to him till he had time to study it over. But there really was a fire further on and they were not to lose such a sight.
image55"THE FIRE WAS TWO BLOCKS AWAY."
A large dry goods house was on fire, and eighteen or twenty monster engines were puffing and roaring, each one like a threshing machine on Uncle's wheat field. They pressed themselves forward to the very front of the spectators, and so close that the heat of the flames could be distinctly felt. A heavy wind wasblowing, and all the force of the fire department was out to stop the flames. It was truly the grandest and most fearful spectacle the family had ever seen. There came a puff of wind toward them and the flames came down, almost scorching their clothing. Then the policemen commenced to drive the crowd back.
image56"SOMETHING HAPPENED."
There was almost a panic, and the girls nearly had their lives crushed out of them. It was an adventure they cared never to repeat. Johnny did not fare so badly, for he was more intent on the workings of the engines. He was free from mishaps till he chanced to take a position over the great hose-pipe through which the water was sent with such tremendous force on its mission.Something happened. He is not able to relate just how it was. But the hose burst directly under him, and he was tossed over into the streaming gutter with a precision he can forgive but never forget. After this happened it was time to go home to be more agreeably clothed. Johnny was a sadder though a wiser boy.
Jackson Park was a paradise of peace and rest compared with the nerve destroying difficulties of sight-seeing in the city. Uncle had experienced all the adventures he wanted, and his great desire now was to escape all further mishaps until he could get back safe among his Jerseys on the farm.
Tired from much walking among the scenes of the Exhibition, the family sat down upon one of the rustic seats in Wooded Island. It was a most picturesque place, a most inspiring spot from which to contemplate the great sweep of history that had culminated on those grounds.
"The longer I stay about this Fair," said Uncle, "and the more I see, the more I wish I knew. I can see folks discussing things with such great delight when I can't understand anything but the ifs and ands and buts. I heard a man say to-day that Columbus never discovered America, that he was a pirate. He said that all these doings should have been for a Viking or some such name. I knew it wasn't so, for so many people couldn't be fooled. How may that all be, Fanny?"
"There are a great many theories and stories set afloat about the discovery of America by people who desire more to show off their ability to construct plausible heresies against accepted things than to give real historic truth. But there is much that at least seems to be evidence of the Norsemen having been in America 500 years before Columbus touched the outlying islandsof the West Indies. The Sagas of Leif the Lucky and Eric the Red told some marvelous stories of discoveries to the southwest of Iceland. Some of these stories seem to be verified in many ways, by digging up the logs of the Norse huts, by the written characters on Dighton rock, by the old tower at Newport, by the Benheim map of 1492, and a number of other important things.
"Then there has been found what seems to be beyond doubt a figure of Buddha in Yucatan, and also a Buddhist monument in Central America. Therefore a number of people have been trying to prove that Hwul Shan of China, discovered America ages ago. There are likewise well established the claims of the Phenicians and Greeks and even the Welsh and the Irish. But all of these were fruitless till Columbus in his high aspirations to become a great prince over unknown countries and to spread the Christian religion of his day, opened the way for the course of Western empire."
"But Fanny," said Uncle. "I heard the man say that Columbus didn't know anything and had no chance to learn."
"Yes, Father, this glorious year has taught to the students all over this country the beginning history of our great republic even as this Fair is teaching the progress of the world. Though Columbus was the greatest man of his age, yet we know only that he was the son of a wool comber and that he attended the school at Pavia, where he showed a marvellous aptitude for astronomy and cosmography. He became a sailor on the Mediterranean, some say a pirate, but the ships of one nation then preyed on the ships of another and considered it legitimate because there was then no International law. He married the daughter of an Italian named Palestrello, who had been a celebrated Portuguese sailor. With her he received many valuable charts, journals and memoranda. He soon moved to Lisbon, which was then the center of everything speculative and adventurous in geographical discovery. Columbusmade a living here by making maps. Here he studied out his theory that he could reach Asia by going west, and he made several voyages to the Azores and Canary islands, which were then the limit of sea navigation. Then began his travels for help to carry out his wonderful plans. He took with him his motherless boy, Diego. From place to place he went with a heroism of patience never surpassed. The story of the rebuffs and privations through which he passed will be the wonder and praise of men forever. Weary and footsore and hungry, he stopped one day before the Franciscan Convent La Rabida, in Andalusia, to beg some bread and water for his child. Then came the mysterious turning of the scales in the forces of human greatness. The Superior of the convent happened to pass by, and, struck by the appearance of the poor traveler, began to talk to him. The Superior at once saw that no ordinary man was before him. Grander views were never presented and greater plans of conquest were never known. Christianity was to invade Asia on its eastern shores and meet the irresistible forces from the West. Columbus believed himself divinely inspired for this and therefore demanded that he be made high-admiral, governor-general and viceroy over all the land he reached and that for his revenue there should be given one-tenth of the entire produce of the countries. Such a far reaching demand as this could not have been acceded to only by a doubting sovereign, and he would probably have been beheaded with his puny crew of one hundred and twenty men if he had reached Asia and attempted to carry out such a wholesale scheme of subjugation.
"The months of this voyage were scarcely less full of treason, burdens, and peril than the years that had been given to make the voyage possible. A pension was promised to the man who first sighted land but Columbus saw a light rising and falling on the evening of Oct. 11, and on that account claimed and receivedthe pension. It is said that the sailor who really saw land first foreswore his country and fled to Africa because of having lost the pension and the honor of being the first to see land. This is told by the enemies of Columbus to prove a sordid and avaricious nature. It is also told that he took such exasperating and outrageous measures to uphold his visionary schemes of conquest and government as high-admiral, governor-general and viceroy, that it became more than his home government could endure.
"His last voyage was disastrous, but whether from his own desire for gold hunting, or because from the demands of his crew, it can not be told. A man was sent to supersede him and chains were placed upon the man who had worn the robe of royalty. His last years before the public were even more bitter than his first. Until his death he seemed to spend all his time in trying to recover from the king his lost prestige, titles and possessions, but they never came. He besought Ferdinand pitifully to bestow them as a perpetual heritage upon his son, even if not to him. In a letter to his sovereigns, he said: 'Such is my fate that twenty years of service, through which I passed with so much toil and danger, have profited me nothing; and at this day I do not possess a roof in Spain that I can call my own. If I wish to eat or sleep, I have no where to go but to the inn or the tavern, and I seldom have wherewith to pay the bill. I have not a hair upon my head that is not grey; my body is infirm, and all that was left me, as well as to my brothers, has been taken away and sold, even to the frock that I wore, to my great dishonor. I implore your highness to forgive my complaints. I am indeed in as ruined a condition as I have related. Hitherto I have wept for others: may Heaven now have mercy upon me, and may the earth weep for me!'
"He died in bitterest poverty at Valladolid at about the age of seventy years. He was buried at Valladolid for a short while tosatisfy the Franciscans, and then removed to Seville by request of his relatives. It was said that Columbus wished to be buried in San Domingo, and Charles V. gave authority for this to be done to the grandson of Columbus, and the family of Colon was to occupy the chapel of the cathedral. But there is no record whatever of the events of his burial at San Domingo. This is accounted for only on the theory that Drake, the English pirate, destroyed them when he sacked San Domingo.
"In 1795 Spain ceded San Domingo to France and it seemed to the Spanish people to be a national disgrace for the bones of Columbus to remain on foreign soil. There were no explicit directions as to the exact spot where his bones were and it was not known then that five of the family were buried together there. What was supposed to be his ashes were taken to Havana but in 1877 while making some repairs in the vaults another tomb was discovered in which was a strip of lead from a box which proved that the place contained the ashes of the grandson of Columbus. Then a further search was made; only a few inches from the vault first opened another vault was found and in it a lead box containing pieces of bone and human dust and on the lid was written
"D. de la A. per Ate"
which is supposed to mean "Discoverer of America, First Admiral." A silver plate inside had inscribed on it the names and titles of Columbus. This much decomposed leaden case was placed, with its contents, in another case of satin wood and glass, and all deposited in a vault so that the contents could be seen through the glass. Spain could not think of giving up the honor of having the bones of Columbus on her own soil, and the Royal Academy of Madrid made an exhaustive study of the subject and at last published a book in which they closed the argument with the following words: "The remains of Christoval Colon are in thecathedral of Habana, in the shadow of the glorious banner of Castile. It is most fit that over his sepulchre waves the same flag that sailed with him from Palos in the SantaMaria.""
After reviewing this history, which her interest in the great Fair, and the great events it commemorated, had caused her to learn, and after consulting her note book to be sure of her correctness, there was a general discussion among them, which showed that sight-seeing was not all they were doing at the Fair.
image57"Some bodies for the heads and feet."
It was now past noon. Aunt decided to go home; Fanny would walk up and down the "Plaisance," and with her sketch book see what she could do toward putting bodies between some of those heads and feet she had drawn. Uncle and Johnny decided to go up to the business portion of the city to spend the rest of the day. It was a pleasant afternoon, and when they reached the viaduct from the train a great mass of people were passing and repassing. The great Auditorium building loomed up before them, with the Art Gallery on their right and the Columbus statue on their left. Under them trains were gliding by like long serpents, and out in the lake fleet steamers and sail-boats loaded with people were moving about like white spots on the blue waters. Uncle and Johnny passed along the sidewalk in front of the hotel when something at the corner caught their attention, and they came up for a moment to look at it. Two or three men also turned, stopping by him when he stopped. Then a few more came up, and a ring of men began to form. Uncle and Johnny now noticed that they were surrounded by people, and they attempted to move out, but in vain. In a short time the crowd had become so large that the sidewalk was blocked, and none except those who were close to the center knew what the original attraction was. The people coming over the viaduct and from far down the street noticed the crowd too, and bent their steps also in its direction. Some, fearful that they would miss something, began torun. The contagion for speed spread, and soon the whole mass were speeding up the boulevard with open mouths and wide-staring eyes. Each was asking the other as he ran, "What is it?"
As they came in contact with the central surging crowd where each man and woman was trying to see over the heads of those in front,despitethe fact that the object, whatever it was, was on the ground, the question was repeated. But no one seemed to know what had happened. People in the center of the crush began to demand room and air. In vain they struggled to get out. The people still coming over the viaduct would start into a run as soon as they were on the street, and thus continually adding pressure on the outside made the positions of those inside almost unbearable. The crowd was now a pushing, clamoring one, extending some distance up and down the sidewalk and out into the street. The apparently insolvable mystery as to the nature of the accident or cause of the excitement only made the crowd more persistent and harder to manage. There were some who shouted, "give the poor fellow more air." "It's a shame to crowd around him like that." Then they would push harder than ever to see what it was.
Two men pushing each other got into an altercation. One struck the other, almost knocking him down. The crowd quickly took hold of the injured man and shoved him out into the "outer darkness," as if he had been a criminal, while the other was let alone. Some shouted for a doctor, others for the patrol and ambulance and the police. At last two officers came. After ringing up the patrol they forced their way through the crowd, which quickly fell in behind them and pressed on again with the renewed hope of seeing something. The presence of the officers only added to the general excitement, and people who had been
laggards or had left in disgust came back at a double quick.
When the police got to the wall of the building they found aman who had two Newfoundland pups tied to a string. The patrol wagon was sent back empty, and the crowd, which had been sold instead of the pups, dispersed.
When Uncle got out he took his bandana out of his hat and mopped his forehead, as if he had just finished tossing up a load of hay to Johnny on a hot day in the hayfield.
image58"ONLY A COUPLE OF NEWFOUNDLAND PUPPIES."
"Consarn them critters!" he said, "I was thinkin' of buyin' one of them Newfoundland purps for Fanny, but the crowd was so anxious to see the trade that I've got entirely out o' the notion. I never see such curiosity people in all my life. The other day I stopped at a winder, and before I got half through seeing therewere about fifteen people standin' around and lookin' over my shoulder. I guess I can't see anything any more without tollin' so many folks on that I'm liable to get crushed. If country folks was half as curious 'bout things as these city folks, they might be laffed at with some sense."
"And so you call this the Anthropological building?" said Uncle. "What kind of things has it got inside to have such a name?"
"Well, Grandpa, if you desire to be enlightened scientifically, I may say that it is a subject beginning with Adam and including the whole human race. It is divided into five parts: zoological anthropology, showing the differences and similarities between men and brutes; descriptive anthropology, showing the differences and similarities between the races; general anthropology, which is the descriptive biology of the human race; theological anthropology, which concerns the divine origin and the destiny of man; and ethical anthropology, which discusses the duties of man to the world and his creator."
"Do tell! it's a pretty big subject, and no wonder it has a house to itself."
Inside they found skulls, skeletons, bones, savage relics consisting of dress, utensils, ornaments and weapons with amulets, charms, idols and everything pertaining to early religions the world over.
On the eastern border of south pond was to be found the outdoor ethnographical exhibit. Indian groups, Indian schools and everything illustrating their primitive life and material progress.
There were objects, shell heaps, village sites, burial places, mounds, cliff houses and the ruins of Mexico, Central and SouthAmerica. To see the same thing, and to only very little better advantage, would require thousands of dollars and years of perilous travel.
"The more I go through these places," said Uncle "the more I feel ashamed that I did not do my share in bringing of relics. Now I could have brought the old nightcap that sister Susan's dead husband's grandfather brought over from England; and I have a gridiron that my great aunt gave me to remember her by. And there's the snuffers and the old wood-yard rake that my grandfather made himself way back in New England, and the dress in which my aunt Harriet was married, and the horseshoe from the foot of the horse that killed cousin John's boy Tom, and sister Hanner's gold fillin' of her tooth, which was the first gold fillin' in our parts, and it came out just afore she died, and I don't know how much more. Ain't they anthropological, ethnographic biology or something like that?"
"I think, Grandpa, they would have been more useful in some kind of a cabinet in the old settler's cabin, but we needn't to fret about it any."
From here they went over to the Midway Plaisance. The "Street inCairo"was to be opened with a great parade of some kind and they wanted to see it. The natives call itMars-al-Kabia. In fact the Street in Cairo was all the curiosities of Egyptian Cairo's streets crowded into one Chicago Cairo Street. It was a splendid sight with its gardens and squares, its temples, its towers and minaret made in the most Arabesque architecture and ornamented with the most fantastic draperies. The inhabitants had been directly transported from old Cairo across the sea to Midway Plaisance. There were the importunate street venders, the donkey boys begging and pulling at the clothing of the visitors, the pompous drivers of camels beseeching the visitors to try their "ship of the desert;" tom-tom pounders, reed blowers,fakirs, child acrobat beggars, Mohammedans, Copts, Jews, Franks, Greeks, Armenians, Nubians, Soudanese, Arabs, Turks, and men and women from all over the Levant, all in the gorgeous apparel of the East, filling the booths or strolling about the street. They were the happiest lot of Orientals that ever got so far away from home. Drums were beating, camel drivers singing merry songs, and a curious medley of voices which the earth beneath them never heard before. At eleven o'clock somebody blew a strange kind of horn, which made the small boy almost kill himself in his frenzy to get near to see what it meant.
Musicians mounted the camels and began grinding out music that was enough to frighten even a North American Indian to death. At the first glimpse of the camels a team of steady old horses, that probably were never frightened before, ran away with the gravel wagon which they had been patiently dragging along. Little Arabs and Soudanese ran ahead of the procession turning somersets and clapping their hands in hilarious glee. There were warriors hopping about and clashing shields and swords together in mimic battle. In front of Hagenbeck's show the lions were aroused from their slumber in the den above the entrance, and they stood before the bars and roared at the procession. Then the dancing girls came skipping along, followed by a bride and her maids, for at last it was seen to be a bridal procession that was celebrating the opening of "Cairo street" in Chicago.