Day after day had the stewards of these hotels scoured the Callowhill Street, the Spring Garden Street, the Girard Avenue, and all the city markets with terrier dogs and shotguns, hunting ratsGIVE ’EM
RATS! to be served to the Celestials at their establishments. Traps, too, were placed under each stall; in short every luxury the markets afforded in this line was prepared for them, and the products of thousands of private traps were generously donated by patriotic citizens, and yet the supply was not equal to the demand. Our visitors found a peculiar fascinating flavor in the American rat, and it became absolutely impossible to satisfy them. Then, too, the candles at these hostelries disappeared in a rapid and mysterious manner. Mysterious until one fatal Wednesday evening, when a Mandarin of the first rank, who was entitled to wear six swords and able to swallow the half dozen at once, and who consequently ought to have known better, was discovered with a box of penny dips under his flowing robes, making his way stealthily up the cellar steps at the “Globe.” The very same evening a great commotion was raised at the “Transcontinental” by the discovery of Gail Hamilton’s lapdog, stewed in kerosene oil, in the private chamber of the Secretary of the Chinese delegation. As might be expected, the visitors joined cause, braved the thing out, and declared that they were being starved, and were forced to this action to sustain life. Then, packing up their goods, they left indignantly in a body.
Reunions and conclaves, however, and meetings of national and international, social, philanthropic, medical and scientific bodies, kept things tolerably lively, and the month of October was really brilliant. There was a horse show, a cattle show, a dog show, and a poultry show. There was to have been a baby show too. In fact, it was announced and arranged, but was broken up on the very day of opening by a terrible battle among the mothers.THE BATTLE OF
THE MOTHERS.
This battle was consequent upon the arrival of a
MRS. McDUFF,
with a red-headed and cross-eyed infant.
“Begurra, what are ye doin’ here? go home wid ye,” was her greeting to the fond mammas seated in the live-stock yard of the Pennsylvania R. R. Co. with their babies in their arms. “What’s the good o’ ye a sittin’ here, compating wid me Mickey?—arrah, luk at the child and tell me where’s his ekul—sure there’s nary one among ye has a baby fit to go ’longside o’ him, wid his beautiful awburn hair and the shwate smile atwixt his eyes—go home wid ye, go home!”
And, rolling up her sleeves she improvised a war dance.
After four buckets of gore had been spilled, the managers adjourned the exhibition, giving every survivor, without exception, a gold medal. Under the circumstances this was their wisest possible action.
Of all the live-stock exhibitions the dog show was the most successful. The International Exposition would have been sadly wanting in completeness if the faithful companion of man had been denied a place and recognition within its hallowed precincts. He had a place. The R. R. Drove Yards were arranged in tiers, after the style of La Scala at Milan, only, instead of accommodating but thirty-six hundred spectators, the drove yards accommodated, easily, as many thousands. We know of nothing to which this show can be likened save the dog pound in August. Wherever the lorgnette or opera glass was directed, spaniels, poodles, bloodhounds, terriers, pointers, setters, and bone-crunchers of every species, from the board yard mongrel who never earned an honest meal, to the noble St. Bernard who saves a life every morning before breakfast; from the lady’s pet with his golden collar, to the pugilist’s bull-dog with his iron chain, met the gaze and bewildered the senses. Every dog had his day with him, tied up in tissue paper, and it was a pleasing sight to notice—at a distance—the wistful eye with which many of the canines followed the forms of plump visitors, and the broad grin with which they greeted a well-developed thigh.
The International Regatta