One thing you noticed—nearly all San Franciscans were personally, or through some members of their family, interested in the Fair. Everyone gave dinners on the Zone, either on the balcony of the Chinese restaurant—that had nothing Chinese about it except its Chinese ornamentation on the front of the building—or at the Old Faithful Inn of the Yellowstone. The illuminations at night were very soft and subdued, all the lanterns were turned dark side to the Concourse and light side to the buildings.
In the Zone there were few new attractions, and fewer worth seeing. The best were the Panama Canal, the Painted Desert, and Captain, the mind-reading horse. A woman mind reader, who took turns with the horse, was equally remarkable.
The queen of the Samoan village, clad literally in a short skirt, a Gaby Deslys head-dress, a string of beads and a dazzling smile, had not only great audacity but a fascinating personality that was literally bubbling over with the old Nick. We were crazy about her, a fact she saw perfectly well, for in the garden afterward, when she had discarded her gorgeous head-dress and donned a modest piece of sash tied around her chest, she came straight to us and shook hands as a child might, who, amidst a crowd of strangers, had singled out a friend. That is all there is to tell, as we couldn’t speak Samoan, nor she English.
A few months ago, in the midst of a daring flight, the wings of the famous Beachey’s aeroplane crumpled and plunged into the sea. The aviator was strapped into his machine in such a way that, if he still lived, he could not free himself.
Le roi est mort! Vive le roi!
And the new king was Art Smith. At eleven o’clock at night, the siren blew and thousands crowded about the open field to see him start. Up and up and up he went until, at several hundred feet up, a torch suddenly burned at the back of the machine which swept the sky, leaving a trail of fire like a comet’s tail, looped and double looped and curved and twisted and wrote “ZONE” across the sky.
But really to see the feats of this aeronaut who far exceeded Beachey’s daring, you had to go to the Aviation Field on a day when he flew at five. You saw, if you were early enough to stand near the ropes of the enormous enclosure, a young boy apparently, very small, but stockily built, walk casually out of the crowd standing back of the machine, wave good-bye to a young girl, his wife, and get on a sort of bicycle on the front of his biplane without any apparent strapping in, except the handle of the steering-wheel that he pulled close in front of him. Across the wide grass field he gradually arose, soared higher and higher, until at half a thousand feet or more, he dipped and swooped, then somersaulted round and round and round in a whirling ball, then flying upside down, dropped nearly over your head, then arose again, flying backwards, sideways, fell, arose, dipped—like a bird gone mad. At last he came swooping down and alit at the end of the great green field.
Very young and small, Art Smith walked the whole length of the field between fifty thousand shouting, waving human beings. No hero of the Roman Stadium, no king coming to his own, has lived a greater moment than the young birdman lived every day. Boyishly his mouth broke into a wide smile, he doffed his cap, bowing to the right and to the left, and the applause followed him in a series of roars. At the hangar his young wife ran out and kissed him. He had been spared to her once again.