The nations seemed dreaming,—England, Germany, France, Austria, in their houses and pavilions of history; Denmark, Italy, India; charming Switzerland, the mother of republics; tropical South America, where Edwin Arnold says may one day come the greatest development of the American race. The Transportation Building was like a shadow; its grand portal, like the door of the sun, had lost its glory with the light. Who can ever forget its golden door in the morning light! Wooded Island, too, with its Ho-o-den palace and Japanese garden, was a shadow; the Convent of La Rabida was a shadow,—and the Krupp Building, with its awful guns; the battle ship was a phantom; the Walking Sidewalk rested; the Eskimos were gone to their mats; the Hagenbeck animals were sleeping in their cages; Cairo, Java, Algeria, China, all slept in one great camp. There was silence in the coffee garden of Brazil.
As our friends walked down the Court of Honor toward the Peristyle, the silence seemed a prophecy; and like the song of the angels on the night of the Nativity, the air seemed to say, “The world is at peace.” They could fancy that the old Destinies were there, and that they, as of old, said to their spindles, “Thus go on forever.”
“If Shinar’s Tower was the beginning of the world’s confusion, the White City by Lake Michigan may be the beginning of the new and eternal order of harmony,” said the old Quaker, as the clocks broke the silence with twelve strokes each, in many steeples and towers.
A night watch went wandering with him up and down the avenues of white luminous walls. He was a man who had been well educated, and who had seen much of the world.
“There is one statue that has been left out,” said the old officer, “and it should stand here in the Court of Honor, for it might represent the best of all for which the world can hope!”
“Whose?” asked our venerable Quaker.
“Pestalozzi’s, the founder of the public schools. He taught that education stands for character, and not for a cunning brain, and that character means the brotherhood and peace of the world.”
THE ELECTRICAL BUILDING ON A MOONLIGHT NIGHT.
“He was right,” said our friend. “The new education should be that of peace. It should follow the spirit of the White City here, where all is harmony and unity, and all races are families of the same common family. Our schools, our churches, our societies, should all enter into this new education. It will be one day the greatest teaching in the world.”