Stretching over a vast area of Forest Park, enclosed by a high board fence, stood the magnificent Palaces of Varied Industries, Liberal Art, Agriculture, Mines and Metallurgy, Manufacture and Transportation, Palaces of Machinery and Electricity, Festival Hall, and the Cascades, the Government Building, Tyrolean Alps, the Stadium, Ferris Wheel, and the sunken garden; the camps of the West Point cadets, Artillery and Infantry; Hospital, Signal, and Life-saving Corps. Museums containing relics of anthropology, zoölogy, geology, anthology, and numerous other scientific researches were everywhere in evidence. In one British concession, soldiers of the “Household” cavalry of London stood watch over the magnificent “Queen’s Jubilee presents” which had been presented to Queen Victoria by the nations of the earth. Five hundred Indians, representing various
tribes, in all their habiliments of war, here flourished at their best, the most prominent chiefs among these being Geronimo, Iron Mountain, and White Cloud. Every State in the Union was represented with an appropriate edifice, that of the State of Missouri being the most imposing. Statues and images from the chisels of the world’s most famous sculptors adorned a section in the Palace of Varied Industries, while the art galleries were filled with the rarest paintings of the most celebrated artists of all times and all nations.
To enumerate even the most important exhibits of this prodigious exposition would require volumes, and, for the benefit of those whose duties prevented them from seeing the “Fair,” I wish to say that it is impossible to form a conception of the progress this world attained during the century since the purchase of the Louisiana Territory.
At night the electrical display was a dazzling glitter of phosphorescence; myriads of incandescent lights of variegated colors were strung along the lagoons, cascades, and Pike, these combined with large arc lights
completed an illumination of festive splendor.
A group of marines could be found nightly in social session on Napoleon bridge, a span of the lagoons, meditatively absorbing the sweet strains of the ever-entrancing Italian Yama Yama, sung by Venetian “gondoliers,” as they gracefully plied parties in gondolas through thread-like canals fed by the waters of the cascades. The inspiration animated by the grandeur of the surroundings on these occasions, the thrilling sweetness of the singing, to the mellow-toned accompaniment of mandolins and guitars, had a most electrifying effect. Music, music, music, music, everywhere; sweethearts, music, and mirth, that was the slogan. “Love me and the world is mine” is hummed in chorus by this happy-go-lucky bunch of jolly tars, whose only responsibilities are confined to the hours of love and duty, and whose motto is, “Be a good fellow here, and you’ll be a good fellow there.”
“The Pike, the Pike! let’s shove off for the Pike.” They stop a few moments to hear the soft tones of Il Trovatore by the
famous Hawaiian band, and exchange greetings with some St. Louis friends, who propose a mild stimulant for their infirmities which consist chiefly of a severe thirst that needs quenching. Downey’s cabaret is sought, where in a cosey corner of bohemia the corks are drawn from ice-cold bottles of “blue-ribbon” as they sing of “the soft-flowing dreamy old Rhine” and “Meet me to-night in dreamland.” The latest stories are told and toasts are drunk to the health of the absent. From the tinkling glasses of bohemia, the marines meander to the Pike. Ten minutes’ walk from the north pole to Ireland through a labyrinth of gayety. Everybody visited the Pike, particularly at night, when the soft pedal was put on conventionalities and every “piker” became a thoroughbred bohemian, and then some. Commencing at the north pole you would follow in rotation on either side of this animated thoroughfare: first the Galveston flood, an excellent representation of the devastation of that Texan city: Battle Abbey, with its relics of antiquity, on the right; cross over, and you see Hobson sinking
the Merrimac, also the battle of Santiago. There is a rush, and we find ourselves in Turkey, watching the slim princess trying to beat it with an American kodak fiend. After “shooting the chutes” a few times, in order to be sure of not missing anything, you stroll to a palmy dance-hall and join in a “Frisco dip” or perhaps a “St. Louis rag,” with liquid refreshments during the intervals.
From this point you take a boat for the “Garden of Eden” and the scenes of creation; the dark recesses of this cavernous route were the cause of many leap-year proposals in 1904. Leaving Paradise you stop to watch a fellow picking confetti out of his sweetheart’s eyes; he is laughing, and some one throws a handful of confetti into his mouth; he swears at this, but he is only joking. A barker on the opposite side is holding a crowd with his spiel on “Hereafter.” You enter a dark subterranean passage likened unto the intricate caves in the “Chamber of Horrors” depicted in Dante’s Inferno, a journey along the river Styx on the outskirts of hades, and you are transported