to Paradise for a turn along the “golden strand.” Returning to earth, the strains of music from a Spanish orchestra can be heard in Old Madrid, where troubadours and matadores exchange stories over a bottle of madeira. A dark-eyed señorita from Cordova, who wears her clothes well, sings La Paloma, clicking the castanets to the accompaniment of an orchestra from Barcelona. “Bravo! bravo!” yell the marines, as she joins them in a Pall Mall and goblet of wine.
All aboard for St. Petersburg shouts the conductor of the Great Siberian Express, from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg and return. “Under and over the sea” pipes a sailor; “take a ride in a submarine, ten thousand leagues under the sea.” From a balcony over the entrance to the Old St. Louis arena, “The Cowboy’s Farewell” is being played by a genuine cowboy band. This arena is the Indian’s favorite place of amusement, as the scenes are typical of frontier life. Wading ankle deep in confetti, you enter into the enchantments and desolations of Paris, with its relics of the
Inquisition, Waterloo, and the Bastille, the bridge of the Invalides, Rue de Rivoli, and Champs Elysées, here represented in miniature, where songs were sung by gay Parisians. Further on are the Japanese and Chinese tea-gardens, Cummings’ wild west show, Hoyle’s fire-fighters, and Hagenbach’s celebrated animal show.
Arabs with tomtoms are attracting a stream of people to mysterious Asia. Here you find Hindu jugglers, magicians, and snake-charmers, Oriental dancers of the hootche kootche, and venders of wares of the “Far East,” camels and donkeys for hire, elephants with gorgeous canopies in which the children love to ride. This concession has the spicy odor and Oriental aspect of the Far East.
Blarney Castle and the Irish village are next. “Ho for the Irish jaunting car!” All pile in, and we’re off for the Lakes of Killarney, climb to the Castle and kiss the blarney stone. A Dublin colleen who is vending shillalahs, canes, and other ornaments of Irish bog-oak, sweetly sings, “Where the River Shannon flows,” as she
pins a fresh green shamrock on each uniform, then remarks, “If I was a man, I’d be a soldier too.” The café has a seating capacity of nearly one thousand people; here the tinkling of glasses is interspersed with sweet music by harpists from the “Emerald Isle.” You order an Irish high-ball, and you receive a crême de menthe with a shamrock in it.
The Pike was the favorite promenade of the “Fair,” something doing every minute. Here millionaires nudged elbows with paupers; celebrities of distinguished vocations with the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker. The various nations of the earth here commingled in harmony, all possessed with the same feeling of curiosity and intent on having pleasure.
After doing the Pike, the Tyrolean Alps was a favorite resort for midnight diners whose mirth and good fellowship were in keeping with their surroundings. Delicious terrapin, lobster, and rare-bits were specialties in this extraordinary café. From a pass in the mountain chain of the Alps came the clear yodel of a quartette of Tyrolean singers,
whose notes reverberated from the cliffs to the scenes below.
Swiss maidens from Geneva presided over stalls of quaint curios from Switzerland, beer-steins and long tobacco-pipes being the most favored articles. These Swiss girls were great favorites of the marines; they were constant visitors at the camp during the entire exposition, scarcely a tent was lacking in some ornamentation or other from the booths of this Alpine exhibit, while each girl wore pinned to her shirt-waist an ornament emblematic of the marines, consisting of the semisphere, the eagle, and the anchor.