“The President, being detained by the storm, did not arrive at the appointed time of one o’clock, being delayed till about an hour later. When he did arrive, however, with his suite, civil and military, he was warmly greeted by the people within the building, who amounted to some 20,000, as far as we could judge. The United States Band struck up ‘Hail Columbia,’ and finished with ‘Yankee Doodle.’ This part of the day’s proceedings was extremely interesting. When the shouts had died away, and thousands of fair hands, waving their handkerchiefs, had exhausted their first burst of enthusiasm, Bishop Wainright delivered, in a full, round voice, his appropriate prayer.
“Then came stealing through the vast aisles the hymn of Old Hundred set to semi-secular words. The effect where we stood under the dome was mystically grand. It might be imagined to typify the voices of distant nations rolling in harmonious vastness through the aisles, and bearing the accents of gentleness and beneficence. Their artistic interpretation was intrusted to the ladies and gentlemen of the Sacred Harmonic Society, and admirably did they execute their task. Mr. George Bristow was the conductor of the body. Mr. Timm, however, was the chief director of all the musical arrangements. The hymn ran thus:
“Here, where all climes their offerings send,
Here, where all arts their tribute lay,
Before Thy presence, Lord, we bend,
And for Thy smile and blessing pray.
“For Thou dost sway the tides of thought,
And hold the issues in Thy hand,
Of all that human toil has wrought,
And all that human skill has plann’d.
“Thou lead’st the restless Power of Mind
O’er destiny’s untrodden field,
And guid’st, wandering bold but blind,
To mighty ends not yet revealed.
“Next Mr. Theodore Sedgwick, the President of the Crystal Palace Association, rose and addressed President Pierce. The President replied evidently impromptu, and his words were well chosen. He appeared fatigued in the previous efforts he had made in public speaking during his journey, and was very brief. Mr. Pierce, however, most favorably impressed his auditory. He was fluent, earnest, and unabashed before so vast an auditory. Mr. Sedgwick, when the President had finished, proposed three cheers for the President, which were responded to by the multitude.
“In the mere proprieties of the day the scene passed off well. The speeches had the excellence of brevity; the music was fine and varied, great rivalry evidently existing between the different bands and orchestras; the audience was unexceptionable in its deportment; the appearance of the feminine portion was brilliant, and it must be added that the directors liberally provided a ladies’ refreshment room; the attention of those in authority, the new uniformed police included, was unremitting; the progress made in decorating, finishing, and arraying the details of the building and its contents in the few last days, when all seemed to promise disorder and defeat on the promised day of opening, was a veritable wonder of industry; the arrangements of tickets, places, entrance, exits, were admirable; the accommodations for the corps of reporters were liberal and thoughtful; the positions of the sculptural attractions were well chosen as to locality, light, and combined effect; and in a word, the whole was arranged as to outward show with a skill that was unsurpassable.
“It was a thing to be seen once in a lifetime. As we grow in wealth and strength we may build a much greater Crystal Palace, and accumulate more imperial-like treasures than we could now afford to purchase, but it cannot have the effect of this one. This has been the first love of its kind. The second cannot bring the exhilaration and glory of the first, though exhausting the wealth of genius in its production. In this we behold the first decided stand of America among the industrial and artistic nations of the earth. In this we see a recognition of her progress, power, and possibilities. In this we find a yearning after Peace—Peace which shall dimple the face of the earth with the smiles of plenty, which shall join the hearts of nations, which shall abolish poverty and servitude. God’s earth loves Man to her innermost depths; treat her well with Peace, and she will reward him as a generous mother: abuse her with War and she will drive him from her presence. Such history has proved; but we may fairly believe that the historical vicissitudes of the past may be avoided in traveling the peaceful and generous path pointed out by the Crystal Palace.”
The comments and eulogiums of orators and press upon this first American World’s Fair were, of course, largely pitched in a tone that to-day is interesting only in contrast. It is archaic, primitive, embryonic, though not devoid of what has aptly been termed spread-eagleism. One writer, however, discussed the theme with memorable eloquence, and in a spirit of broad-minded philosophy that makes his almost every word as appropriate to the great fair of 1893 as to that of forty years before. “The exhibition,” he said, “must be particularly instructive to Americans, because it will furnish them with evidences of a skill in many branches of creation beyond their own, and of models of workmanship which are superior precisely in those points in which their own are most deficient. No one, we presume, will push his national predilections so far as to deny that, in the finer characteristics of manufacture and art, we have yet a vast deal to learn. Stupendous as our advances have been in railroads, steamboats, canals, printing presses, hotels, and agricultural implements—rapidly as we are growing in excellence in a thousand departments of design and handicraft—astonishing as may be our achievements, under all the difficulties of an adverse national policy—adroit, ingenious, and energetic as we have shown ourselves in those labors which have been demanded by the existing conditions of our society, we have yet few fabrics equal to those of Manchester, few wares equal to those of Birmingham and Sheffield, no silks like those of Lyons, no jewelry like that of Geneva, no shawls like those of the East, no mosaics like those of Italy. But, in our rapid physical improvements—growing, as we are, in prosperity, in population, in wealth, in luxuries of all kinds—these are the articles that we ought to have, and must have to give diversity to our industry, to relieve us from dependence upon other nations, to refine our taste, and to enable the ornamental and elegant appliances of our life to keep pace with our external development. Mere wealth, without the refinements of wealth—barbaric ostentation, prodigal display, extravagant self-indulgence—can only corrupt morals and degrade character. But the cultivation of the finer arts redeems society from its grossness, spreads an unconscious moderation and charm around it, softens the asperities of human intercourse, elevates our ideals, and imparts a sense of serene enjoyment to all social relations. Our common people, immeasurably superior to the common people of other nations in easy means of subsistence, in intelligence, as in the sterling virtues, are yet almost as immeasurably behind them in polished and gentle manners, and the love of music, painting, statuary, and all the more refining social pleasures.
“These Exhibitions, then, which make us acquainted with the superlative arts of other nations, cannot but be highly useful to us. But they have also another use—a moral, if not a religious use, in that they teach us so powerfully the dependence of nations upon each other—their mutual relations, and the absolute necessity of each to the comfortable existence of all the rest. There is hardly an article in the Crystal Palace to which the labor of all the world has not in some sort contributed—hardly a machine which is not an embodied record of the industrial progress of the world—hardly a fabric which, analyzed, does not carry us to the ends of the earth, or which does not connect us intimately with the people of every clime—with the miners who tortured its raw material from the dark cave, or the diver who brought it from the bottom of the sea—with the solitary mariner who shielded it from the tempests—with the poor, toil-worn mechanic who gave it form or color, or with the artist who imparted to it its final finish. Thus, no man liveth to himself alone, even in his most ordinary occupations; he is part and parcel of us, as we are of him. A wonderful and touching unity pervades the relations of the race; all men are useful to all men; and we who fancy that, in some important respects, we stand on the summit level of humanity, have a deep interest in the laborers of the vales—in the celerity, the excellence and the success of what they do, and in the comfort and happiness of their general condition. As Emerson has wisely sung, in that sweet poem of his: