The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1893-10-06
THE GREAT WHITE CITY.
The Wonder of the roth Century.
By Walter Besanf.

uTODDeu IDLO the SuOJCtI VI bhI
Worlds Fair. When il came to the
last of them-a modest Englishman-
all that he had proposed TO say, had
been said already, and all his adjec-
tives used up. Therefore, be had TO
content himself with few common
place phrases. Something Of the same
difficulty is met with again, when,
after all the special correspondents
and all preceding visitors have been
at work upon the Fair for three
months, describing, and exhausting
the adjectives, one sits down to write
on first impressions. What-whOse-
impressions, first or last, have not
been already offered to the public?
Yet after all, man is individual. Each
of US see with his own eyes, and no
two pair of eyes are alike.
To begin with, the Worlds Fair
may be regarded as another edition,
the latest and most complete, and by
far the best illustrated, of an ecumeni-
cal encyclopedia, published in one
enormous volume. No ordinary visi-
tor, no single writer, can hope to pro-
duce any paper, appreciate, critical or
adequate, Of this encyclopedia as
whole. The wise man will not at
tempt it.
When the visitor happens to be a
literary man, one who is in the habit
of writing and speaking of things of
fered to the public, he wanders about
the courts and galleries of the exhibit
ton, oppressed far more than the
inarticulate person by the vastness of
the subject. To such man the great
truth that he cannot say anything
| adequate and that he need not try 1t,
| falls upon his spirit when it is once
grasped, like a cool shower upon q
| hot afternoon. Into every art-gal-
lery, every kind of show, he carries
| his measuring-rod and his canOns of
art. These, in the worlds fair, he
can leave behind him, unless he
wants to consecrate a considerable
part of his natutal span to the con-
| tents of the buildings.
1 am sorry to have no adjectives
| left. They have all been used al
ready by descriptive and critical
writer's. Yet these are to be my
"first impressions" Let us fall back
on the old adjectives.
! 1t is so big to begin with! The
| guide books spare no figures, yet fig
ures by themselves convey no idea of
vastness. The human mind cannot
grasp the meaning of figures when
they get beyond certain number.
| The native Australian, for example,
| who can only understand the number
of his ten fingers uses for all num-
| bers beyond ten the single expression
"eighty-eight." To me as to the Aus
tralian child, all these figures of tons,
| acres, etc, are exactly represented by
| the term "eighty-eight." 1t is big
oh so big! How big? Eighty eight
| What on earth does one want more?
Apart from their curious tendency
to become "eighty-eight," figures,
when they are very large-indeed, and
things in general when they are very
Iarge-have a way of saddening him
| who contemplates them. Vastness of
all kinds Expresses the soul with sad
ness. L once observed during Jour,
new over the Alps girl who turned
from the contemplation OF the mighty
mass of mountain with eyes overflow
ing. She quickly put up. her hand
kerchief and blushed for shame that
she should be thus moved. L longed
to saw to her, but could not, for the
ordinary reasons, "My child, you cry
because the thing is so great; for the
same reason, too, L could cry. How
this effect is produced know not. LII
YOU please, we will look out once more
and weep together"
The bigness of the Worlds Fair
first strikes and bewilders one; then
saddens. / observe that most people
set down their tears to the evanes
cence of the show. "Three months
more,u they say, "and then it will be
zone like a dream" We weep. The
pity of it! Nay, dear friends, but the
vastness of it,
Then the unexpectedness of 1T
Never was any place so unexpected
The special correspondents and the
illustrated papers have done their
best to bring the place home to us
but you see description never de-
, scribes. Oh you may point at once
to the woman's building, or to the
manufacturers building; you recog
nize them; you recognize them be-
cause you saw the pictures in the
illustrated London News. Quite
faithful pictures they were, yet-yet-
did YOU expect at all what you SEE
: before YOU? What did the descrip
tive writer and the artist between
them teach you? The form OF The
? thing, not its surroundings and it!
setting; not its atmosphere; not it!
color; not it's individuality. These
things cannot be put into words o.
, into drawings, and they make up thu
, unexpectedness.
| Then again, the poetry of the thing
Did the conception spring from on
brain like the Iliad? Were these build
: ings-every one to the unprofessiona
| eve q miracle of beauty-thus arranged
so as to produce this marvellou
effect of beauty by one master brain
or by many? For never before in an
', age, in any country, has there 5 bee or
l I wonderful an arrangement Al
buildings as OF Cav1ce or th6f love
year, Seen we.aaSp chicago the presel
l IL his 81 grace. The hanging garde
~ of Babylon-whlch some OF us mi
:. remember as belonging to preVlo
IL existence-were fine. There were son
very fine things in Rome, especial
when Nero was emperor and arcI
tect, but the common people saw lltt
of his palace. There was rather nj
little show in London forty years sc
%. and another, not without its points,
[r. Philadelphia, seventeen years az
But nowhere at any time has the
va been presented to the world any gro
an of buildings so entirely beautiful
themselves and in their arrangeme
1g as this group at Chicago, which tn
as call the Worlds Fair.
he To make an end of first impression
"A TT is a very good thing for all OF |
io especially for those who live IN clti
ne and easily fall into the belief that =
n the world is old, and all the leaves
w. brown. and all the tales are told, 3
- ali the wheels are run down." that I
world is, on the other hand, gu
ed Young and vigorous; that there Is
IN mast but that of childhood; that
80 E-o.ont IL nothing but an eager ra