St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-04-28
CROWDS ALONG THE RIVER.
Thousands View the, Pageant il
Spite of the Rain.

New YORK, April 27.-The river was
the Mecca of all New York and vicinity
today. The metropolis smiled, but she
smiled through her tears. Old Glory
floated bedraggled from thousand
points along the shore. but at Riverside
drive. In the neighborhood of Grants
tomb, it seemed as if there were more
people and more bedraggled stars and
stripes than at any other place.
That cold, chilling rain was driven
in horizontal sheets by a north
eastern wind. and that the war
ships were partly enveloped in
a mantle of mist, mattered not to them.
To the tens of thousands of persons
gathered the rain fell unnoticed, and
the grandeur of the river pageant was
increased by the thin clouds of fog
which swept necessarily over its sur
face. To say that, In spite of the disa-
greeable weather, the scene presented
on the drive and the adjacent water in
the middle Of the morning was superb,
is but to repeat the words which rose to
the lips OF everybody who saw it. Yet
superb is poor word to describe the
scene.
AS viewed from the opposite side of
the river the effect was that of a pict-
ure, beautiful. grand and imposing. In
the foreground, and separated from the
frame by narrow strip of water, lay
the ships of our own navy, their white
sides rendered the more noticeable by
the clouded atmosphere. and their for
midabieness partly removed by the
flags and pennantS which waved and
tiuttered in the rigging. Just behind
them lay the foreign men-of-war, them
imn0Cinp rpndQrQd
more attractive by their novelty and the
variety iof colOrs they displayed.
Next came the hundreds of sailing
craft, steam yachts and tugs, which
lay decked out from bow to stern
beneath the shore. The center piece
was multitude of human faces, which,
beneath the overspreading trees, rose
row above row from the edge of the
water up the sloDing hillside to the
drive itself. In its rear was line of
vehicles extending from one end of
the drive to the other, and crowded
with the representatives of fashionable
New York. Above them arose the
walls Of the houses which line the park.
Flags of every nationality hung from
the windows. while the roofs were dotted
with people anxious TO obtain lofty
sight of the review. The upper part Of
the picture was set in frame of heavy
gray clouds. which seemed almost to
rest upon the heads of those who stood
on the roofs of the houses farther in the
rear.
While In this picture the spectators
formed necessarily the center piece, the
real center Of interest was, of course,
the fleet of war ships. When the people
left home they looked spick and span;
when the reached the cars that were to
take them to their destination they
looked bedraggled; when they arrived
at the drive they looked as if they had
got mixed up in Chicago cyclone. But
the crowd assembled was remarkable.
1t spread from the edge of the river to
the top of the bank, and extended from
Sevanty-Second street to Grants tomb. 1t
walked slowly up and down, stopping
at every other moment to look forth
from beneath umbrellas at the men-of-
war. Scarcely one wore light or gray
colors. 1t was a multitude arrayed in
black, and this added, perhaps, to the
dignity of the scene. The number of
persons who went to Riverside drive
was not, of course, as large as it would
have been had the day been pleasant,
but it was very, very large. 1t was also
heterogeneous gathering. There were
Englishmen and women, Frenchmen,
Russians. Germans, Italians, Spaniards
and South Americans mingled with our
own people.