The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1893-05-13

Chicago found some way to do the very
thing which Mr. Thompson, with his
quick eye and artists enthusiasm, sug-
gested. Suppose she were to reproduce
these palaces in marble and offer them to
Uncle Sam for capitol?
AS have said the crowds are greatest
before the beautiful things the fountains,
the statues, the flowers, the pottery, the
paintings. Next to beauty it seems the
people love power. A curious test of this
is found in that part Of Machinery hall
where the II ghty energies Of steam are
converted into the magic current of cleo
tricity. Go any hour you WILL and in the
huge boiler house may be seen as many
people as the narrow gallery will hold. A
boiler house is not usually considered
much of a show place. It is rather dull,
somewhat grimy, damp, odorsome Prob
ably this explains why the projectors of
the building made far too little provision
for visitors here. But while one boiler is a
tame and uninteresting thing hundred
boilers set all in q row, and extending in
true perspective to the vanishing point,
become at once majestic and inspiring.
They form an aggregate of power which
awe and overwhelm and at the same time
fascinate, just as the man who has been
accustomed all his life to handling one
dollar bills will gasp for breath when con-
fronted by million dollars tied up in one
package.
1t is not surprising that the mighty en-
gines, which are a mere manifestation Of
the power which the one-ffth of mile of
boilers generate, should fascinate their
tens of thousands hour after hour They
have motion, action, grace, ostentation,
while the boilers are seemingly dead and
lifeless. The neighborhood of the fifty en-
gines, therefore, is one spot where room is
always at a premium. A spectacle worth
travelling miles to behold it is, and
"power" is the one word that affords
key to the fascination. The engines charm
with their motion, and with the amazing
Gghtness and almost noiselessness Of their
movement. But the huge dynamos fas-
cinate with the double force Of power and
mystery. The crowds are always thick
where the dynamos are. Electricity is to
the masses an industrial occult, mechan-
ical spiritualism. They eagerly follow the
mysterious current through all its mani
festations, and admire though they under
stand not.
One will always find large crowd
around the printing presses, too. These
machines are used in the actual printing
OF real newspapers, and though the art
which helps preserve all other arts is no
longer species of necromancy, it is the
hight Of the useful and the beautiful in
mechanics, and exercises a strange fascina-
ton over the multitude. Then the crowds,
still loving power, go to see the mighty
Krupp gun which to most people is a lit
tie disappointing. 1t is not as large as ex-
~, l. 49,
mends it, either, for it is as ugly as war
itself
A locomotive, though commonplace, is
always interesting, and when q hundred
thousand people get chance to see the
first locomotive used in America, progeni-
tor of 200, 900 more worthy sons, YOU NAV
be sure they will avail themselves thereof
Hence "John Bull No. u is always sur.
rounded by admiring thousands. So is the
English locomotive with its lines which to
us seem SO ugly. This is real locomotive.
and the steamships which are shown near
by in the same building are mere models;
but the latter have beauty in their lines
and they attract more visitors than the
land travellers.
Ii were to persist in telling you of the
things which attract crowds of unusual
thickness-if l attempted to penetrate
every ring Of humanity and show you
what was in their center in one letter I
should be called on to describe a thousand
matters each one of which is worth a col
umn. But in closing must say, as proof
OF my theory, that beauty is the strongest
attraction for the masses, that the Japa-
nese temple on the wooded island, conced-
eddy one Of the most beautiful structures
in the exposition-not only temple but
picture, framed in sandal wood and BAN
boo and warmed with touches of exquisite
color-is one of the Columbian attractions
which nine visitors out of ten think they
must see during their first visit
There are plenty of people who spend
half of their time amid the glories of the
statuary with which the grounds and
buildings are replete, or with the flowers
and plants of Horticultural hall and it's
surrounding greeneries. Others never tire
of filing the eye with the things which
are simply vast and therefore typical of the
greatspower which created them. Since
beauty and power are the magician's
wands, the feminine and masculine of
things inanimate, it Is pleasant to know
that the prestidigitators who created this
exposition have set in their park here in
Vulnerable things which speak one or the
other, and many which breathe both.
WALTER WELLMAN.
The viking shin which ia tn he exhibited