The Newtown bee., 1901-07-05
LOCAL AFFAIRS. GOING TO THE "PAN."

LOCAL AFFAIRS.
 GOING TO THE "PAN."
 REV OTIS W. BARKER WRITES FOR THE BEE ABOUT HIS TRIP TO THE GREAT BUFFALO EXPOSITION.-IT IS WORTH
 GOING TO sEE.-CAsH IN YOUR PoCK- EFT IS NOT ALL YOU WANT.-THE BIGGEST AND BEST OF ALL FAIRS. ''It is only the rich who enjoy life." We'll, my dear friend, if you don't range yourself among the 15,000, 900 people who are going this summer and fall to Buffalo it will be your own fault. You should have been minister and so have been rich enough to go. All roads for the next six months are going to lead to the city between the two | lakes; and if you are not on the tramp | over one of these roads, you will make a big mistake. I met minister out 1 there. He was for years missionary in India under the American Board, and you know what munificent salaries | missionaries receive. He had just re- signed from little back-country, hill l side Connecticut Congregational church where, l suppose, he had had a yearly stipend of about $500; and yet
 
 week with his wife! But when I saw him, he had a small paper parcel under his arm, which evidently contained his lunch. You see that he had swal- | lowed his pride before he essayed to l swallow his lunch. You have too I much pride about you; that is the l reason you cannot go to the "Pan. You want to go on the Empire State Express tho matter how I went, that ic h,7cinocc\. nf fn r117f up at the IroQuoiS hotel in Buffalo 1 where the clerk has no compunctions of conscience whatever in telling you that your bill is $10 just for staying | over night; you want waiter to stand at your back while you are eating and | anticipate all your real and fancied l wants; you want to be one of the big bugs when you travel. The trouble with you, dear reader, is that you have like the frog who tried to swell him. self into being as big as an OK. I have | no objections to your travelling like ] Vanderbilt; but if you happen to be country parSOn, you cannot make your | salary and your notions hitch. I have been asked many times since return ed: Well, does it pay to go to Buff falo?" Oh, yes, 1t pays. The tri p will not put much cash % in your your pocket; ! deal out, but cash is not all you are after in this world. You do not want to be always seeking to put cash in your till; you want to put something in you brain, something in your mem- Ory. You want to have few extras laid away i'm Memory's casket, so that you can pull them out on the rainy, l dull day that so often comes, and look them over. Every life ought to have ! fny To ro1r rl1 life even ought to have few big things that it has done. I do not have much sympathy with the old type of farmer, whose generation, let us be thankful, is fast passing away, who has lived all his life within 40 miles of New York, but who has been too busy planting taters and feeding the pigs to take few days off to see how the other half lives. Go to Buffalo? Why, had to sell my last years OvercOat or go without pudding for the next three years. 1 don't believe you would miss 1 the pudding few years later on; but you would miss this great experience to think over in life'S declining days, when the days of activity were laid aside and there was little left in life but to think. Go to Buffalo? Why, yes, by all means I would go if I were ! Let me give you fact to null over, and you can ruminate upon it just as the COW ruminateS on these mighty hot days when she is lying down in l the pasture in the cooling shade. This is the fact: the Pan-American Exposi tiOn is the biggest thing this country has done yet, and the world is begin ming to think that our reputation de- pends on the doing of big things do l hirol% f0o t0 hot h ing of greater importance has happen ed in this country since the time when Christopher Columbus ran his poor ship upon the sands of Guanahani. You say: 'I have been to the Pan
 American, and I don't agree with you." don't care whether you do or
 not. am writing these articles for
 THE BEE, not you; and the good
 natured Smithy let's me express any
 cut down his list of subscribers. If
 you object to what 1 say, you can
 "write up'' the Fair yourself; and I'll
 read your sketches very patiently and
 not utter word of protest.
 How big is this Fair? We'll, to tell
 how big it is, let us go back a little
 into history; and we shall get at this
 Fairs bigness by coming up a gradu-
 ated scale. When l was a boy l re- ! u1ciuUcl 1OlhS pay lllS SOOu OCdl dUoOU
 the Worlds Fair at the Crystal Palace
 in London. It was held just 50 years
 ago (see here, do not mean that that
 Fair was held when I was a boy;
 mean that folks were recalling it then
 as a memory. That was the first
 Universal Exposition, and it set the
 ball a-rolling in pretty good style. Then, as a sort of Halfway House
 up the mountain of the worlds
 achievement, came our own Centennial
 at Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, in
 1876. Didn't we feel big Ov CT that though? A good deal as Will Carleton
 represents the first settler as feeling big over the first baby that came along
 out there in the clearing among the wolves and the bears. The Centennial
 was a pretty big thing; but there was
 hardly scintillating spark of elec-
 tricity about it, and Electricity makes
 the Pan-American the big and glorious
 exposition that it is. l was small
 chap then. It was getting way along
 in October in the very closing days of
 the big show. All my family, except
 myself, had been to the City of Broth
 erly Love. Through the long sum-
 mer months I had not cared very much
 about it; but one evening it came over
 me like an inspiration that l wished
 to go, in fact that ought to go, and l
 stirred up such rumpus aboutit that 1 think, simply to preserve peace in the household it was decided that l could go with a kind friend of the
 family, and l was hustled off the next : day. A few things stare at me yet out