Charles Dudley Warner, "Wonder of a World: So the Great Fair is Characterized by a Noted Writer." Chicago Tribune. July 30, 1893. (Excerpts)
Charles Dudley Warner in the Hartford Courant:If any word I could write would induce anyone to visit the World's Fair at Chicago I would put it in italics. It is worth any reasonable sacrifice of money and time. Better economize in other ways than to miss an experience which will be food for the thought of all after years. There has, I am sure, been no spectacle equal to it before and there will be nothing like it in our generation. Probably the nearest approach to it in architectural beauty was the Rome of the Caesars, but the splendor of this city of palaces on a lagoon today has elements of beauty that were lacking to the Via Sacra... We have here the effect of water, which reminds us of Venice, and we have the witchery of the electric lights, which for the first time in history have been used to illuminate such a noble scene....
To one who studies the Fair two things are special causes of wonder. One is that this marvelous thing could have been erected in the short time it was erected in. It is safe to say that no other nation could have done it -- and it is safe to say that no other community in all history except the Chicago community could have done it. In no other city in the United States is there the requisite public spirit, generosity, and headlong energy...
The other wonderful thing is the mind that is put into the conception of the scheme and the administrative detail with which it is carried out. Nothing seems to have been neglected. The more we study the details of administration in any branch the more we are impressed with this. For the workmen in this splendid city the night must be as busy as the day. All the supplies are taken in after 11 o'clock at night. All the refuse is then gathered and taken to the crematories to be burned. During the day from 50,000 to 200,000 people (on special days more) are transported there, are carried about by the boats and chairs and the intramural railway, are fed, looked after by the ambulances and the hospitals, guarded, protected, and amused, and leave everywhere the litter of their lunch baskets. And every morning the city is spick and clean again. We are greatly impressed by the mind that conceived this splendid city of the lagoon, that made it so harmonious, that decorated it with statuary, and adorned it with native and exotic plants, but after all the administrative detail excites fully as much wonder....
Never before was such variety of entertainment offered at one time and place. To pass by the exhibits themselves, which one cannot walk through and glance at in less than a month, and the scene at night when the buildings are illuminated and the many-colored electric fountains are playing, and the floating about in this fairy land in the electric launches and gondolas, there is the great variety of races on exhibition. Paris probably had a greater variety of Oriental people, but ours is a greater world spectacle. We have here the Esquimaux, several tribes of our own Indians, and the Mexicans and South Americans. To them we add the South Sea Island colony. These latter contrast in their barbarous dances with the colony from Dahomey. The Orient is also here in force, the Chinese and Japanese with theaters and tea-houses, the Persians with theaters and dances, the Turks, the Egyptians, the East Indians, the Ceylonese, the Javanese (with the most interesting village, theater, and orchestra of the grounds), and all sorts of acrobats, dancing girls, and merrymakers from strange lands. Then Europe itself has put itself here bodily in Irish villages, German villages, a complete reproduction of Old Vienna of the fifteenth century, and so on and so on. There is also music to be heard everywhere, and from some of the best bands in the world.
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