Our Show: A Humorous Account of the International Exposition in Honor of the Centennial Anniversary of American Independence, from Inception to Completion, Including Description of Buildings, Biographies of Managers, Receptions of Foreign Dignitaries, Opening Ceremonies, Poem, Oration, Amusing Survey of All Departments, Incidents, Etc., Etc.Cohen, David Solis
History
Our Show: A Humorous Account of the International Exposition in Honor of the Centennial Anniversary of American Independence, from Inception to Completion, Including Description of Buildings, Biographies of Managers, Receptions of Foreign Dignitaries, Opening Ceremonies, Poem, Oration, Amusing Survey of All Departments, Incidents, Etc., Etc.
On the tenth day of September the charge for admission to the Exposition
was reduced one-half for the time of its continuance. This action
occasioned a great influx of European nobility and gentry, parties who
had been waiting for the reduction, and the extreme capacity of the
various steamship lines was taxed for their accommodation. Baron
Rothschild, Baroness Burdett Coutts, and the Marquis of Lorne were among
those who gave a new spurt of brilliancy to the affair. The poor Greeks
came too, during these months, and their eminent countryman A. T.
Stewart also made his first appearance upon the grounds.
By this time most of the potentates had departed. We had become so used
to affecting farewells, that the tears started voluntarily to our eyes
whenever we chanced to hear a steamboat bell or a locomotive whistle.
Only one of the potentates left without paying his hotel bill, a most
gratifying fact. We refrain from mentioning his name out of
consideration for his family.
Things in general, out upon the grounds and in the buildings, began to
look seedy, and the combined action of the Chinese and Japanese
Commissioners, in summarily shutting up their portion of the show and
going home, was productive of a general feeling of listlessness, a sort
of forewarning of the end. We are sure that everything was done that
could be done to please these pigtailed and pig-headed Celestials, but
the fact is, the old boy himself couldn’t satisfy them. We have no
desire to record anything harsh, but we deem it our plain duty to state
clearly, for the vindication of our beloved country in the eyes of
posterity, what really occasioned this sudden move.
Every candid reader will admit that it could by no possibility prove an
easy task to supply, for the many varieties of visitors of such
different tastes and habits, a full and liberal allowance of palatable
food, such as that to which they had been accustomed. After the episode
of the Sandwich Island Commission which we have noted, the gentlemen of
this delegation were given free run of the anatomical departments of
Jefferson Medical College and the University, and the Executive
Committee congratulated itself that they, at least, were provided for.
And so they were. No more waiters were missed during the entire time of
their stay. But suddenly, there was a revolution at the “Globe Hotel”
and a mutiny at the “Transcontinental.”
[GIVE ’EM RATS!]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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