In a retrospect for our particular purpose, it is as well to grasp in some such general way the chief features of the event. For the year in which it had been actually incubating New York heard little and did not care much about it, and wakened very gradually to the great festal proportions it was to take. In fact people were returning to New York from mountain and seaside after the heats of Summer before they clearly understood how much was afoot in the way of civic entertainment. New York’s self-consciousness differs from that of every other American city. There is, for instance, no feeling that its greatness needs proclamation. It is not worried about its growth: it has been always growing. It is imaginatively undisturbed about its future: it is too busy to trouble about its past. Perhaps it has never taken to any civic phrase more kindly than describing itself as “little old New York,” while it knows it is not little, and if it has any municipal thrill it is over its modernity. Here was something coming which might be thought of as an attempt to awaken “the Chicago feeling” in Gotham—that is a somewhat delirious sensation of the bumptious and divinely ordained, the throbbing of the inflamed nerve of Destiny. In a way of its own New York gave way to it. The city began to hum, and when the time came in September’s days of warm colors and genial airs the people were ready to cheer, to march, to sail in line, to celebrate. ORGANIZATION OF THE IRISH PARTICIPATION. It was during the months of the previous springtime that the Irish share in the celebration took shape, when Hermann Ridder met the representatives of the Irish societies, and stating briefly but clearly the general plan of the celebration, called for 10,000 Irishmen to take part in the Historical civic parade. And to this they agreed. In a compendious sketch he described the divisions of the procession and the historical floats that were to make part of each—the Indian period, the Dutch period, the Colonial period, the Revolutionary period, the Modern period. Over forty nationalities besides the native American were to be represented. To the Irish he conceded the right of the line. To them would be assigned certain historic floats. In the upbuilding of New York Mr. Ridder recognized that the immigrants from Europe had contributed the major share. In other words it had been fed with population mainly from oversea. Of the original Dutch stock but a trace remained: it had largely scattered or died out. The early English stock had similarly passed on. The influx from rural America or other American towns and cities had been constant and latterly was increasing. Still the immigrant and the children of the immigrant preponderated in the great city. [Illustration: ROBERT FULTON ESQ^R From a Celebrated Picture through the Courtesy of Vice-President Joseph I. C. Clarke of New York. ]