But in 1904 there came that greater fair--the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, to which the world was bidden. It was a really great fair and it has left a permanent impress upon the town in the form of a fine Art Gallery and the splendid group of buildings at the west edge of the city which are being devoted to the uses of Washington University. But the big fair spelled the doom of the smaller. The town had grown out around its grounds and they were no longer in the country. So the career of the old St. Louis Fair ended--brilliantly in that not-to-be-forgotten exposition. Although some attempts have recently been made to reëstablish it in another part of the town, the older folk of St. Louis shake their heads. They very well know that you cannot bring the old days back by the mere waving of a wand. Upon a crisp October evening, the Veiled Prophet still makes his way through the narrow streets of the town. The preparations for his coming are hedged about with greatest secrecy, and the young girls of St. Louis grow expectant just as their mothers and their grandmothers before them used to grow expectant when October came close at hand. At last, expectancy rewarded--out of the unknown an engraved summons to attend the court of a single night--with the engraved summons some souvenir of no slight worth; the prophet's favor is a generous one. Absurd, you say? Not a bit of it. It is a pity that we do not have more of it in our land. We have been rather busy grubbing; given ourselves rather too much to utility and efficiency, to the sordid business of merely making money. A Veiled Prophet is a good thing for a town, a Mardi Gras a tonic. It is an idea that is spreading across America, and America is profiting by it. * * * * * This is a personality sketch of St. Louis and not a guide-book. If it were the latter, it would recount the superb commercial position of the city, each of the bulwarks of its financial fortresses. The river-trade is dead indeed; even the most optimistic of those who are most anxious to see it revived doubt, in their heart of hearts, if ever it can be revived. But commerce is not dead at St. Louis. As St. Paul and Minneapolis are gateways to the Northwest remember that she is one of the great gateways to the Southwest. To the man in Arkansas or Oklahoma or Texas she is another New York; she stands to him as London stands to the folk of the English counties. And this relation she capitalizes and so grows rich. She is solid and substantial--the old French town of the yesterdays has taken her permanent place among the leading cities of America. 15 THE OLD FRENCH LADY OF THE RIVERBANK