Some Artists at the Fair

John Stuart Mill · en
[Illustration: LIGHTING THE NATURAL GAS TORCHES ON THE ROOF OF THE
ADMINISTRATION BUILDING.]

enjoy it, rise obedient to one’s thought in aftertime. Such a memory is
that of a first sunny morning in Paris: a ride from the Madeleine across
the Place de la Concorde, along the Tuileries Gardens and the Louvre,
across the Seine with the island and Notre Dame in the distance, and
then through older Paris to the gardens of the Luxembourg. Or again, a
certain early moonlit evening in Florence, with the Duomo looming at the
end of the street, Giotto’s Campanile standing sentinel at its side, the
narrow street to the Piazza della Signoria with its Palazzo Vecchio and
the Loggia dei Lanzi, thence by the side of the Uffizi to the Arno and
across the Ponte Vecchio up to the Pitti Palace. These memories, common
to so many, are often gained on ground made familiar through study of
guide-books and photographs which, instead of dulling realization, add
to it the zest of more thorough appreciation. In like manner, study,
discussion, photographs, and engravings prepare one for the Columbian
Exposition; but the first few hours of living in its architectural
dreamland gives reality to the shadowy preconception, and adds the
priceless gift of another masterpiece to memory’s picture-gallery.

It is probably impracticable in any case, and when we think of the
transformation that this prairie has witnessed in two short years, quite
impossible, in the case of the Exposition, to keep the approaches of a
great popular resort in any degree beautiful. Here we have on the land
side of the Fair the usual assemblage of cheap shows, lemonade venders,
and the like, which line the unsightly fence and make up what a friend
has dubbed the Sideway Unpleasant. The fence is hard to pardon in a land
where energy is predominant, desire to do the best not wanting, and
_staff_ abundant. A high white wall enclosing the substantial fabric of
their dream would have done much to give the western approach something
of the festal magnificence which the architects have given to the
entrance by the Peristyle at the lake side.

[Illustration: AT NIGHT ON THE MIDWAY PLAISANCE.]