What We Saw At Madame World's Fair. Gordon Elizabeth

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СКАЧАТЬ OR Music, whom Madame World loves very much, she has provided an imposing palace worthy indeed for so great a goddess.

      It has a wonderful arched entrance, with statues of mythological meanings, which father explained to us, but we liked best little Pan, who sits at the left of the entrance. He has charmed with his pipes a chameleon, who has come to his feet to listen to the music.

      We often amuse ourselves by wondering how many panes of glass there are in the great dome of the hall, but father says there is no way to be sure.

      But it is a very large hall, and will hold about four thousand people, and is not large enough even at that. Music has so many adorers, many of whom have made a pilgrimage to hear her, and who dislike being disappointed.

      To this palace will come while the Fair lasts all the worshipers of Music, and all the world’s great orchestras, with their distinguished leaders.

      Even the Boston Symphony, which so seldom ever leaves its own beloved city, is here for a season.

      The Goddess of Flowers and the Goddess of Music are first cousins, and so the lovely grounds are always crowded full of the dear little Flower people, standing on their tiptoes to catch the strains of music as they float out from the palace.

      There are whole fields full of Pansies, in their gorgeous yellow, and brown and purple dresses, and the golden-hearted Shasta Daisies have crowded close up to the palace walls. The lovely Lady Hydrangeas, who wear a different gown for each month in the year, seem eager not to lose a note, and the dainty Heaths come hurrying and laughing up the walk from the Avenue of Palms, beckoning the baby Blue Gums across the way to come closer.

      The darling naughty little California Poppies, who always go just where they please, have simply broken loose and are everywhere you go, while the Canterbury Bells, little rogues, who were expressly told to stay in their own back yard, have come out in front and cuddled themselves at the feet of the Lady Eucalyptus, who has thrown her bluish-green robe over them, so that they may stay and hear the music.

      Everything around Festival Hall is harmonious and beautiful, and the glorious sunshine is over all, and the salt breezes from the bay, whose work it is to keep the air always clear and health-giving, are never idle.

      Madame World was a wise mother when she chose this spot for her Fair.

Your loving cousins,JANE AND ELLEN.

      THE PALACE OF VARIED INDUSTRIES

      DEAR COUSINS:

      T HE Palace of Varied Industries, where we spend a good deal of time, is a beautiful building in the old California Mission style, and has some fine doorways. The statuary used around the building is meant to say that work is honorable and desirable.

      It is wonderful how many kinds of work there are in the world. We never stopped to think until we came to this Fair, that everything that is made has first to be thought out. And then all the little things that go with it have to be thought out, even to a little flower in the wall paper, or the way icing is put on a cake.

      All Madame World’s families have sent samples of work to this palace: There are the loveliest little hand-knitted sweater dresses for children from the Argentine, laces from Spain, cocoanut fibre hats from the Philippine Islands, wood-carvings from Switzerland, and some equally as pretty from South Carolina made by boys in a private school.

      Mrs. Adelaide Robineau has some wonderful porcelains from Syracuse, New York, which are very beautiful.

      We admired the jewelry; there are gems of all sorts in hand-wrought mountings, both ancient and modern.

      There are wonderful opals, tinted like the gleam in a bubble, some very lustrous pearls, which you would think were worth the king’s ransom which you always read about in stories, but which are made from the scales of a little three-inch fish found in Russian waters.

      We nearly forgot to tell you about the silkworm exhibition. It was the thing we liked best in the whole palace. The silkworms eat a very great amount of mulberry leaves, and are most inexcusably particular about their diet, and when they are ready they go into their cocoons, and that is the last of them.

      Only a few are allowed to become butterflies, but they are not pretty butterflies, anyway. When they have spun enough, and just before they would hatch and spoil the silk, they are sterilized, and then the silk can be unwound. They were doing that when we saw them, and they have a delicate machine which winds the silk into nice soft yellow skeins, ready to be woven. It is one of California’s new industries, and will be more profitable as time goes on.

      There are so many things to choose from, we are not able as yet to decide what we shall do.

Your loving cousins,JANE AND ELLEN.

      THE PALACE OF MACHINERY

      DEAR COUSINS:

      T HE Palace of Machinery is just across the Avenue of Progress from the Palace of Mines, and is an imposing building of great beauty, as befits a god of so much power and importance. It covers nine acres of ground, and seems to suggest strength. Father tells us that it is the largest wooden structure in the world. He says that six million feet of lumber were required for sheathing it and four carloads of nails and fifteen hundred tons of bolts and washers were used in building it.

      We found many things of interest – machines for drilling oil wells, and machines for refining the oil, machines for crushing great rocks, and machines for making roads. There were canning machines, gas engines, giant printing-presses, bookbinding machinery and all sorts of electrical devices. Father says that every machinery appliance that has been invented is shown here in completest detail.

      There was a knife in one exhibit which opened and shut all by itself; it was a giant knife, and we said to each other that perhaps a gnome was making it open and shut. A little boy who was near said, “Aw! Sillies! It goes by machinery!” So then, of course, we knew!

      There were some moving-picture machines in the palace, but we did not see them work, and we are going back there some day. In all the palaces they have wonderful “movies,” and sometimes we go to them while father looks at things.

      We find that it is better not to get too tired, so we went and sat in the Avenue of Progress and listened to a band which was playing, until father came out, and then we came home. It was a heavy day, seeing so much massive machinery, and we were a little tired, but very glad that we had seen it all.

Your loving cousins,JANE AND ELLEN.

      THE PALACE OF MINES

      DEAR COUSINS:

      T HE Palace of Mines is a most interesting Palace, built in the Spanish style, with some very fine doorways or portals.

      Inside we found so many things of interest that we were quite surprised, as we had not expected to be so very much interested in mines. Father says that we came to this Fair to learn about the things in it, and mines are very important. We began to think he was right, when we saw the two big balls of gold which show where the most gold comes from, and how much is mined every year.

      Gold mines are not the only kind that are valuable. So many things come from mines which we had never even wondered about before, that we wonder now at our former ignorance. Jewels of every kind come from the ground – lovely opals and diamonds, and our СКАЧАТЬ