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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE

April, 1876.

Vol. XVII, No. 100.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE CENTURY ITS FRUITS AND ITS FESTIVAL.
IV.--THE CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION UNDER ROOF.

SKETCHES OF INDIA.
IV.--CONCLUSION.

THE COLLEGE STUDENT by JAMES MORGAN HART.

SONNET by MAURICE THOMPSON.

THE HOUSE THAT SUSAN BUILT by SARAH WINTER KELLOGG.

AFTER A YEAR by KATE HILLARD.

THE BERKSHIRE LADY by THOMAS HUGHES.

THE SABBATH OF THE LOST

THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS by MRS. E. LYNN LINTON.
CHAPTER XXIX. THE FRIEND OF THE FUTURE.
CHAPTER XXX. MAYA--DELUSION.
CHAPTER XXXI. BY THE BROAD.
CHAPTER XXXII. PALMAM QUI NON MERUIT.

THE SING-SONG OF MALY COE by CHARLES G. LELAND.

LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA BY LADY BARKER.

DINNER IN A STATE PRISON by MARGARET HOSMER.

FAREWELL by AUBER FORESTIER.

THE INSTRUCTION OF DEAF MUTES by JENNIE EGGLESTON ZIMMERMAN.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
THE CITY OF VIOLETS by ELISE POLKO.
LA BEFANA.
ERNESTO ROSSI.
BISHOP THIRLWALL'S PRECOCITY.
FREAKS OF KLEPTOMANIA.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
BOOKS RECEIVED.

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE BRIDGE ACROSS LANSDOWNE RAVINE, CONNECTING MEMORIAL AND
HORTICULTURAL HALLS.
GIRARD AVENUE BRIDGE--ONE OF THE APPROACHES TO THE EXHIBITION GROUNDS.
MAIN BUILDING.
MACHINERY HALL.
HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY, PRESIDENT OF THE CENTENNIAL COMMISSION.
GENERAL ALFRED T. GOSHORN, DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE CENTENNIAL
COMMISSION.
JOHN WELSH, ESQ., PRESIDENT OF THE CENTENNIAL BOARD OF FINANCE.
AGRICULTURAL BUILDING.
HORTICULTURAL HALL.
MEMORIAL HALL, WITH EXTENSION.
INDIGO-FACTORY NEAR ALLAHABAD.
MUSSULMAN SCHOOL AT ALLAHABAD.
MALERS AND SONTALS.
GRAIN-AND-FLOUR MERCHANT OF PATNA.
A TIGER-HUNT, ELEPHANT-BACK.
BENGAL WATER-CARRIERS.
BRAHMANS OF BENGAL.
BENGALESE OF LOW CASTE.
CHARIOT OF THE PROCESSION OF THE RATTJATTRA, AT JAGHERNATH.
THE PORT OF CALCUTTA.

LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.

APRIL, 1876.
Vol. XVII, No. 100.

THE CENTURY ITS FRUITS AND ITS FESTIVAL.

IV.--THE CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION UNDER ROOF.

[Illustration: THE BRIDGE ACROSS LANSDOWNE RAVINE, CONNECTING MEMORIAL
AND HORTICULTURAL HALLS.]

None of the European exhibitions we have sketched partook of the
nature of an anniversary or was designed to commemorate an historical
event. Some idea of celebrating the close of the calendar half-century
may have helped to determine the choice of 1851 as the year for
holding the first London fair; but if so, it was only with reference
to the general progress during this period, and not to any notable
fact at its commencement. Still less did the later exhibitions owe any
portion of their significance and interest to their connection with a
date. They afforded occasion for comparison and rivalry, but no shape
loomed up out of the past claiming to preside over the festival, to
have its toils and achievements remembered, and to be credited with a
share in the production of the harvests garnered by its successors.

In our case it is very different. Here was the birth-year of the Union
coming apace. It forced itself upon our contemplation. It appealed
not merely to the average passion of grown-up boys for hurrahs,
gun-firing, bell-ringing, and rockets sulphureous and oratorical. It
addressed us in a much more sober tone and assumed a far more
didactic aspect. Looking from its throne of clouds o'er half the (New)
World--and indeed, as we have shown, constructively over the Old as
well--it summoned us to the wholesome moral exercise of pausing a
moment in our rapid career to revert to first principles, moral,
social and political, and to explore the germs of our marvelous
material progress. Nor could we assume this office as exclusively for
our own benefit. The rest of Christendom silently assigned it to the
youngest born for the common good. Circumstances had placed in our
hands the measuring-rod of Humanity's growth, and all stood willing to
gather upon our soil for its application, so far as that could be
made by the method devised and perfected within the past quarter of
a century. It was here, a thousand leagues away from the scene of the
first enterprise of the kind, that the culminating experiment was to
be tried.

[Illustration: GIRARD AVENUE BRIDGE--ONE OF THE APPROACHES TO THE
EXHIBITION GROUNDS.]

To what point on a continent as broad as the Atlantic were they to
come? The European fairs were hampered with no question of locality.
That Austria should hold hers at Vienna, France at Paris, and Britain
at London, were foregone conclusions. But the United States have a
plurality of capitals, political, commercial, historical and State.
Washington, measured by house-room and not by magnificent distances,
was too small. New York, acting with characteristic haste, had already
indulged in an exposition, and it lacked, moreover, the rich cluster
of associations that might have hallowed its claims as the "commercial
metropolis." Among the State capitals Boston alone had the needed
historical eminence, but, besides the obvious drawback of its
situation, its capacity and its commissariat resources, except for
a host of disembodied intellects, must prove insufficient. There
remained the central city of the past, the seat of the Continental
Congress, of the Convention and of the first administrations under
the Constitution which it framed--the halfway-house between North and
South of the early warriors and statesmen, and the workshop in which
the political machinery that has since been industriously filed at
home and more or less closely copied abroad was originally forged.
Where else could the two ends of the century be so fitly brought
together? Here was the Hall of 1776; the other hall that nearly two
years earlier received the first assemblage of "that hallowed name
that freed the Atlantic;" the modest building in a bed-chamber of
which the Declaration of Independence was penned; and other localities
rich with memories of the men of our heroic age.

The space of a few blocks covered the council-ground of the Union.
Those few acres afforded room enough for the beating of its political
heart for twenty-five years, from the embryonic period to that of
maturity--from the meeting of a consulting committee of subject
colonists to the establishment of unchallenged and symmetrical
autonomy.

The growth of Philadelphia from this contracted germ was only less
remarkable than that of the government. The capital of the provincial
rebels had expanded into one fit for an empire, comparable to Vienna
as a site for a World's Exposition and a caravanserai for those who
should attend it. Such advantages would have caused its selection had
the question been submitted in the first instance to the unbiased vote
of various quarters of the Union, all expected and all prepared to
contribute an equal quota, according to population and means, of the
cost. But the enterprise of the community itself anticipated such
decision. Its own citizens hastened to appropriate the idea and
shoulder the responsibility. They felt that the standpoint wherefrom
they were able to address their countrymen was a commanding one, and
they lost no time in lifting up their voice. Aware that those who
take the initiative have always to carry more than their share of the
burden, they were very moderate in their calls for aid; and the demand
for that they rested chiefly upon the same ground which naturally
sustained part of their own calculations of reimbursement in some
shape, direct or indirect--local self-interest. The dislike to the
entire loss of a large outlay on an uncertain event is not peculiar to
this commercial age. Appeals on the side of patriotism and of
public enthusiasm over the jubilee of a century would be at least as
effective with the American people as with any other in the world;
but they could not be expected to be all-powerful, and to need no
assistance from the argument of immediate and palpable advantage.
In default of subscriptions to the main fund from distant towns and
States, these were invited to provide for the cost of collecting,
transporting and arranging their individual shares of the display.
This they have generally, and in many cases most liberally, done, in
addition to direct subscriptions greater in amount than the provinces
of either Austria, France or England made to their respective
expositions. Withal, it could surprise no one that Pennsylvania and
her chief city would have to be the main capitalists of an undertaking
located on their own soil.

These came forward with a promptness that at once raised the movement
above the status of a project. The city with a million and a half, and
the State with a million, replenished the exchequer of the association
after a fashion that ensured in every quarter confidence in its
success, and at the same time extinguished what little disposition
may have been manifested elsewhere to cavil at the choice of location.
These large subventions very properly contemplated something more than
the encouragement of a transient display, and were for the most part
devoted to the erection of structures of a permanent character, such
as the Art-Gallery or Memorial Hall and the Horticultural Building. To
endowments of this description, called forth by the occasion, we might
add the Girard Avenue Bridge, the finest in the country, erected by
the city at the cost of a million and a half, and leading direct to
the exhibition grounds. The concession of two hundred and sixty
acres of the front of Fairmount Park, with the obliteration of costly
embellishments that occupied the ground taken for the new exposition
buildings, may be viewed in the light of another contribution.

[Illustration: MAIN BUILDING.]

A treasury meant to accommodate seven millions of dollars--three
millions less than the Vienna outlay--still showed an aching void,
which was but partially satisfied by the individual subscriptions of
Philadelphians. It became necessary to sound the financial tocsin
in the ears of all the Union. Congress, States, cities, counties,
schools, churches, citizens and children were appealed to for
subscriptions. The shares were fixed at the convenient size of ten
dollars each, hardly the market-value of the stock-certificate,
"twenty-four by twenty inches on the best bank-note paper," which
became the property of each fortunate shareholder on the instant of
payment. But these seductive pictures belonged to a class of art with
which the moneyed public had become since '73 unhappily too familiar.
They had to jostle, in the gallery of the stock-market, a vast
and various collection exhaustive of the whole field of allegory,
mythological and technical, and framed in the most bewitching aureoles
of blue, red and green printer's ink. It seemed in '72 much more
probable that the Coon Swamp and Byzantium Trans-Continental Railway
would be able, the year after completion, to pay eight per cent. on
fifty thousand dollars of bonds to the mile, sold at seventy in the
hundred, than it did in '75 that ten millions of fifty-cent tickets
could be disposed of in six months at any point on the Continent. Thus
it happened that the exchange of Mr. Spinner's twenty square inches of
allegory for the three square feet of Messrs. Ferris & Darley's went
on slowly, and it became painfully obvious that the walls of but an
imperceptible minority of American homes would have the patriotic
faith and fervor of their occupants attested a century hence by these
capacious engravings, as that of a hundred years ago is by rusty
muskets and Cincinnati diplomas.

Still, the stock did not altogether go a-begging. The adjacent
State of New Jersey signed for the sum of $100,000, more remote New
Hampshire and Connecticut for $10,000 each, and little Delaware for
the same. Kansas gave $25,000. Five thousand were voted by the city
of Wilmington, and a thin fusillade of ten-dollar notes played slowly
from all points of the compass. This was kept up to the last, and with
some increase of activity, but it was a mere affair of pickets, that
could not be decisive.

Undismayed, the managers fought their way through fiscal brake and
brier, the open becoming more discernible with each effort, till in
February, 1876, Congress rounded off their strong box with the neat
capping of a million and a half. The entire cost of administration and
construction was thus covered, and the association distinguished from
all its predecessors by the assurance of being able on the opening day
to invite its thousands of guests to floors laden with the wealth of
the world, but with not an ounce of debt.

The assistance extended in another and indirect form by the States
collectively and individually was valuable. Congress appropriated
$505,000 for the erection of a building and the collection therein
of whatever the different Federal departments could command of the
curious and instructive. Massachusetts gave for a building of her own,
and for aiding the contribution of objects by her citizens, $50,000;
New York for a like purpose, $25,000; New Hampshire, Nevada and West
Virginia, $20,000 each; Ohio, $13,000; Illinois, $10,000; and
other States less sums. The States in all, and in both forms of
contribution, have given over four hundred thousand dollars--not
a fourth, strange to say, of the sums appropriated by foreign
governments in securing an adequate display of the resources, energy
and ingenuity of their peoples. It does not approach the donation of
Japan, and little more than doubles that of Spain. In explanation, it
may be alleged that our exhibitors, being less remote, will encounter
less expense, and a larger proportion of them will be able to face
their own expenses.

Great as is the value to a country of a free and facile interchange of
commodities and ideas between its different parts, of not less--under
many circumstances far greater--importance is its wide and complete
intercourse with foreign lands. Provincial differences are never
so marked as national. The latter are those of distinct
idiosyncrasies--the former, but modifications of one and the same. To
study members of our own family is only somewhat to vary the study of
ourselves. Really to learn we must go outside of that circle. Hence
the tremendous effect of the world-searching commerce of modern times
in the enlightenment and enrichment of the race.

For the best fruits of the exposition its projectors and all concerned
in its success looked abroad. In this estimate of highest results they
had the example of Europe. It was remembered that British exports
rose from one hundred and thirty-one millions sterling in 1850 to two
hundred and fourteen in 1853--an increase equal to our average annual
export at present, and double what it was at that time. The declared
satisfaction of Austria with her apparent net loss of seven millions
of dollars by the exhibition of 1873, in view of the offset she
claimed in the stimulus it gave to her domestic industry and the
extended market it earned for her foreign trade, was also eloquent. We
must therefore address the world in the way most likely to ensure its
attention and attendance. The chief essential to that end was that it
should be official. Government must address government.

[Illustration: MACHINERY HALL.]

Naturally, this necessity was apparent from the beginning. Congress
was addressed betimes, and the consequence was a sufficiently sonorous
act of date March 3, 1871, assuming in the title to "provide for
celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of American independence."
It made, however, no provision at all for that purpose financially. On
the contrary, it provided very stringently that the Federal treasury
should not be a cent the worse for anything contained in the bill. It
furnished, however, the stamp wanted. It "created" the United States
Centennial Commission, and it directed the President, as soon as
the private corporators should have perfected their work, to address
foreign nations, through their diplomatic representatives and our
own, in its behalf. A commissioner and alternate were appointed by the
President, on the nomination of the respective governors, from each
State and Territory, who should have "exclusive control" of the
exhibition.

Subsequently, an act of June 1, 1872, established a Centennial Board
of Finance, as a body corporate, to manage the fisc of the exhibition,
provide ways and means for the construction of the buildings according
to the plans adopted by the commission, and after the close of the
exhibition to convert its property into cash and divide the same,
after paying debts, _pro rata_ among the stockholders. This was to be
done under the supervision of the commission, which was to wind up
the board, audit its accounts, and make report to the President of the
financial outcome of the affair. An inroad on the terms of this act
is made by the law of last winter, which makes preferred stock of
the million and a half then subscribed by the Federal government--a
provision, however, the literal enforcement of which, by the covering
back of so much money into the treasury of the United States, is,
in our opinion, not probable. It will doubtless be made a permanent
appropriation, in some form, for the promotion of the arts of industry
and taste.

Ten millions of dollars was the authorized capital of the new board.
Events have proved the amplitude of this estimate.

As early as the third day of July, 1873, the President was enabled,
by the notification of the governor of Pennsylvania, to make formal
proclamation that provision had been made for the completion of the
exposition structures by the time contemplated. Nearly three years was
thus allotted for preparation to home and foreign exhibitors. A
year later (June 5, 1874) an act of a single sentence requested the
President "to extend, in the name of the United States, a respectful
and cordial invitation to the governments of other nations to be
represented and take part in" the exposition; "_Provided, however_,
that the United States shall not be liable, directly or indirectly,
for any expenses attending such exposition, or by reason of the same."
The abundant caution of this _italically_ emphatic reservation will
scarcely preclude the extension to the representatives of foreign
governments of such measure of hospitality, on occasion, as they may
have in the like case offered our own.

Acts permitting the Centennial medals to be struck at the mint, and
admitting free of duty articles designed for exhibition, were passed
in June, 1874. The Secretary of the Treasury gave effect to the
latter by a clear and satisfactory schedule of regulations. Under its
operation foreign exhibitors have all their troubles at home; their
goods, once on board ship, reaching the interior of the building with
more facility and less of red tape than they generally meet with in
attaining the point of embarkation.

The answers of the nations were all that could be desired, and largely
beyond any anticipation. Their government appropriations will exceed
an aggregate of two millions in our currency. Great Britain, with
Australia and Canada, gives for the expenses of her share of the
display $250,000 in gold; France, $120,000; Germany, _$171,000_;
Austria, $75,000; Italy, $38,000 from the government direct, and the
same sum from the Chamber of Commerce, which is better, as indicating
enlightenment and energy among her business-men; Spain, amid all her
distractions, $150,000; Japan, an unknown quantity in the calculations
of 1851, no less than $600,000; Sweden, $125,000; Norway, $44,000;
Ecuador, $10,000; the Argentine Confederation, $60,000; and many
others make ample provision not yet brought to figures, among them
Egypt, China, Brazil, Chili, Venezuela, and that strange political
cousin of ours at the antipodes, begotten and sturdily nurtured by the
Knickerbockers, the Orange Free State. In all, we may reckon at forty
the governments which have made the affair a matter of public concern,
and have ranked with the ordinary and regular cares of administration
the interest of their people in being adequately represented at
Philadelphia. Many other states will be represented by considerable
displays sent at private expense. It results that we shall have
twenty-one acres under roof of the best products of the outer
world--more than the entire area of the London exposition of 1851. A
Muscovite journal, the _Golos_, expresses a wide popular sentiment in
declaring that our exposition "will have immense political importance
in the way of international relations." The people suspect they have
found what they have long needed--a great commercial, industrial and
political 'change to aid in regulating and equalizing the market of
ideas and making a common fund of that article of trade, circulating
freely and interchangeable everywhere at sight. Practically, the
territory of the United States is an island like Great Britain.
Everything that comes to Philadelphia, save a little from Canada, will
traverse the sea. We are assuming the metropolitan character, whereto
isolation is a step. All the imperial centres, old and new, have been
seated on islands or promontories. Look at England, Holland, Venice,
Carthage, Syracuse, Tyre, Rome and Athens. Shall we add New York and
San Francisco--little wards as they are of a continental metropolis?

A unanimous, graceful and cordial bow of acceptance having thus swept
round the globe in response to the invitation of the youngest
member of the family, let us glance at the preparations made for the
comfortable entertainment of so august an assemblage. An impression
that its host was not yet fully out of the woods, that the
chestnut-burs were still sticking in his hair, and that the wolf, the
buffalo and the Indian were among his intimate daily chums, may have
tended to modify its anticipations of a stylish reception. The rough
but hearty ways of a country cousin who wished to retaliate for city
hospitalities probably limited the calculations of the expectant
world. This afforded the cousin aforesaid opportunity for a new
surprise, of which he fully determined to avail himself. It is not
his habit to aim too low, and that was not his failing in the present
instance.

[Illustration: HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY, PRESIDENT OF THE CENTENNIAL
COMMISSION.]

The edifices, according to the original plan, were to excel their
European exemplars not less in elegance and elaboration than in
completeness for their practical purposes, in adaptation and in
capacity. The uncertainty, however, of success in raising the
necessary funds in time enforced the abandonment of much that was
merely ornate--a circumstance which was proved fortunate by the excess
in the demands of exhibitors over all calculations, since the means
it was at first proposed to bestow upon the artistic finish of the
buildings were needed to provide additional space. As it is, the
architectural results actually attained are above the average of such
structures in general effect. The Main Building strikes the eye, at an
angle of vision proper to its extent, more pleasingly than either
of the English or French structures; while for the massiveness and
dignity unattainable by glass and iron Memorial Hall has no rival
among them, and its facade is inferior chiefly in richness of detail
to the main entrance at Vienna. Were it otherwise, some shortcoming
in point of external beauty might be pardoned in erections which are
meant to stand but for a few months, and which can have no pretensions
to the monumental character belonging to true architecture.
Suitability to their transient purpose is the great thing to be
considered; and their merit in that regard is amply established.
Mr. P. Cunliffe Owen, familiar with all the minutiae of previous
expositions, declares them supreme "in thoroughness of plan and energy
of construction"--a judgment designed to coyer the whole conception
and administration of the exhibition, and one which, coming from a
disinterested and competent foreign observer, may be cited as an
amply expressive tribute to the zeal and fidelity of those in control.
Ex-Governor Hawley of Connecticut, president of the commission, is
a native of North Carolina, and brings to the cause a combination
of Southern ardor with Northern tenacity. The secretary of the
commission, Mr. John L. Campbell of Indiana, was a good second in
that bureaucratic branch of the management. The trying charge
of supervising the work generally, conducting negotiations and
correspondence, and leading as one harmonious body to the objective
point of success an army of artists, contractors, superintendents,
clerks, exhibitors, railroad companies and State and national
commissioners, fell to General A.T. Goshorn of Ohio, director-general.
We do not know that anything more eloquent can be said of him than
simply thus to name what he had to do and point to what he has done.
The duties of procuring the ways and means and controlling their
expenditure devolved upon the Centennial Board of Finance. Of this
body Mr. John Welsh is Chairman; Mr. Frederick Fraley, Treasurer; and
Mr. Thomas Cochran, Chief of the Building Committee. Their office
was fixed upon the grounds at an early stage of the proceedings. Mr.
Welsh, more fortunate than Wren, has been able while yet in the flesh
to point to his monument, and see it rising around him from day to
day.

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