THE CITY OF WONDERS

A Souvenir of the World’s Fair.

BY

MARY CATHERINE CROWLEY

CHAPTER 10. THE MIDWAY PLAISANCE

[For other installments of our serialization of The City of Wonders (1894), see the Table of Contents]

“If that genial old showman Barnum were to see the Midway Plaisance, he would have to acknowledge himself outdone; for it emphatically is ‘the greatest show on earth’,” remarked Uncle Jack, when he set out with the Kendricks for this part of the World’s Fair grounds.[1] “And yet,” he added, “one may learn a great deal from this unique cosmopolitan town, where the representatives of many lands dwell upon one broad thoroughfare, together yet apart, preserving their own peculiar modes of living, and curious manners and customs, and paying little attention to one another. The location was originally merely an avenue, six hundred feet wide and a mile long, connecting Jackson and Washington Parks. But, from a quiet, grass-bordered driveway, it has become, as at the waving of a magical wand, a dusty, bustling street, lined with every kind of habitation, from an Indian wigwam to a Turkish kiosk; thronged from morning till night with holiday-making promenaders, barterers, and venders; a street astir with life, where re-echo sounds of light laughter and gay voices, amid the din of strange musical instruments, and harsh cries and calls in all the tongues of Babel, one would think.”

Our friends started upon their tour through the motley metropolis.[2] To their right, through the openings of a high picket fence, were to be seen the reed-woven tents of the Java village, and on the left the huts of the natives of South Africa. Next they came to the Japanese bazaar, which distributed itself enticingly in a succession of charming pagodas, where, beneath gorgeous umbrellas, amid backgrounds of embroidered screens and lacquer ware, sat cross-legged mandarins, looking as if they were figures from the great vases come to life; while to the fore, maidens in quaint costumes of queer woven stuffs, with coal-black hair, stuck as full of pins as a pincushion,—maidens who spoke our language with surprising fluency,—were disposing of cheap fans at fabulous prices.

“Oh, look there!” Aleck exclaimed.

The strollers were now opposite to the Menagerie, or Animal Show, and gazing up at the second story of the building, saw that it formed a cage, where several lions were moving to and fro with a majestic tread which had something ominous about it.[3] Among them stood their keeper, in a harlequin suit bespangled with gold and silver, with a whip in his hand. In defiance of his perilous position, his evident purpose was to arouse the anger of his charges, and for this he resorted to many petty annoyances, such as calling and then ordering them back; now snapping his whip, and again lashing it about peremptorily. Meantime the pace of the lions momentarily increased. One sprang upon the man, and Ellen gave a faint cry, fearing it was becoming unmanageable. But when the keeper spoke, it ceased growling, licked his cheek like a dog, and then crouched at his feet. The others were manifestly becoming excited, however. They turned abruptly, snarled at him, and occasionally one or another emitted a sullen roar, which made the girls’ hearts quail.

“Ha!” said Aleck; “The keeper appears very bold and fearless; but I notice he remains near the door of the cage now, and never for a moment takes his eyes off the lions.”

When he had goaded them to the highest pitch of endurance, and they seemed ready to tear him limb from limb, with a bow to the spectators, he withdrew. Then the band struck up, (it did not take long to discover that every show along the Plaisance had a band of its own,) and the man at the door, in his most persuasive manner, invited all to secure tickets for the performance about to begin within the arena, “where the wild beasts roamed free, while the people would find themselves protected behind iron bars.”

Farther along they came to the German medieval village with its castle and quaint, peak-roofed houses; and next to the Turkish settlement.[4] As they entered the latter quarter Uncle Jack said:

“This represents a street of old Constantinople. Yonder pavilion is a copy of the palace of the Caliph of Bagdad; near it is a war tent that once belonged to the Shah of Persia.”

Here were Turks like the bearers of the sedan chairs,—men with baggy trousers, red embroidered jackets, yellow waistcoats and crimson sashes, and upon their heads the red fez, as invariable an adjunct of the follower of Mahomet as is his scarlet comb to the barnyard rooster.

One of these supposed hadji attracted special attention, as he stood in the doorway of a latticed-windowed dwelling, with a scymitar stuck in his sash, and his long moustaches waxed out straight, sharp and slender as a pair of rapiers. On his feet he wore red heelless slippers, which were overwrought with gold thread, and turned up at the end like a pruning-hook.

Presently, Nora descried coming toward them an old man in nondescript robes, carrying in his arms a funny brown baby, probably his grandchild.

“There you see a real live Persian baby,” said Mr. Barrett.

“Isn’t it a cunning, wise-looking little creature?” replied Ellen. “How solemnly it stares at everything with its round, bead-like eyes!”

While the attention of the girls was engrossed by the baby, Aleck suddenly found himself confronted by a stalwart Zulu, in raiment somewhat scant, with head and shoulders like polished ebony, his sable visage set off by a white turban, and in his hand a long dart, or assegai. The apparition grinned, and the next moment disappeared in the crowd.

Passing the low archway that led into the Street of Cairo, and a gorgeous Moorish palace, they now came to the wonder of the Plaisance, the huge Ferris Observation Wheel, the axle of which was more than a hundred feet from the ground.

“This is the Eiffel Tower of the Columbian Exposition, although a much greater achievement than the work of the French engineer,” said Mr. Barrett.

“Hi for a lark, to ride two hundred and sixty-seven feet on the rim of a wheel!” cried Aleck.

“No doubt about its being high,” interposed Nora, teasingly.

The great circle looked like a colossal bicycle, as it hung between its two lofty towers. They saw suspended from its rim thirty-six passenger coaches, enclosed in glass and balanced upon great steel trunnion pins.

“Each of these coaches accommodates sixty passengers; thus two thousand, one hundred and sixty persons, may ride on the wheel at a trip. About six cars can be loaded or unloaded at the same time,” explained a man in attendance.

“Shall we try the ascent?” urged Uncle Jack. “The wheel takes twenty minutes to make a complete revolution.”

“Not for worlds would I submit to being hurled into the air upon that gigantic iron skeleton,” said

Ellen, with a shudder.

Nora declined the invitation also, but Mr. Barrett secured places for himself and Aleck, and they were soon borne upward as if in a vast air-ship.

“Don’t let us watch it,” pleaded Ellen nervously, turning away.

Ere long they were rejoined by the aeronauts, as Nora called the two ambitious voyagers. Uncle Jack declared that from the most elevated point, when one was floating in mid-air, the view of the World’s Fair grounds was magnificent.

“But the people looked hardly larger than flies moving about,” added Aleck.

Neither was as enthusiastic as might have been expected, however, and the girls discovered that the experience, although exhilarating, had not been entirely pleasant.

“Yes, I felt as if my last hour had come, and even Uncle Jack changed color when we were right overhead,” Aleck confessed. “Still, this is not surprising, considering that two women fainted, and a man grew so excited he wanted to jump out, and his friend had to hold him by main strength.”

After a luncheon at the White Horse Inn, our party visited the ice railway, and joined the merry company of children and grown people who, upon sleds and toboggans, were coursing over a great field of real ice.[5]

“How splendid to have coasting in mid-summer!” said Nora, as they took their turn. “One’s feet and hands do not get stiff and cold; and here the sleds and toboggans go up hill as well as down, so there is no need of getting off at the end of the coast and trudging to the top again.”[6]

A few steps beyond this frozen region, and they were in the ancient streets of Algiers, Tunis and Morocco, apparently, amid sights and sounds which conjured up pictures of sheiks and caravans, of tall palm trees and the burning African deserts. Here, were rows of the singular Kabyle houses, and there, more pretentious buildings with Moorish domes. The exterior walls of these edifices, being covered with the richly colored and glazed tiles peculiar to those countries, presented a charming and novel effect. Adjacent was an Arab tent village, like a desert encampment. “They folded their tents like the Arabs, and as silently stole away,” quoted Uncle Jack.[8]

The nomads appeared to have no intention of stealing away for some time, though.

“Their white robes and turbans are very striking,” Ellen observed, “It seems that half the inhabitants of the Plaisance wear turbans”

The shops were redolent of sandal-wood, and rich Eastern fabrics were temptingly displayed for sale.

After purchasing several trifles, the girls followed their brother and Mr. Barrett along by the enclosure above which rose the ancient-looking gables of Old Vienna, the queer little windows of which looked down into the street, like sturdy old burghers with a stare of surprise in their sleepy eyes. Everywhere on this interesting highway, the ears and eyes of the young folk had been diverted by the eccentric appearance and behavior of the strange people who stood at the entrances to the villages, bazaars and side-shows, describing, in language more or less intelligible, and with the full force of their lungs, the glories of the things within. The muezzin who shouted from tower and minaret the Mahometan call to prayer, and the fakirs, grotesque, shrewd and joke-cracking,—each and all imperatively claimed attention.

Now they met with a contrast to this din and jargon. Before the gates of the fifteenth century town stood two burly, silent personages, in the medieval costume of the Austrian Tyrol.

“Ho, look at William Tell! “ said Aleck. “Two of them, by Jove! I suppose we shall be favored with a sight of the boy and the apple presently. But what have the old fellows done with the bow and arrow?”

“These are not doubles of the Swiss hero come to life,” said Uncle Jack, laughing; “but representatives of those knights of the Middle Ages whose fastnesses were in the Tyrolese Alps.”

Each was clad in a parti-colored doublet trimmed with silver lace, knee breeches striped in orange, red and blue, with long yellow hose, and buskins of light leather; his hands were protected by gloves with wide gauntlets, embroidered on the back in gaudy colors; and upon his head he wore a cap of crimson velvet, adorned with a long white ostrich plume, fastened by a jeweled pin. He was armed with a strong lance, which he held erect after the manner of a sentinel.

“These mysterious, living statues change their pose every five minutes,” explained Uncle Jack; “but they never speak except to announce the passing of the hour by reciting, in a half-singing tone, some appropriate verse or proverb. The only interest they take in the crowd is to bow occasionally, as an invitation to enter, or to extend their spears in front of persons who attempt to get in without tickets.”

Opposite to Old Vienna our explorers found the Chinese Village, including a joss-house, or temple, and a tea-garden.

“See this notice, that the restaurant is conducted upon both the American and Mongolian plans,” Nora said.

“I suppose it means that bird’s-nest soup, rice à la chopsticks, and possibly haricot of rats, may be had to order,” answered Aleck.

They also saw the Chinese Theatre, before the door of which an almond-eyed celestial, with shaven crown and a cue, robes as gorgeous as those of the acrobatic individuals upon paper fans, and a hat like an inverted chopping dish, sat beating a tom-tom.

An exclamation of dismay from Ellen caused the others to glance towards the point at which she was staring. Before an open tent stood a Hindoo, in the act of taking a full-grown serpent out of a basket.[9] As he held it up, they saw that it was ten or twelve feet long. To their horror, he began to twine the reptile around his neck and shoulders, at the same time playing a tune upon a small flute. To the rhythm of the music, the snake coiled and uncoiled itself, thrust its head forward, and kept its glittering tongue wriggling from side to side.

The girls shrank away from this exhibition in such haste that they hardly remarked the captive balloon nearby,[7] and would have taken refuge in the Dahomey Village, had they not been brought to a standstill by the sight of two black warriors, arrayed as for battle, on guard before the entrance. Through the palings, however, they had a view of a band of the dusky, bare-footed Amazons in rude armor, engaged in a fantastic drill with battle-axes and spears.

At the door of one of the small huts of bark, an old warrior sat curled up on a bench, sewing; and farther along another, with his head covered with a fur cap shaped like a candy horn, thrummed on a primitive little harp, singing in a shrill, high key a refrain which, whatever its import in Dahomeyese, could certainly be translated into nothing but discord to civilized ears.

In juxtaposition to this settlement from the west coast of Africa was the encampment of American Indians, with its wigwams, its chiefs in war paint and buffalo skins, eagles’ feathers in their hair, and tomahawks in their hands; and its squaws going about with pappooses strapped to their backs.

“Poor babies! How uncomfortable they must be, with their kicking feet bound up so tight in those baskets!” said Nora. “How funny the little dark heads look, peeping over the tops of these queer cradles!”

Not far off several Indian girls sat at the door of a lodge, deftly embroidering moccasins in beadwork; while, a stone’s throw away, their brothers practiced with bows and arrows. Adjoining was a model of Solomon’s Temple, and opposite, the Lapland Village.

“The inhabitants of this village are short of stature, you see,” said Uncle Jack; “and have sallow skins, and straight black hair, which hangs about their faces.”

Notwithstanding the warm weather, they were clad completely in furs, with great hoods, like cowls drawn over their heads. The background afforded a glimpse of a herd of reindeer and several sledges.

[The tour of the Midway Plaisance continues in Chapter 11 of The City of Wonders with a visit to the most successful concession in the World’s Fair entertainment district.]

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NOTES

[1] “when he set out with the Kendricks for this part of the World’s Fair grounds.” To avoid exhaustion on the part of characters (and readers), let’s assume that this part of the story begins a new day!

[2] “Our friends started upon their tour” Crowley seems to have confused the arrangement of exhibits in Midway Plaisance. With the Java Village on the right, a visitor would be walking west, and on the left would be the Dutch Settlement and Jahore exhibits, not huts from South Africa. The Japanese Bazaar would not come next, as it was behind them to the east. Hagenbeck’s was even further east, on the south side of Midway Plaisance.

[3] “the second story of the building … formed a cage” This is an interesting description of Hagenbeck’s Arena, the facade of which has no apparent visible cage or animal display.

[4] “Farther along they came to the German medieval village” The story is now moving west along the Midway. From Hagenbeck’s Animal Arena, the German Village was further west on the north side of Midway Plaisance, across from which was the Turkish Village on the south side.

[5] “After a luncheon at the White Horse Inn” To dine at the White Horse Inn, the party would have had to travelled to the South Pond on other side of the exposition grounds! Perhaps the author meant the Vienna Café, directly underneath the Ferris Wheel?

[6] “How splendid to have coasting in mid-summer!” Their unfounded fear of riding on the Ferris Wheel should have been reserved for the ice railway, which had crashed on June 14, 1893, killing one and injuring at least five others.

[7] “they hardly remarked the captive balloon nearby” The Captive Balloon ride closed after being destroyed in a terrible accident due to a wind storm on July 9.

[8] “They folded their tents like the Arabs, and as silently stole away” Uncle Jack is paraphrasing the final lines of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Day is Done.”

[9] “Before an open tent stood a Hindoo” The Hindoo Jugglers concession performed at a few different locations, eventually setting up in a small “Indian Bungalow” building on the east end of the Midway between the Illinois Central tracks and the Nursery exhibit.