A Wild Conglomeration of Absurd Fantasies

On May 25, 1893, Mr. E. A. Hodge departed Marion, Kansas, heading to the World’s Columbian Exposition. A few days after arriving in Chicago, he wrote home advising other visitors: “Don’t plan to stay here less than ten days—thirty are better, and if you want to study the exhibits you can put in three months.” (Marion Record, June 9, 1893)

His letter of July 7, printed in the July 27 issue of the Marion Record (when he finally had returned home from his two-month trip) expressed a dream-like scene of the 1893 World’s Fair. The bizarre imagery confirms that he may have reached the limit of his mental endurance while exploring the fairgrounds.

“I have now been here six weeks, five of them on the fairgrounds and I think I have them pretty well outlined. But when I close my eyes a wild conglomeration of absurd fantasies is moving in panoramic intricacy.

Camels are streaming down the lake. Monster guns and mammoth engines threading their way among intricate piles of fine-spun Venetian glass and puffing out large smoke wreaths of exquisite embroidery and fabulous priced laces, turbaned Turks and black bearded Moors are holding out for sale $150,000 pictures and crying “Zalabia, Zalabia, Zalabia. Hot! Hot! Hot!” Brass bands are blowing out fire-works filling the air with gold and silver rain; an $80,000 silver statue is pulling a gondola through the Cairo street, in Midway Plaisance; water fountains are presided over by half naked south sea islanders, where you drop a penny in the slot and get a mummy from Peru or Arizona, or I go fishing with an 80 foot bamboo pole and pull out a half million dollar necklace, that when I take it off, the hook turns to a stuffed ostrich from the Cape of Good Hope, etc. etc. etc.

I know I am tired and have about reached the limit of my weak endurance, physical and mental. I think I will run up to Wisconsin for a rest …”

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After regaining his strength, Mr. Hodge penned a lovely description of his visit to the White City on Lake Michigan. His poetic recollection “A Day in Fairyland” was published in the August 4 issue of the Marion Record:

“The morning was clear, cool and sunny—simply a perfect morning in June. At the foot of Van Buren St., downtown, we took the steamer for the grounds. The lake was blue and sparkling, the city lay before us with its packed blocks of houses, its parts and tall buildings in bold relief in the morning sun, and when the ‘White City’ of Jackson Park was reached we landed among the palaces of an enchanted land in bewildering arrays of peristyles, arches, domes and gables, huts, bungalows, monastery and temples of art, under acres of glass, leaving us to question in what nation, age or clime we were entering; and through these we wandered, now among the totem poles of north Pacific land and now under the luxuriant foliage of the tropics, and here we wandered among statuary more beautiful than our imaginations could ever have dreamed; among pictures of ocean, of forest and of plain and mountain; of more than princely surroundings and of the lowliest of homes; pictures such as only the genius and pencil of Millet, of Baird, of Rosa Bonheur and such artists can paint, absolutely acres of art, each gem a princely fortune in itself; among silks and laces that only the wives of kings, lords and Populist leaders can afford to wear. Tapestries of rich, historic scenes and jewels flashing out their millions of value in diamond sparkles. The rarest product of loom and of forge from every land, rare old blades from Damascus and polished steel worth more than its weight, oft multiplied, in gold. Rare, fine spun Venetian glass and rich wine goblets that gods might handle with tender care when drinking from.

We saw the crude cars and engines of 50 and the coaches of 100 years ago, with the modern rolling palaces in which the wealthy and the ‘reformers’ now ride; saw mighty engines and machinery that play with tons as with toys and toss as the magician tosses his gilded balls; went for a while four centuries back and lived with Columbus in La Rabida convent, then came back again to modern times and saw Krupp’s mighty engines of destruction, looked down the muzzle of the monster gun a length of 48 feet from the depths of which rushed shrieking projectile monsters, weighing over a ton, and capable of carrying destruction 20 miles, or at 12 miles of shattering a solid plate of chilled steel 16 inches thick. Surely the mind of God is the only thing capable of measuring the ingenuity of man or that can foretell its final results.

And so the shades of evening came and we were tired and worn, brain and muscle needing rest. And so we sat us down on a bench, with easy back, to rest and eat our lunch by the side of the waters of the clear lagoon, with the fountain shooting it’s sparkling waters high in air, and smaller streams chasing and dancing over the surface, among the white walls, domes and palaces filled with wealth of millions untold, by the side of which Aladdin’s lamp was but a toy and its results called forth but crude beginnings.

And then we fell into reverie over the wonders of the day and almost went into dream land.

Presently the electric lamps from their posts of prominence laughed down on the lagoon, and the gondolas glided out from the shadows that had been silently gathering, and then a row of footlights around the lagoon twinkled and in a flash where all alight, and torches of mammoth size way up on Administration Building, lit the upper darkness, and though night had come it was still light. Now some player in the band started a low, sweet cornet solo, mingling softly as if a part of the evening shade breathing in low symphony. Then another player breathed sweeter notes, and soon the music was floating in the air from a full band, soft and sweet as the evening shades come on.

A line of light ran along the fronts of the palaces and cornice and frieze wall, dome and turret were woven over in lines of clear, strong, soft electric light. The red and green lights of the electric launches flashed in and out among the gondolas and the lagoon was covered with floating throngs of every clime and nation of earth, and the soft music grew and swelled into a grand, triumphant storm of rolling melody.

Then again all was silence. The gondolas and ferry launches glided like spirit angels. The lights danced and quivered. It seemed almost wrong to breathe in such intensity of silent rapture. Then swelling with slow graduating power an anthem rose from a choir of a hundred voices on the boats, sweet, clear and grand. Oh, it was rich. And the searchlights from the electric domes sent their long shafts of weird light reaching out for miles into the darkness and then coming back and searching out statue, cornice and ornament clearer and more distinct than sunlight itself.

And we could bear no more. There is a measure to the capacity of every soul, and we came out of the weird dazzling weavings of splendor, of the sweetness of the melody, of the glory of the light, to our home to rest, feeling we had seen fairy land in its beauty, its sweetness and its glory.