Mr. Gerald James of London, puzzled by the discouraging impressions of the Fair reaching him through the New York press, came to Chicago to see for himself what the Exposition had to offer an open mind. “The Fair is supreme,” he wrote.

“It is a scintillating diadem crowning the civilized world with the honor and glory of peace. It tells a story that centuries of books and newspapers could not tell, and is worth more to a man or woman than the college training of a lifetime. It is so far ahead of what is expected that no story, however glowing, can convey even an impression. It surprised me, and it will surprise and overwhelm any mortal whose footsteps lead him to the Magic City by the lake.” [“His Admiration Almost Boundless” Chicago Tribune Jul 6, 1893, p. 9.] Reading this praise inspired Mrs. M. M. Stearns of Mound City, Kansas, to pen a letter of her own to her hometown newspaper. Reprinted below is “The Fair” from the July 14, 1893, issue of the Linn County Clarion.

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The Fair

“The Fair is a scintillating diadem crowning the civilized world, the honor and glory of peace.” I read that sentence in the Chicago Tribune, today, and thought my experience of the vastness of the great show was similar to an experience of years ago, when standing under Niagara Falls. It was where Table Rock jutted over and left standing room behind the edge of the Great Falls, and trying to look up at that thundering, awful flood above me period to that sweeping tide, my puny personality was scarce a grain of sand, and I was glad to get away to safety and silence.

So at the fair, the tide of the world pours there increasingly, and only one pair of eyes, and one brain and vitality to oppose the flood that rushes upon you.

If you don’t try on a first day to see anything, you may bring away a pleasant sense of a unique day. You can’t see it all—why struggle with the impossible? Those great white buildings will be there tomorrow and workmen are still improving them.

Wander through the display of fruits, splendid, but row after row of canned and preserved fruits have lots of sameness, even if the label New York, or Idaho, or California, divides them into sections. California built an orange pyramid and offered a prize to the lucky guesser of the number used. The nearest guess was 13,872, while the actual number was one more. I hoped the guesses were suitably awarded, but I didn’t learn what the reward was.*

[* The winner, Clara E. Harwood of Norwich, Connecticut, won a prize box of oranges. Read about it in “California’s Tower of Oranges.”]

What cozy, homelike reception rooms in the State houses, though we could not stay in the Kansas building to note its furnishing. Standing to look in the great alcove where Prof. Dyche has arranged his splendid collection of animals, a tearing toy train of cars with roar and rattle and bang, was whizzing around the circle just above our heads, torturing ear and forbidding our enjoyment and study of the Wilds and animals so deftly arranged. Outside the din and roar of the cars doing actual service never ceases. Was not that enough? Wouldn’t someone stop that little train and pass it on the nursery where it belongs, but no one did, so we passed out to wait and hope for a day when we can look at the Kansas building and not think of “wild and woolly west.”

Ours was a pleasant party and the most of them had been there again and again, and knew something worth seeing right at hand, whichever way you turned. And we knew that in Hayti real coffee was served at lunch. Sitting on the porch of the Haytian building, sipping that fragrant coffee from delicate China, and waited on by a native daughter of the island, and looking out on the great lake with its green and purple waters, bearing the huge ships to and fro and lapping the breakwater at our feet, we passed a restful hour, and then refreshed, tried one room of the French department of the art gallery.

What pictures, what perfection. Ah! a room full, when one of those pictures would bear looking at a season. Exhausted, we determined to begin right there next time and came away to stop a while in the Vermont building—small but neat, cozy and homelike.

While we sat in the reception room, two women came in, one was of the “sniffing” order. “Painted green,” she said, glancing around, “for the Green Mountain state I suppose (sniff) “must be a green set anyway,” and with a parting sniff she went down the steps.

Another party, papa, mama, son and daughter. The children were aged about eight and ten, and the indescribable charm of real childhood made them beautiful. Papa was holding a map of the fairgrounds and said to a friend, “I am going to sit here till I locate myself, I want to get things straight,” and the little boy half to himself commented, “I’ve located papa over and over, and he won’t stay located.”

Oh, the great, hurrying, well-dressed, self-possessed and self-respecting crowd. Which is the greater, the fair, or the representation of our great country?