Abby Frances Hamlin Abbott (1837–1907) was the daughter of Hannibal Hamlin, the 15th Vice President of the United States (1861 to 1865, during President Abraham Lincoln’s first term), and the wife of Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott, editor of The Outlook. In her “Just Among Ourselves” column in the December 1893 issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal, Mrs. Lyman Abbott extols the comportment and curiosity of Columbian Exposition crowds:
Nothing at the World’s Fair interested me so much as the people who visited it. The great company of honest, thoughtful, inquiring men, women and children, awed into quiet by the marvel of it all, fascinated me, and I found myself continually turning from the exhibits to the wondering crowd around them. There was so much kindness and considerateness in the multitude—so much unselfish standing aside to give another the better chance, that I came home from my very brief visit with an augmented respect and affection for human nature. A friend tells me that he found the visitors to the Fair too serious, too studious, but I saw enough of hearty enjoyment that I did not feel oppressed by the seriousness.
“Visitors in the Corridor between the Aquaria” of the Fisheries Building, drawn by Joseph P. Birren. [Image from The Graphic History of the Fair (Graphic Co., 1894).]
SOURCE
Abbott, Mrs. Lyman “Just Among Ourselves” The Ladies’ Home Journal Dec. 1893, p. 32.