marked absence of drunkenness in the White City. If it should ever become impossible to obtain any food in our restaurants less obnoxious to the digestion than welsh rarebits and mince-pies, the people could scarcely be blamed for the dyspepsia which would surely ensue.

Much the same things might be said of the facilities for cleanliness and comfort which in the White City were so amply provided. It was a decided novelty, anywhere in America, to be in a miniature great city, where for a nickel one could get at frequent intervals clean hands and face and a smooth head of hair. But the novelty was of a sort which commanded universal approval. Everybody liked the arrangements at the Fair; and everybody would doubtless like to see similar arrangements in his own city. Who will be first to furnish them? A good profit awaits his investment.

No doubt the people who did not go to Chicago are saying even now: "Let us hear no more of the beauty of the buildings at the Fair," being like those Athenians who wearied of hearing Aristides' praises continually dinned in their ears; and those who went there

are

never quite ready to forgive any lack of enthusiasm on that theme. Let me rather do my duty by the most wonderful revelation of the century to Americans, than ease the unwilling minds of those who still sit in the darkness of ignorance. Inquiry was made of several of the most critical observers of the World's Fair what in their judgment would be its most marked and impressive effect upon American thought and enterprise. The unanimous opinion was that it would give a great impulse to architecture, to the construction of civic buildings, to the study of artistic effects in public and private constructions. Not that anybody expects to see those great buildings reproduced anywhere else. That would be to re

peat the old stupidities of our architectural bungling and botches, which have given us Greek temples for dwelling houses and an enlargement of the settler's log cabin for a church. But there will be a new spirit growing out of the discovery of what is possible in the way of beautiful public. buildings. We have had very little so far in our national life; and we have had, certainly until this latest time, extremely little good private architecture. After the awful monotony

of ugliness in the domestic and public architecture of cities like Brooklyn and New York and Philadelphia, the White City was not only a revelation but a benediction. But it forecast a duty, too. It is time we awoke from our nightmare of ugliness and builded better. We are on the eve of a great revival in architecture. When it comes we shall not find men building barns for city halls and court houses and churches, nor making houses by the mile, so like each other that a man could not tell his own house in the block by broad daylight except for its number or some private chalk-marks.

The American visitor to the Fair was permitted another sensation as unusual as it was agreeable, and as strange as it was unexpected. He

everything had been done with a view to making him feel at home in the enjoyment of his inheritance. There was not another place in America where the American citizen could feel so much of the pride of popular sovereignty as he could after he had paid his half dollar and become a naturalized resident of this municipality. Once within those grounds he was monarch of all he surveyed. He could go anywhere. He could see everything. He was welcome to all that he found inside those gates. He could feel for once in his life that he was not liable to be snubbed by the police, nor bullied by car-conductors, nor brow-beaten by salesmen. His temporary citizenship entitled him. to the same large privileges which are his by right in any permanent city,

with this difference, that for once his title was recognized and his rights respected. It was a great experience for the patient, submissive, long-suffering

American.

It gave him a hint of his own deserts. It taught him what he had a right to expect by virtue of his citizenship. It revealed to him what a mock-freedom is really his, when every petty upstart, clad with a little brief authority, feels at liberty to domineer over him. We imagine that we, the people, are the state, and we pride ourselves upon our sovereignty. But was ever a monarch so shame-faced, so put upon, so humiliated? Let this "popular sovereign" try to walk the streets of his own city with any such feeling as filled his heart in the White City, and see how mortifying a lot is his. If he meets a policeman he cannot help feeling afraid under some very innocent circumstances, that he may be arrested merely for being out of doors. If he attempts to cross a street, the swift and deathdealing trolley- or cable-car will soon

teach him that the public thoroughfare does not belong to him but to some corporation. If he enters these or any other public vehicle, he realizes that they are run, not to accommodate him, but to make money for somebody else. The sidewalks are not his, but the grocer's, the furniture dealer's, the house builder's and the street contractor's. Even in his own house, the dust from ill-kept streets, the crash and racket over bad pavements, teach him that the city is cared for, not by a

best brains and the best dispositions available. The talent and the character of at least one city government in America were level with the task which was set for them. The source and secret of the order, the safety, the beauty, the devotion to the good of the people, which were found in that one small municipality, lay in the fact that the best were called upon to produce the best. Those beautiful grounds were planned by the best minds that could be brought to the undertaking. The beautiful buildings were decorated by the best artists who could be secured. The president of the Directory was one of the foremost business men of Chicago. The executive talent in that wonderful city (which abounds

in that particular commodity) was laid under contribution to administer the enterprise. It was a clear case of cause adequate to effect. When our great cities can and will observe the same law; when they realize that it takes the best to make the best; when they feel that personal comfort, safety, and enjoyment are worth having and worth working for; then indeed we may expect to see the ideals suggested in the White City realized in Boston, New York, Brooklyn and Chicago, in every great city in the land.

The great White City has disappeared. Its walls have fallen, its

attractions have vanished, its glories have faded like the summer which marked its life. But in its place, heirs of its uses, its beauties, its order, we shall yet see springing into being throughout the land cities which shall embody in permanent form the splendors, the noble suggestions, the dignified municipal ideals of this dream city. In the day in which the better, the best, American city shall become a common spectacle, we shall perceive how much sooner it came by reason of the vision of the White City which we all beheld upon the shores of the great lake.