Lippincotts Magazine, May 1876 | Page 8

north bank of the lake. Such a
focus of the news and newspapers of all nations was not paralleled at
either of the preceding expositions. American journalism will be
additionally represented in the different State buildings, where files of
all the publications of each commonwealth will be found, embracing in
most cases a greater number of journals than the entire continent
boasted in 1776, and in each of the States of Ohio, New York and
Pennsylvania more than the extra-metropolitan press of either France,
Austria, Prussia or Russia can now boast.
[Illustration: GERMAN BUILDING.]
The commercial idea is so prominent in this, as in all expositions, that
it is difficult to draw the line between public and private interest among
its different features, and particularly among what may be called its
outgrowths, overflowings or addenda. Here is half a square mile dotted
with a picturesque assemblage of shops and factories, among which
everything may be found, from a soda-fountain or a cigar-stand up to a
monster brewery, all devoted at once to the exemplification and the
rendering immediately profitable of some particular industry. In one
ravine an ornate dairy, trim and Arcadian in its appurtenances and
ministers as that of Marie Antoinette and her attendant Phillises at the
Petit Trianon, offers a beverage presumably about as genuine as that of
'76, and much above the standard of to-day. A Virginia tobacco-factory
checkmates that innocent tipple with "negrohead" and "navy twist." A
bakery strikes the happy medium between the liquid sustenance and the
narcotic luxury by teaching Cisatlantic victims of baking-powders and
salæratus how to make Vienna bread. Recurring to fluids, we find
unconquered soda popping up, or down, from innumerable fonts--how
many, may be inferred from the fact that a royalty of two dollars on
each spigot is estimated to place thirty-two thousand dollars in the
strong box of the exposition. Nor does this measure the whole tribute
expected to be offered at these dainty shrines of marble and silver. The
two firms that bought the monopoly of them pay in addition the round

sum of twenty thousand dollars. It speaks well for the condition of the
temperance cause that beer is the nearest rival of aerated water. An
octroi of three dollars per barrel is estimated to yield fifty thousand
dollars, or two thousand dollars less than soda-water. Seventy-five
thousand dollars is the aggregate fee of the restaurants. Of these
last-named establishments, the French have two. The historic sign of
the Trois Frères Provençaux is assumed by a vast edifice in one of the
most conspicuous parts of the enclosure, sandwiched between the Press
and the Government. The "Sudreau" affects the fine arts and cultivates
with like intimacy the society of Memorial Hall. The German refectory,
Lauber's, a solid, beery sort of building, shows a fine bucolic sense by
choosing a hermitage in the grove between Agricultural and
Horticultural Halls. A number of others, of greater or less pretensions,
will enable the visitor to exclaim, with more or less truth, toward the
dusty evening, "Fate cannot harm me: I have dined to-day."
"Dusty," did we say? The ceaseless sob of engines that rob the
Schuylkill daily of six millions of gallons to sprinkle over asphaltum,
gravel and greensward demands recantation of the word. Everything
has been foreseen and considered, even the dust of the earth. George's
Hill Reservoir can, on occasion, give the pumps several days' holiday,
and keep all fresh and dewy as the dawn.
Some industries meet us in the Centennial list that are not to be
detected in the United States census or any other return we are
acquainted with. What train of ideas, for example, is suggested to the
average reader by the Roll-Chair Company? The rolling-stock of this
association turns out, on inquiry, to be an in-door variety of the
conveyance wherein Mrs. Skewton was wont to take the air under the
escort of Major Bagstock. It is meant for the relief of those who wish to
see everything in the Main Building without trudging eleven miles.
Given an effective and economical motive-power, the roll-chair system
would seem to meet this want. The reader of Dombey and Son will
recollect the pictorial effect, in print and etching, of the popping up of
the head of the propellent force when Mrs. S. called a halt, and its
sudden disappearance on her directing a resumption of movement. The
bobbing up and down of four hundred and fifty heads, like so many
seals, will impart a unique aspect to the vista from one of the interior
galleries of the great hall. The stipulated tax of forty dollars on each of

these vehicles will necessitate a tolerably active undulation of polls if
the company is to make both ends meet--granting that a rotatory
movement can have an end.
Another startling