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Show j f S LAME IhHTakc a Monili j i to See li AIL i ij 1 Grounds Twice as Big as ,- I Columbian Exposition at sty I Chicago. 5 Enormous in Size and in Variety of Sights That It Makes JJJ I the Eyes Tired. 1 j ' T LOUIS, June 10. I linvo Just j ji C flnl3hed one stressful week. It Is e J needle 10 aay that 1 spent St at 'hfti, f th World's Fair. If you want to wt t busy, go to the World's Fair. 13u-1 13u-1 ffen? Field once wrote a poem on "See-30 "See-30 jn Things at Night." You'll bo seeln' kpfeH things day and night If you go to tho to nttlF&oslilon, find you'll be lamenting for rt'(fc 'days and nights afterward that you , didn't have lime lo see more things for the things are there. You just slm- ply can't see all the things you want to 1 ; I m unless you spend a month or two ' l I at the fair. 3 U j i n,et a man Inside the fair grounds -j j who Icokcd supremely disgusted. Ho wore the expression of a person who 'i I Us tried and tried again to accom- 1DE I ?l'!h something, but failed to succeed. Inalp I "What's the trouble?" I asked him. h'or'$ ! "Don't you like the fair?" itrk i "Tou bet 1 don t like st'" lie renlIeii: 5 i "I'm sore on the whole shebang." "isn't the exposition fine? Don't you j find many things here of Interest?" I "Sure; lots to Interest anybody mag-ffSi mag-ffSi -I r.lficent buildings, beautiful grounds, $ costly exhibits, and all that; but still refo j I'm disgusted." stti i Cause of His Disgust, j.y- j i received the Impression that here tf muft be a most urious Individual, and puBi 5 I resolved to investigate further, f fnS $ "What Is It you don't like? Don't you 5 like the music by these famous bands? & Do you object to the lllumlnatoln from ryji i half a million electric lamps? Is It 'he . S ? dally, almost hourly military parades a that disgust you? Don't you fancy 'f, these big Pike attractions " "Oh, of course I like all those things. -. f Who wouldn't? They're great; but siill Tm disgusted with the fair as a whole." !.' 'My dear good man," 1 asked, in do-tTe do-tTe ? rjalr. "what feature of the exposition ' Jsjtthatso greatly displeases you?" ' "Us size." he replied; "It's the enn-5 enn-5 roundest biggest thing 1 ever saw, heard of or dreamed of. and I'm sore tecsuse I .can't see al of It. 13 very time 5f I think of the fact that I've got to go ' . hone tonight, after being here only two inu 1 eet disgusted. Why I'vo only llnlr T'feked Into one corner of the World's llUJwl? Fair, and nil the rest I've got to miss. .' ,J Wouldn't that disgust you?" fl From the card which the disgusted ''lM '; Bsntleman handed me I discovered him to bf a member of the American Press UM Humorists, who held a convention at , the World's Fair the first week In Juno. I Though he was having his little Joke, .. 'j ne meant It, and he merely expressed "lJ .1 In his own way the disappointment of if-T.l thousands who find that In th- limited ta w J5 at their disposal they are unable ! ii k jo see as much of the fair as they would ttt'iK "Ike. because of its unprecedented and jf j uccxpected Immensity of size. iku't jt The Largest Ever Created. mt'lt ? 'Gradually but surely it is being im- tOm i Ktzjed upon the public consciousness llii i that this exposition Is all that Its bulld- 1 era and managers have claimed for it, jjj and more, namely, by far the largest, vZ i tiost comprehensive and most intere?t- UiB enterprise of Its kind ever created. j2 ' Pery day durlnb' niy stay at the fair j i I.have met persons from afar off who 0 f Imply nad to sit down and gasp at rrt '. lhe bigness of the exposition. ft a c "My!" exelalniPd a portly woman Of ' Jror Milwaukee; "but ain't It awful?" tjirt 'What's awfuIC" her husband asked. NiM felicitously. ? tt"1 Just never saw anything like it," mJP ;5 1,1S woman continued, "Jt just coin- !JJ, - P-etcly stuns me; I'm dazed and bewil- - fercd. ' S 5 Knowing that the pleasant Juno 5fcB I , was 100 cno1 to Slve the WIs- 5if i ,n wo,"in a sunstroke. I was at a T0Jiv? i k,now v,'hat 11 was that dazwl P'SJ bew"dered her. and was so awful. ' that. Though It was none of jik ' C buslness. 1 lingered conveniently TiiS : var' 3ust t0 henr what she meant by ' n-f ,PerlatIvc expressions. : HI never got over It never!'' she . , , wclalmcd "I know Sarah wonT-be- li '' tmm 11 whcn 1 tel1 ner- and Uncle Jim '"tS ! v aCUi!e me C boasting about what : i,Ve Sen iust because he wouldn't Kf" f0Tne But I don't care; It's Just tho it' I "Wcest thing I ever saw. Why. I was rT-iS "Ch,lca50 In '93 year before we were ) v.0tl you know and that fair was ,w4 ' HISRCst lh,IIS tlmt ever could hap- ; 1 thought; but this St. Louis I3cpo- iixii tmi completely eclipses Chicago. iDifri ! m never get over it never!" Jj Could Have Saved Money. ; InSSw !SClwnt,lke U,ls nre Sequent Sff ari lho Wor,d 5 FaIr Krounds. There f -a :- prL ln?ny Prson who come hero Sft 1 !SiLian.dflnd' hvcnly Pan-Americans H lnt0 on-' th:iL lhe very atmos-; atmos-; ' or rCSenls a aort of hay apparition SOgC "lrnt--n-mouthedness expressive of W &fent Pass,n ,nc Louisiana r5 ' Si i mo,lum-'nt today I was ac- P. S K a strangcr who Inquired V Paorthe bu'ld,nss In r.ight wrU the , "i;ace of agriculture. hlm.0SuC?n'L seo 11 from here." 1 told urffj mile." U a hM1 WesL or horo about rffejtf ""owr he saspefl. Th-U.1 n.ml,e WMl" 1 pcated. lidHv ltlne ans ln;vor Jaw dropped like a ZTHkily a min! 6t0?d 0Pen-iuouthed for ful-l ful-l 4,v ' stRrtS- Then he asked; SPhbre ler' how far wpf,t does thla run clonn 1 d a Snowed that the show 5$!m Uopnod n(nUt0 U? Ka,,sa8 1Ine I'd "a' v ft folks i. n Frt Scolt wllh m' son s ?r'j! ! Se rin?.Cad I,UU"1' Up at the In" tafe s Stlu another Westerner, a farmer i from Oklahoma, where land areas are measured by sections and quarter sections, sec-tions, accosted me In the Sunken Garden Gar-den near the foot of one of those aspiring as-piring Egyptian obelisks that stand In front of the palace of mines and metallurgy. metal-lurgy. "What's that thing?" he inquired. "Cleopatra's needle," I told him, Just for the fun of 1U "A needle, hey? ' Well, I'm not surprised, sur-prised, for a needle to fit Into this here World's Fair would have to be Just about the size of that thing. How many quarter sections would these grounds divide up Into?" "How much Is a quarter section?" I asked, though 1 knew already. "Hundred and sixty acres bet you're from Boston." Two Square Miles in. Area. "This World's Fair lacks forty acres of containing eight quarter sections of land," I informed the Oklahoman, and left him to figure up the acreage for himself. Being familiar with the government gov-ernment of measurements, the farmer quickly reached the correct conclusion that In this exposition la embraced an area of two square miles, less a mere bit of for,ty acres and for that matter mat-ter there Is enough underground area in the big mining gulch to make up for the missing forty. v Just to satisfy my own curiosity I went up to the administration building of the fair beyond the line group of foreign for-eign government pavilions, and made some Inquiries as to the comparative sizes of several recent expositions. Here Is what I discovered: The Columbian Exposition at Chicago covered G33 acres; that at Parl3 in 1000. 33C acres; the Pan-American at Buffalo. Buffa-lo. 300 acres; the Centennial at Philadelphia, Phila-delphia, 23G acres; the Trans-AIlsslssIp-pl at Omaha, 150 acres; and The Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 at St. Louis covers 1240 acres! Add "em up for yourself. The St. Louis show has twice the area of Chicago's, nearly four limes the area of the last Paris Exposition, more than live times the area of the Philadelphia Centennial. Furthermore, I learned that In floor space for exhibits the St. Louis Expo-si Expo-si tlbn Is more than ten times the size of the Pan-American, and more than twenty times the size of the expositions at Omaha, Nashville, Atlanta, San Francisco or Charleston. Too Much, for the Money. These figures startled me. At first I felt dazed. I thought of that sixty-foot-high sTTuue of Vulcan In the palace of mines and metallurgy, and of the ancient an-cient Goliath, and of prehistoric mammoths mam-moths and mastodons and megatheriums megathe-riums and so forth, to find something worthy of comparison. Then I was conscience-stricken. It occurred to me. quite suddenly, that 1 was getting too much foimy money. . Like the disgusted stranger of whom I have told, the humorous gentleman, I felt that the fair was too big for the price of admission; and if It hadn't been after C o'clock p. m. I should have gone straight to the- office of the director direc-tor of admissions, or whatever they call It, and paid him at least six-bits a day (in Missouri that means 75 cents) for the time I have spent here. It's worth It, of anybody's money. But speaking of the price of admission, admis-sion, 50 cents, I want to tell you that I met the other day at the Llndell boulevard boule-vard entrance to the World's Fair the meanest man of whom I know. He was standing just outside the gates arguing argu-ing with one of the gatemen. "I want my money back," he said; "that is. 90 per cent of it." - "On what grounds?" , asked the.gate-'man. the.gate-'man. "On the best of grounds," was the reply. "I have been to see this here fair for twelve days, and It cost me S6 lor admissions. You folks owe me S-5.40." Paid to See It All and Didn't. "What asylum did you break out of?" asked the gateman, disgustedly. "This exposition owes you nothing. Didn't you get your money's worth?" "That's not the thing," said the meanest mean-est man on record. "It's just this way: I've been here two -weeks and seen only about one-tenth of the fair, and I paid to see it all. The thing is so all-fired big that I've missed nine-tenths of the sights, and If you don't gimme back 55.-10 I'll sue the company." Well, after all, there, are compensations compensa-tions in this life. I enjoyed that little tilt with the gateman. and when I came buck to my lodging tonight for which T pay six-bits In Missouri currency, after eating a square meal at the corner vnctn urn lit fnv 5!0 ront! II nrmrrfrl trt ine that the second meanest man on earth is the one who wrote a newspaper newspa-per article about six weeks ago and sent It broadcast over the country, stating stat-ing that you couldn't live In St. Louis for less than $7 a day, and that It cost you 10 cents a second to breathe the air Inside the World's Fair grounds. My trouble has been that I have not found an opportunity to spend enough of the small fortune that I laid in to meet,' those Imaginary high charges'. There are so many free things to see, and the Pike shows charge such small admissions, that I think I'll stay a month longer and try to prevent my friends, when I get home, from looking upon me as a Croesus or expecting me to donate the town a Carnegie library or a home for superannuated heroes. |