secretary of an exposition which was holding its dedicatory ceremonies six months before its doors were to open in order to make prospective exhibitors aware of its existence had failed not only to inform Chamberlain and me that this great prelate had been invited to attend them, but that he was actually in Chicago, accompanied by Archbishops Satolli and Satolli and Ireland. Luckily, we had had the foresight to retain for such an emergency the tickets for a box which, although well situated, bore the number thirteen. But between the demands of an angry governor and an insistent cameriere, we were in a quandary until, putting our heads together, we came to the conclusion that whereas the chief executive of a State was able, no doubt, to create a rumpus within its confines, a cardinal might, if offended, spread an unfavorable impression of Chicago's cherished enterprise throughout the entire Christian world. To the emissary of his Eminence, therefore, the tickets for box thirteen were given, his Excellency being placated by the inclosure within red ribbons of six orchestra chairs, and the hanging upon a neighboring pillar of a flag on which were blazoned the arms of a commonwealth.

When the last banner had been hung and the last nail driven, my able coadjutor and I dressed in a jiffy and bolted a hasty dinner; then, with the assistance of a corps of white-gloved young men wearing red-and-yellow sashes across their shirt-bosoms, we formed upon a floor completed but an hour before a receiving-line composed of a score of the city's most prominent ladies, with Mrs. Potter Palmer, beautiful and bejeweled, at its head.

An ungracious chief executive of the

nation having remained in Washington, our next duty was to marshal the members of the cabinet, the diplomatic corps, and the Supreme Court, together with the governors of some thirty States, their gold-braided staffs, and sundry senators, congressmen, and officers of the army and navy, all in order of precedence behind Vice-President Morton, who, being "kind and affable to every creature," fulfilled a definition of a gentleman made centuries ago.

This task performed, Sousa, on a sign from me, raised his baton; whereupon the most imposing array of personages Chicago has ever beheld filed in slow procession into the Auditorium, to dazzle with gorgeous costumes, stunning uniforms, and glittering decorations, eyes unaccustomed not only to the sight of Orientals in courtdress, but to that of stately diplomats as well, with orders on their breasts, swords at their sides, and cocked hats in hand. To startle with his fierceness the many eyes that gazed that night, there was a mustachioed grenadier with a plumed Pickelhaube on his giant head, and to entrance the onlooker with his manly grace, a blue hussar with dolman, sabretash, and tasseled boots.

But the most impressive marcher in that unwonted procession was a noble knight of Calatrava in a cloak that swept the floor majestically; the quaintest being, without a doubt, a little ocher-colored Korean who wore high up on his glossy coiffure a contrivance of wire that looked for all the world like a fly-trap.

When the last pair of spurs had begun to click to the wearer's forward step, I glanced into the room in which these men of many lands had assembled and, to my consternation, saw a

scarlet-clad figure entering its farthest door. Again Cardinal Gibbons had been overlooked, and to save an unpleasant situation, I introduced myself forthwith as one appointed to await his coming. Offering him my arm, I led him past a slowly moving procession to a place near its head belonging to him as a prince of the church; and from that chance meeting I have carried through the years an impression of an upright man, at once kindly and courtly, in a word, "a wealthy priest, but rich without a fault."

Of the ceremonies during which the edifices so magically built by Daniel H. Burnham were tendered by him to the officers of the Exposition, then dedicated to humanity by Vice-President Morton, my recollection is less vivid. I remember, however, that medals in recognition of their truly wonderful achievements were given not only to architects such as Charles F. McKim, Richard M. Hunt, Stanford White, and Frederick Law Olmstead, but to Louis Sullivan, William Holabird, Francis Meredith Whitehouse, and other Chicagoans whom I was glad to find were not without honor in their own land, neglect or ridicule rather than recognition being only too often the lot of Americans who devote their lives to what Mr. Higinbotham, the president of the fair, spoke of that day as "the civilizing arts."

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Painting and sculpture, too, were acclaimed when, for its beautification at their hands, a grateful exposition awarded its medals to Augustus SaintGaudens, Frederick MacMonnies, Francis D. Millet, Carroll Beckwith,

and a number of their confrères, as well as to Chicago's gifted citizens, Lorado Taft and Walter McEwen. Literature, moreover, was remembered, and local talent also, when Miss Harriet Monroe's "Dedication Ode" was read to an audience of a hundred thousand souls, who, to us upon the platform, were, in words of Robert Browning, "human beings, like spiders newly hatched."

These happenings were in 1892. On May day, in the following year, Grover Cleveland came to press the button that was to start gigantic wheels, and, at the same time, send the Stars and Stripes fluttering up a gilded pole between the banner of Castile and that of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic sovereigns. But before these flags were given to the fitful breezes of a day, half rain, half sunshine, a great President said:

"The machinery that gives life to this vast exposition is now set in motion. So, at the same instant, let our hopes and aspirations awaken forces which in all times to come shall influence the welfare, the dignity, and the freedom of mankind.”

Five years later to a minute, through one of fate's strange ironies, the epauleted officers who listened to this idealism of their commander-in-chief were directing in Manila Bay the fire of ruthless guns against the very flag in whose honor cannon boomed when he had finished speaking. But the crowd, surging before a platform while women fainted in its midst, thought not of war or peace or idealism, but of how to edge closer to the Duke of Veragua in order to see his resplendent uniform and gilded collar of the Golden Fleece.

At the invitation of Congress, this

descendant of Columbus had come to view the exquisite buildings that had arisen beside the belching chimneys of what, until then, the world had looked upon as the least imaginative of its cities. He was a stately grandee, with features such as Goya would have taken delight in painting; and when he reached the shores of Lake Michigan, he was escorted in pomp to his hotel by the yellow-plumed cavalry and blue-coated infantry of his host, the American nation. Being of a race whose manners are courteous and whose ways are leisurely, he did not view himself in the light of a nine days' wonder, but rather as the guest of a rich and powerful people invited, as its emissary had led him to believe, not for a day or a week, but for the duration of an exposition held to commemorate the achievement of his ancestor.

An official in Washington who counted the very pennies of the ducal board-bill thought otherwise; so, in due course of time, this guest of our people was bluntly told that he had outstayed his welcome. When in chagrin he departed, no blue-coated soldiers stood in line to honor him with their salute; but at my instigation, I having been at the time the honorary consul of his land, a troop of amateur hussars sat on black chargers before his hotel, ready to escort him to his train. Not being enrolled in either the regular army or the organized militia, the honor these troopers paid was without official significance; yet they rode fine horses and carried gleaming sabers; so when they wheeled into line before his Grace's carriage, they looked an imposing escort, and to his European eye they appeared as soldiers of his host. Thus by a pardonable subterfuge was a

heart humiliated by official discourtesy made glad for the moment. This duke and his duchess, let me add, were gentlefolk as unpretentious as any it has been my good fortune to meet, while the courtesy once shown by them to me in their native land was of a kind such as I shall remember always with delight and gratitude.

The Infanta Eulalia of Spain also came to Chicago as the nation's guest in that year 1893, and being of royal birth, she set the city's heart aflutter. By nature a joyous Parisienne rather than the proud and haughty Spaniard of romance or the gracious princess of fairy-tales, her playing of the part of royalty was at variance with the exalted notion of it held by a city remote from kings and their majesty, and believing with Euripides that "it is necessary for a prince to please the many."

Now, the pretty princess who journeyed across the seas Columbus had sailed thought not of pleasing the many, but rather of pleasing her own vivacious self, she being a somewhat wilful lady, filled to overflowing with la joie de vivre. She was accompanied, furthermore, by a royal husband who took delight, like a calif of old, in roaming incognito in search of questionable adventures through the streets of the city by night. Being the antithesis of democracy's own picture of royalty, this princely pair was not the ideal one to present it in a favorable light; and when it became apparent that neither the infanta nor her consort would play the royal part in the pompous way in which it had been written into the agenda of the Exposition, many an official heart was in despair.

Upon the very evening of her arrival, in fact, and while sky-rockets

were still exploding in her honor behind a white peristyle, her Royal Highness said to me in a tone of ennui: "In Havana, in New York, and in Washington, which cities I have visited since leaving Spain, and now in Chicago, it has ever been the same tiresome story of officials to meet, officials to placate, and officials to bore me to distraction. I want to see the World's Fair in peace and in comfort and without an official in sight. You must arrange it."

Being a young man still in the twenties, the idea of protecting a fair princess from pestering officials appealed to me, I confess, as an adventure at once bold and romantic. To a telephone, therefore, I went straightway, and called up Allison Armour. Although only a namesake of the founder of a noted industry, and not in any way related to him, this friend in need possessed, nevertheless, sufficient worldly goods to have enabled him to be the owner of a steam yacht named the Gryphon, which speedy little craft he agreed to have within hail, off the the lake-front, on the morrow. Every day during a fortnight Allison Armour and I managed to spirit the infanta aboard her, and, after reaching the Exposition grounds, to land first at one place, then at another, but always with a retinue of wheeled chairs in waiting. Besides the infanta and the bold conspirators, the party during these clandestine cruises was composed of two ladies of the city, whose presence had been royally commanded, and her Highness's own suite, consisting of the Spanish minister plenipotentiary, the cynical and sophisticated grandee who was the royal chamberlain, an ancient marchioness who played the dual rôle of duenna and lady-in-waiting, and an

American naval officer, who, detailed as official escort to royalty, was incongruously accompanied by his wife and a daughter still in her teens.

Once having set foot within the Exposition grounds, the infanta was usually able to enjoy herself undisturbed until the luncheon hour, and during these unceremonious wanderings she proved to be a delightful as well as a merry companion. At "Old Vienna," however, at the "German Village," the "Pickwick Inn," or wherever her noonday repast had been ordered, the reporters were pretty certain to discover her, generally about the time when, in her most affable mood, she had lighted an after-luncheon cigarette. Her gracious manner changed then to one of coldness or even of vexation should an official chance to enter the royal presence and proffer his services.

The story of her ill humor at the reception given for her by Mrs. Potter Palmer I prefer to tell in the graphic words of Mrs. William J. Calhoun, who, before marrying a minister plenipotentiary and learning by a court experience of her own how to judge of royal breaches of etiquette, used, as Lucy Monroe, to assist in editing that little magazine of enchanting memory, "The Chap Book."

"Unfortunately," says this accomplished lady, in "Chicago Yesterdays," "the Infanta learned that her host to be was the landlord of the hotel where she was lodged. An innkeeper she thought him, and therefore unworthy to entertain a princess. She was constrained at last to put in an appearance, but she arrived an hour late and departed outrageously early, making no response, meanwhile, to the greetings of the guests as they were presented.

She sat upon the dais, which, with too much courtesy perhaps, had been prepared for her, in sullen, unsmiling, unbending silence, while her beautiful hostess, standing at her side and offering martyred Chicago society at her altar, tried in vain to thaw the icy atmosphere."

Being a Spanish official at the time, I had my own unpleasant moments, too, such as when at a party given by my wife and myself I was obliged, on account of the infanta's aversion for officials and desire to be surrounded only by gay and amusing people, to seat at a supper-table other than hers not only the Spanish commissionergeneral, whom she disliked heartily, but Carter Harrison as well, whose Southern hospitality she had enjoyed at the house in which but a few months later he met death at the hand of an assassin. Indeed, my most vivid memory of the courtly old politician who so adored to rule Chicago is not of the impressive sweep of the hand with which he was wont to doff his slouchhat to a cheering multitude while riding through the streets, but of the hurt look that crossed his benign face when he discovered that although mayor of the city, his seat was not to be at the royal table.

Had not the Infanta Eulalia rebelled against her own caste since then, and expressed in candid words her contempt for it, I should have been loath to tell, even in borrowed words, of the incidents of her visit that angered Chicago. To her entourage she was graciousness itself, and to have been her courtier for a day was an amusing experience. Yet the memory of it, coupled with stories told me by friends who were behind the scenes during other royal visits, has led me to

suspect that a monarchy may best serve its own interests, in a democracy such as ours, by keeping its royal persons at home.

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My glimpse of court life was luckily too short to prevent me from enjoying happiness during it or from attaining it elsewhere, this, according to La Bruyère, being the fate of those who haunt royal antechambers. Nor was it the experience of World's Fair days to which I look back with the keenest pleasure. For such a memory I must turn from white buildings beside a blue lake to the lawn of my father-in-law, Senator Charles B. Farwell, where under his greenwood tree the Augustin Daly Company gave, for the benefit of a crèche in the Exposition grounds, its only al fresco performance of "As You Like It."

No doubt the dual rôle of publicity and property man played by me upon this occasion was humble. Yet it was not without its difficulties, particularly when I was called upon to stick a number of freshly hewn saplings into the ground beneath the gnarled oaks of Lake Forest in such a way that the actors might have their exits and their entrances between them, and the tents that served as tiring-rooms be hidden by them, while the saplings themselves appeared as the undergrowth of the Forest of Arden.

Still, in spite of my arduous duties, this performance lingers in memory, together with Celia's words in the play, as "wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful." It had, in fact, a joyousness, a naturalness, and a youthful buoyancy such as I have never seen beneath a spot-light. Ada Rehan, girlish and exuberant, was