The
Exposition itself defied philosophy. One might find fault till
the last gate closed, one could still explain nothing that needed
explanation. As a scenic display, Paris had never approached it,
but the inconceivable scenic display consisted in its being there
at all -- more surprising, as it was, than anything else on the
continent, Niagara Falls, the Yellowstone Geysers, and the whole
railway system thrown in, since these were all natural products
in their place; while, since Noah's Ark, no such Babel of loose
and ill joined, such vague and ill-defined and unrelated thoughts
and half-thoughts and experimental outcries as the Exposition,
had ever ruffled the surface of the Lakes.
The first astonishment became greater every day. That the
Exposition should be a natural growth and product of the
Northwest offered a step in evolution to startle Darwin; but that
it should be anything else seemed an idea more startling still;
and even granting it were not -- admitting it to be a sort of
industrial, speculative growth and product of the Beaux Arts
artistically induced to pass the summer on the shore of Lake
Michigan -- could it be made to seem at home there? Was the
American made to seem at home in it? Honestly, he had the air of
enjoying it as though it were all his own; he felt it was good;
he was proud of it; for the most part, he acted as though he had
passed his life in landscape gardening and architectural
decoration.
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