Gaudens, Burnham and McKim, and
Stanford White when their politicians and millionaires were
otherwise forgotten. The artists and architects who had done the
work offered little encouragement to hope it; they talked freely
enough, but not in terms that one cared to quote; and to them the
Northwest refused to look artistic. They talked as though they
worked only for themselves; as though art, to the Western people,
was a stage decoration; a diamond shirt-stud; a paper collar; but
possibly the architects of Paestum and Girgenti had talked in the
same way, and the Greek had said the same thing of Semitic
Carthage two thousand years ago.
Jostled by these hopes and doubts, one turned to the exhibits
for help, and found it. The industrial schools tried to teach so
much and so quickly that the instruction ran to waste. Some
millions of other people felt the same helplessness, but few of
them were seeking education, and to them helplessness seemed
natural and normal, for they had grown up in the habit of
thinking a steam-engine or a dynamo as natural as the sun, and
expected to understand one as little as the other. For the
historian alone the Exposition made a serious effort. Historical
exhibits were common, but they never went far enough; none were
thoroughly worked out. One of the best was that of the Cunard
steamers, but still a student hungry for results found himself
obliged to waste a pencil and several sheets of paper trying to
calculate exactly when, according to the given increase of power,
tonnage, and speed, the growth of the ocean steamer would reach
its limits.
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