The prospect from the
Exposition was pleasant; one seemed to see almost an adequate
motive for power; almost a scheme for progress. In another
half-century, the people of the central valleys should have
hundreds of millions to throw away more easily than in 1900 they
could throw away tens; and by that time they might know what they
wanted. Possibly they might even have learned how to reach it.
This was an optimist's hope, shared by few except pilgrims of
World's Fairs, and frankly dropped by the multitude, for, east of
the Mississippi, the St. Louis Exposition met a deliberate
conspiracy of silence, discouraging, beyond measure, to an
optimistic dream of future strength in American expression. The
party got back to Washington on May 24, and before sailing for
Europe, Adams went over, one warm evening, to bid good-bye on the
garden-porch of the White House. He found himself the first
person who urged Mrs. Roosevelt to visit the Exposition for its
beauty, and, as far as he ever knew, the last.
He left St. Louis May 22, 1904, and on Sunday, June 5, found
himself again in the town of Coutances, where the people of
Normandy had built, towards the year 1250, an Exposition which
architects still admired and tourists visited, for it was thought
singularly expressive of force as well as of grace in the Virgin.
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