People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1893 — WORLD'S FAIR GOSSIP. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WORLD'S FAIR GOSSIP.

Items of Interest from the Beautiful City of White. Kxklklton Hastening to Get Their Display* in Shape for the Grand Opening—Fresh Relies and Rarities. (Special Chicago Correspondence. 1

NBTALLATION of exhibits outclasses in importance all other work remaining to be done at the world’s fair grounds. The great rush haa not yet commenced, bat the displays are arriving in daily increasing volume. Rush orders have been sent out to all intending exhibitors. The department of

transportation is thoroughly equipped and ready to handle ten times the daily bulk that has yet been received on the grounds. Preliminary estimates give thirty thousand car loads as the probable amount of exhibits that must be received, unpacked and installed before May 1. Up to date only four hundred car loads have been received. There are sixty working days left If, from now on, five hundred car loads of exMbfts should be received <laj last exhibit would not be installed until the evening before May 1. It is highly important that the transportation department should not be overcrowded at the last moment and that is why exhibitors have been asked to come early and avoid the rush. The different state exhibits are rapidly approaching completion and it is aafe to predict that this part of the great exposition will be in order for the opening day. Great efforts are being put forth to make the agricultural displays a brilliant success. Each state is vying with the other in this department, and the brisk competition for supremacy in the matter of display will be productive of some rare and novel features. Missourians are all in a glow of enthusiasm over the state’s exhibit. Now that installation has been begun they can see the benefit that will accrue to them if their display is generous in its proportions, and are laboring accordingly. One of the features of their display will be a statue of George Washington built of cereals, and another will be an agricultural pagoda constructed of products of the field, surmounted by a globe bearing a model of the Santa Maria, Columbus’ ship, and bearing upon the several sides figures

■yrnbolical of the discovery of the new world. Chief Holcomb’s department has already handled some* unique exhibits. It has taken the trunk of one of California’s mammoth trees Into the grounds on ordinary flat cars, removed it with skids and rollers inside the United States government building, where it is now erected in the tall dome. The department has landed a United States postal car on the track inside the government building and swung it to its allotted place with special cranes and jacks. In the Mines and Mining building an exhibit from Pennsylvania consisting of a steel plate one hundred and fifty feet long, twenty inches wide and half an inch thick, has been put in place. In

the same building the department has landed two pieces of red sandstone from Wisconsin, each about twentytwo feet long and about three and onehalf feet square, also six more cubes of the same material, measuring five feet on each side. • There arrived at Jackson park a few days ago a quaint little locomotive fif-ty-seven years old and with a history possessed by no other engiie in the country. This little old locomotive was the first one used on a railroad west of Chicago and was the first one to come into Chicago. Forty-four years ago it was whipped hers by lake. At that

time there was no railroad In Chicago running east. The Lake Shore, which was the first to reach this city, had not at that time completed its line. The locomotive was purchased for the Galena & Chicago C scion railway, which waa constructing a line to Galena, HL, and its first service was to haul rails and ties for the extension of the new line. It weighs, all told, 8,072 pounds and has only six wheels. There are but two drivers and these are connected directly with the piston rod. Its fittings are extremely simple and the engineer who drove it had no difficulty in finding the bars and levers necessary to operate it. The locomotive is owned by the Chicago &. Northwestern railroad and has been named the “Pioneer.” The locomotive was built in Philadelphia in 1886. It was originally constructed for the Utica & Schenectady railroad and subsequently sold to the Galena. It has no brakes of any sort and its whistle is of a diminutive character. It is the first locomotive to be installed in the Transportation building.

There will be no exhibition at the Columbian expoßitioii of the progress that has been made in hotels and hotelkeeping since Columbus discovered America. Probably the nearest thing to a “hotel exhibition” will be the reproduction of Pickwick’s White Horse Inn, and the visitors to Chicago will probably find all the modern hotel exhibition they care to see outside of the grounds. The great White Horse Inn, a duplicate exteriorly of the English hostelry made so famous by Chirles Dickens in “Pickwick Papers,” has an excellent location on the world’s fair grounds, and in many respects will doubtless be one of the most interesting of the many attractions. The building is almost completed. It occupies a pretty site south of Machinery hall and not far from the southeast corner of the park. As a large majority of the American people are descendants of British subjects, the chief object of the originators of this novel restaurant was to have something typical of the old English tavern, and, as the great White Horse Inn Is best known the world over, it was selected as the most appropriate. But in order to accommodate

and feed a large number of people it was impossible to reproduce every feature of the ancient structure. Consequently the interior arrangements are almost entirely modern in style. Over the main entrance is to be placed the statue of a white horse cast from a model made by Leopold Bonet, the French artist However, some of the interior features slightly modified and improved will he retained. For instance, the original building had an open court in the center into which stage coaches were driven to unload and receive passengers. That feature appears in the duplicate, hut the ground floor, paved with brick, will be utilized as a grill and smoking-room for gentlemen. At the second story this open space will be surrounded by a balcony ten feet wide with the roof extending down over it, supported by pillars and having an ornamental railing of old rustic work running around the four sides. This balcony will be a pleasant place for visitors who like to sip a cup of coffee while enjoying a cigar. Everything about the establishment will be as thoroughly English as the management can possibly make it. On the first floor will be a general restaurant for the benefit of the public, where one can get anything from a ham sandwich to a two dollar porterhouse steak. On the second floor the management proposes to cater only to the finest trade, and that part will be conducted, while not exclusively so, very largely after the style of the best clubs in London. The cooking will he strictly English, the intention being to serve the same cuts of meat, the same kinds of roast beef, the cool joints, plum pudding, imported pickles, ales, wines and beers that high-living Britishers are used to having at home, as far as possible, and to be in harmony with the general air and tone of the place. Old style furniture will be used in furnishing the parlors, -reception and dining-rooms. An attractive feature of the reception room will be an old-fashioned English mantel with side seats, containing large panels, ou which will be hand-painted representations of Peter Magnus, Sam Weller, the Old Maid and other characters found in “Pickwick Papers.” The facilities are sufficiently extensive to permit of the seating comfortably of eight hundred people at

one time. On the second floor will be two handsomely-fitted private diningrooms, arranged to catch the old English dormer windows, thus affording a fine view of the lake. The kitchen will be in charge of an English chef and English cooks, the best that ean be secured. The British section at the world’s fair will be decorated in part by some seventy banners bearing respectively the arms of different municipal corporations in the kingdom, such as London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Ayr, Canterbury, etc. The British royal commission invited the corporations to furnish the banners, and some loaned those they possessed, while others had their official insignia reproduced for the occasion.

WHITE HORSE INN.

INSIDE THE WHITE HORSE INN.

THE “PIONEER,”