Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 97, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1904 — CHORUS Off 200,000 VOICES. [ARTICLE]

CHORUS Off 200,000 VOICES.

Will Sins in the G. A. R. Encampment in Boston. In connection with the National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic in Boston there is to be held a river carnival at Waltham which 'for unusual and thrilling features undoubtedly will surpass anything of a like nature ever attempted before. While 4.000 canoes and hundreds of floats, all brilliantly decorated and illuminated, are passing up- the Charles River and the air is filled with bursting bombs and soaring skyrockets and further made brilliant by the play of scores of searchlights, the 200,000 spectators tfho it is expected will line the banks will join in singing America. It probably will be the mightiest burst of song it has been anybody's fortune to listen to. The river carnival will be held on the evening of Aug. 17. The procession will move along the river for a distance of two miles. About half a mile of this stretch is a straightaway course, while the res 4 abounds in gently sinuous curves. At no point along the stretch is the river more than 300 feet wide. The banks on either side slope gradually upward to a height between twenty -five and thirty feet, thus affording the best possible vantage place for viewing the spectacle. - The south bank of the river will be the stage and the north bank the auditorium. The only curtain will be the sable robe of night. Nature will furnish the scenery—grass,, trees, the beautiful river and the placid moon above. All the houses along the course will be illuminated and gayly decorated with flags and bunting. And as the long procession of boats starts to move there will b* a pyrotechnic display of gigantic proportions.

The finale will be magnificent. Each of the hundreds of boats in the procession will contain a quantity of powder for red fire, and at all possible places of vantage along both banks of the river there will be similar supplies. At a signal given by the firing of a gun six miles of red fire —that is three lines of two miles each—will blaze up simultaneously, and the great spectacle will be thus brought to a close in a blaze Of glory.