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| THE COLUMBIAN ILLUMINATIONS - The photograph
recalls to the minds of all who witnessed the illuminations of 1893,
the splendors of the Administration Building and its environs in the
Court of Honor. In the eye of the camera there is detailed, with
thrilling fidelity, the balustrade of the first stage, the Ionic
colonnade of the second stage, and the festoons and panels of the
dome; but for the fires that burned their tiny points, or the
flambeaux that flaunted their broader flames, or the arc - lights
that made a thousand suns, we here must introduce a poor white
background; and for the misty voyaging clouds that sailed upon the
sapphire vault of Heaven, we here must hang a heavy sable pall. The
octagonal dome, thus lit, was the particular beauty of the Fair; its
corona realized some religious dream of diadems in paradise. On the
strands of a gleaming lake, over the groves and the meadows, cheating
the nightingale and the whippoorwills, undulating in the fragrant air
of harvest eves, hastening the midnight time with speed too swift,
this vision dwelt like butterfly upon a summer hour, and fled from
out our world into the welcome recollections of grateful poets and
faithful bards. And, while it burned at night, then Edison, the
wizard who had summoned this same scene from out the hidden realms of
nature - he came and looked across the waters and across the groves,
and heard his own heart beating loud, and, mayhap, felt the love of
men for him, and sorrow, too, that such a thing should pass away. |
