THE PALACE OF VARIED INDUSTRIES
DEAR COUSINS:
T HE Palace of Varied Industries, where we spend a good deal of time, is a beautiful building in the old California Mission style, and has some fine doorways. The statuary used around the building is meant to say that work is honorable and desirable.
It is wonderful how many kinds of work there are in the world. We never stopped to think until we came to this Fair, that everything that is made has first to be thought out. And then all the little things that go with it have to be thought out, even to a little flower in the wall paper, or the way icing is put on a cake.
All Madame World’s families have sent samples of work to this palace: There are the loveliest little hand-knitted sweater dresses for children from the Argentine, laces from Spain, cocoanut fibre hats from the Philippine Islands, wood-carvings from Switzerland, and some equally as pretty from South Carolina made by boys in a private school.
Mrs. Adelaide Robineau has some wonderful porcelains from Syracuse, New York, which are very beautiful.
We admired the jewelry; there are gems of all sorts in hand-wrought mountings, both ancient and modern.
There are wonderful opals, tinted like the gleam in a bubble, some very lustrous pearls, which you would think were worth the king’s ransom which you always read about in stories, but which are made from the scales of a little three-inch fish found in Russian waters.
We nearly forgot to tell you about the silkworm exhibition. It was the thing we liked best in the whole palace. The silkworms eat a very great amount of mulberry leaves, and are most inexcusably particular about their diet, and when they are ready they go into their cocoons, and that is the last of them.
Only a few are allowed to become butterflies, but they are not pretty butterflies, anyway. When they have spun enough, and just before they would hatch and spoil the silk, they are sterilized, and then the silk can be unwound. They were doing that when we saw them, and they have a delicate machine which winds the silk into nice soft yellow skeins, ready to be woven. It is one of California’s new industries, and will be more profitable as time goes on.
There are so many things to choose from, we are not able as yet to decide what we shall do.
Your loving cousins,JANE AND ELLEN.
THE PALACE OF MACHINERY
DEAR COUSINS:
T HE Palace of Machinery is just across the Avenue of Progress from the Palace of Mines, and is an imposing building of great beauty, as befits a god of so much power and importance. It covers nine acres of ground, and seems to suggest strength. Father tells us that it is the largest wooden structure in the world. He says that six million feet of lumber were required for sheathing it and four carloads of nails and fifteen hundred tons of bolts and washers were used in building it.
We found many things of interest – machines for drilling oil wells, and machines for refining the oil, machines for crushing great rocks, and machines for making roads. There were canning machines, gas engines, giant printing-presses, bookbinding machinery and all sorts of electrical devices. Father says that every machinery appliance that has been invented is shown here in completest detail.
There was a knife in one exhibit which opened and shut all by itself; it was a giant knife, and we said to each other that perhaps a gnome was making it open and shut. A little boy who was near said, “Aw! Sillies! It goes by machinery!” So then, of course, we knew!
There were some moving-picture machines in the palace, but we did not see them work, and we are going back there some day. In all the palaces they have wonderful “movies,” and sometimes we go to them while father looks at things.
We find that it is better not to get too tired, so we went and sat in the Avenue of Progress and listened to a band which was playing, until father came out, and then we came home. It was a heavy day, seeing so much massive machinery, and we were a little tired, but very glad that we had seen it all.
Your loving cousins,JANE AND ELLEN.
THE PALACE OF MINES
DEAR COUSINS:
T HE Palace of Mines is a most interesting Palace, built in the Spanish style, with some very fine doorways or portals.
Inside we found so many things of interest that we were quite surprised, as we had not expected to be so very much interested in mines. Father says that we came to this Fair to learn about the things in it, and mines are very important. We began to think he was right, when we saw the two big balls of gold which show where the most gold comes from, and how much is mined every year.
Gold mines are not the only kind that are valuable. So many things come from mines which we had never even wondered about before, that we wonder now at our former ignorance. Jewels of every kind come from the ground – lovely opals and diamonds, and our birthstone – the purple amethyst – and rubies, and everything but pearls. It is wonderful to think of, isn’t it? We were invited to go down in a coal mine, not a real one, of course, but one which shows just how it looks. It was a bit scary down there; and always after this when we are sitting before a glowing coal fire, and perhaps popping corn over it, we shall remember that some one went down in a dark coal mine and dug it out for us. Father says that the Fair teaches us great lessons, and the best among them is to be kinder to each other.
When we came up from the coal mine we were taken into a dark room, like the ones which photographers have, and shown some radium. You have to use a sort of telescope glass, and shut one eye, and look through the lens, and there it is hopping about in the box just as though it did not enjoy a bit being shut up in there. Being so little of it in the world it is tremendously expensive.
We were glad to see that there are all sorts of ways to keep the men who work in mines well and happy now, at least compared to what there used to be, and the motto “Safety First” is all over everywhere.
The machinery for working the mines was interesting to father, but it was a little too heavy for us, so just to help us to remember that we had seen the Palace of Mines we went to a coal-mining “movie.” After that we went and sat in the North Gardens and watched the ships go by until father came for us. The bay is very beautiful, and we just adore the sea-gulls. They were having a lawn party that day.
Your loving cousins,JANE AND ELLEN.
THE PALACE OF TRANSPORTATION
DEAR COUSINS:
T HERE are so many fascinating ways to travel now that we wonder why anyone stays at home.
Father observed today that if we were to travel in other countries for the same length of time that this Fair is to be kept open, that we could not possibly learn so much about the manners and customs of the people as we can by seeing the Fair. He says it is a privilege to have seen it, because before we are grown up there will not be another, and children remember such things so much more vividly than grown-up people do.
Today we went to the Palace of Transportation. Even Alaska is there with some fine canoes and paddles, and models of steamships.
The Philippine Islands, Uncle Sam’s little brown children of the seas, have sent an interesting means of transportation, in the shape of a water caribou and cart. The ox has immense horns which spread out on each side of his head, and measure about five feet in length. They must be heavy to carry.
Contrasting with that are the great engines of our own railroads, turning majestically on the turn-tables, which illustrate how men can handle such monsters.
There are aeroplanes and automobiles of the very latest models. Here again we were reminded that the ideas shown are all new ones, and we should think that Madame World would consider that her families are very bright children.
We went up on the deck of a big liner, and were quite fascinated with the dear little rooms, with the twin beds, and pink and blue cretonne furnishings.
We wrote a letter to mother on one of the dear little desks in the room we are going abroad in some day.
Some English cars are shown, and we did not think we should care for them, as one has to be really shut up in the compartment until it gets to the next station; and if you do not happen to own it all, some one whom you do not care about may be in there, and it seemed to us that it would be unpleasant.
We do not wish to appear unduly patriotic, but we have seen nothing as yet which convinces us that there is any place better than our own land.
But father says that every one feels that way, and of course it is very proper.
Your loving cousins,JANE AND ELLEN.
THE PALACE OF MANUFACTURES
DEAR COUSINS:
W E WENT across the Court of Flowers, stopping to admire the darling pansies, to the Palace of Manufactures.
This, again, is in Spanish Renaissance style, and has a figure of Victory on the gables, another reminder that we have been victorious with the Canal.
One of the interesting things we saw here was rope-making. A large Colonial mansion has been made of rope, the big cable kind, with pillars and all. It was clean-looking and very ingenious. The rope is made from the wild banana plant which grows in the Philippine Islands and does not look as though it were good for anything. They also make rope of a plant called “sisal,” which is a cactus plant, and grows wild in Mexico.
At this place a variety of small tools had been made into a wonderful waterfall, something like Niagara, only not so large, and a ship was running on the river above the falls which did not look very safe to us; it might be drawn over, we thought, but nothing happened. A very life-like snake made of steel ran across the bank every few moments. The boys seemed to enjoy it very much.
There was also a fountain made of wire, playing in the yard, and it looked very much like water if you wanted to help out by some pretend.
A little Japanese girl in this palace is making hats all the time, but she does not get tired because she is just a little statue, or figure, in a glass case, but she shows how the work is done as well as though she were alive, but you miss her smile.
Broom-making is also interesting, and we watched it until we could almost make a broom. First the man takes a handful of broom straw, and puts it in a machine, which does something to it, and gives it back. Then he passes it on to another man, and he puts it in another machine, and before you know it there is a regular broom, like your mother sends you to the grocery for.
I have always thought it would be better to take the seeds out of the broom and plant them and raise one’s own brooms, but I know better now. The straw is put in hot water first, and so, of course, the seeds would not grow. Besides, one would have to buy a machine.
A wonderful machine from Switzerland was making hand-made embroidery, or some that looked just as well, and we wished that you might see it.
It appealed to us, because to stay in the house and embroider has never seemed to us to be worth while, although we do like pretty things. Men do the work with this machine, and they have a pattern of the flower they are putting on the work pinned on the wall in front of them. I am quite sure brother would let us go without embroidery before he would stay in and do it.
We wouldn’t mind a bit cutting and making doll clothes from the darling paper patterns that we saw, if they would lend us a sewing-machine.
But we didn’t ask to do it.
Your loving cousins,JANE AND ELLEN.