W

HEN, over half century ago, I began writing for the public, it was with the conviction, borrowed from my father, that the public was only a great number of average men and women, and if I could make my accounts interesting and my opinions intelligible to any average individual, I should make them interesting and intelligible to a public, that is, to so much of the larger public as my message was adapted to reach. Let the reader, then, regard this as a personal letter to himself, giving, not accurate information about the singular world exhibition now being held in Boston, but the impression which a casual visitor gets from spending one day in inspecting it. And if workers in the exhibition find errors in it, as probably they will, they may reflect that it is not altogether without value to learn what are the erroneous impressions which such a casual visitor receives.

A number of years ago an Englishman conceived the idea that it would be interesting and valuable to give Christians a visual impression of non-Christian lands and people, and he organized for that purpose a small local exhibition. It was a success. Presently the Rev. A. M. Gardner, Secretary of a London Missionary Board, took the plan up, with, as a result, The Orient in London," which attracted crowds of interested visitors and much newspaper report and comment. A year ago Mr. Gardner came to America by invitation of a missionary committee here, and for a twelvemonth the work of organization and preparation has been busily carried on. This year of labor has produced "The World in Boston," which fully occupies the whole of the Mechanics' Building, which in turn covers an entire block. It may be both compared to and contrasted with the World's Fairs, as we have had them in Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis. Those exhibited the world in its commercial and industrial aspects; this exhibits the world in its social, intellectual, and moral aspects. Those portrayed the things the world is making; this portrays the life

the people are living. There was something of the life of the people in the world's fairs; there is something of the material products of the world in this fair. But the emphasis then was on things; now on life. The first step in preparation was to ascertain what there is in the life of non-Christian peoples to be seen. Correspondence was opened with missionaries at different points, and they were asked to tell what, if a visitor had two days to spend in their locality, he would be shown, on the one hand of the need, on the other hand of the work being done to supply that need. With this information before them, and the experience of Mr. Gardner to guide them, the committee next proceeded to reproduce, as far as was possible in an exhibit, what the missionary would show the two-day visitor.

To do this, to portray life as well as things, required a large number of trained helpers. The churches in and about Boston were called on to furnish these helpers. Each pastor was asked to appoint a certain number of recruiting sergeants; the sergeants were set to work gathering recruits. In addition to the paid employees, between fifteen and twenty thousand men, women, and children have been in training during the past year. These are all unpaid volunteers. They include a chorus of approximately a thousand singers, eight thousand five hundred stewards, and I do not know how many for the scenic effects of the stage in the pageant, in the tableaux, and in representing in the various countries the life of the people. These volunteers are not only unpaid, they pay for the privilege. For they each and all buy their season tickets at the regular price, a dollar each, and each and all pay for admission to the pageant, if they wish to attend it as spectators.

If the

Life is not self-explanatory. casual visitor is to understand the meaning of these exhibits and the life that is going on in them, he must have them explained to him. There must be some one at the door of this heathen temple to tell him what is the idol squat upon the ground within, and what is the na

ture of the worship offered to it, and whether the worship is accompanied by any moral instruction corresponding to that afforded by the Christian pulpit. There must be some one to tell him that this is a Chinese school, and that the teacher is teaching these boys the Chinese classics, and what relation, if any, these classics have to modern life, and what preparation this study makes for life, and how and why the missionary work conducted in the Christian school is any better. And the ordinary layman, even in Boston, cannot give this instruction unless he is first instructed; so that for a year past these interpreters, gathered from the churches, have met in classes, to get from experts the interpretation they are to give to others. There were hundreds of costumes to be made, and much study was necessary to make them even approximately correct. There were hundreds of models to be made, and hundreds of artificers, some volunteers and some paid, have been at work for the past year making them. There were scores of actors to be trained for the pageant, and hundreds of others to be trained to represent life in the exhibits. And many more have to be trained than there are parts to be taken; for since no busy man or woman can give all the time of the four weeks of this unique fair to playing a part in it, several actors must be trained for every part. I give to the reader my impression of the exhibition in the order in which I got it. For I went to it in the morning, and had this work of preparation explained to me, and then in the afternoon and evening I went again to see the result in the exhibition at work.

If from the account which follows the reader gets a somewhat confused idea of the exhibition, so did I from my one day's visit. I advise the reader to give at least two days to his visit, if he possibly can. We pay our twenty-five cents (regarded simply as a show, it is the biggest and most variegated show for twenty-five cents I ever visited) and find ourselves in a long hall-endless, I might say, since, looking through the confused vista of temples, shops, school-houses, encampments, and dwellings, no end is to be seen-and in a cosmopolitan crowd that reminds one of Constantinople, with this difference, that in Constantinople the multitude are

foreigners with a few Americans, and here the multitude are Americans with a few foreigners. But among these relatively few foreigners are every variety of costume and complexion, from the Western cowboy to the East Indian pundit. Closer inspection reveals the fact that the Western cowboy is a Harvard student and the East Indian pundit a Boston salesman. It requires distance to lend illusion to the view. And in this too-crowded cosmopolitan city all sorts of conflicting phases of life are going on. "The World in Boston is the world crowded into a Boston block, and the space is limited and the contrasts perplexing.

Ten feet or so away from an Indian idol an African missionary-a real one, not a Boston portraiture-has gathered a constantly changing group about him, to whom he is handing out a leaflet containing missionary songs. They reproduce in phonetic spelling the spoken dialect of an African tribe that had no written language till the missionaries gave them one, and the Boston audience, among whom are a Japanese lady and an East Indian merchant, are singing "Nearer, my God, to Thee" in an East African dialect. A little beyond is a Chinese school where a Chinese teacher is teaching Chinese children to write the Chinese characters, and on the other side of the partition a Christian school with a scenic representation of the only public library in all China—a fine opportunity here for Mr. Carnegie to extend his work! A sound of song attracts us. A few rods away a group of Fisk University singers are rendering some Negro melodies (these are real Negro singers), and around the corner are specimens of the industrial work carried on by the American Missionary Association in the South. Later in the day boys will probably be seen at the work-bench. Here is Abraham's tent, one grade better than the one-roomed cabin of some of the Southern Negroes, because a cloth partition divides it into two sections. The kind of kitchen utensils which Abraham used are here; the same substantially are used to-day. Children's voices ! We follow the sound, to find a group of a dozen children in Japanese costume attending a Christian kindergarten school in a Japanese school-room under

"the Lady of the Decoration." To-night, at eight o'clock, there will be a judicial trial of a Chinaman in the market-place by the pagoda in the Chinese section. He will be convicted, but neither bastinadoed nor beheaded; a steward will explain what the penalty would be. Out of doors is a missionary car, used in home missionary work in the West, with pews in it to seat a hundred, and the most cunningly contrived bedroom, study, kitchen, and dining-room all in one for the missionary and his wife, and the missionary is there to tell you all about it. Here is a goodsized room, not at all foreign-looking, and with maps and charts on the walls and books on the tables, and a young man to tell you what to read and what equipment to provide to make your missionary meeting interesting.

At three o'clock the pageant begins, and it is now nearly three. Twenty-five cents will give us admission, but we have paid a dollar each for reserved seats, wishing to lose no time in waiting for the curtain to rise. The hall, which seats twelve or fifteen thousand,. is well filled. In the evening performances all the seats are taken. Our conductor reminds us that the theaters cannot maintain an afternoon matinee every afternoon in the week, and this the missionary pageant does. This pageant is a musical drama in four acts, or episodes, and a finale. It is scenic rather than dramatic; the colors of the costumes are skillfully arranged; there are at times nearly or quite a hundred performers on the stage. Compared with grand opera, the performance is, of course, musically and artistically inferior. Regarded simply as a scenic display it is well worth the money. But it is something more than a scenic display. It has its moral and instructive side, though its lessons are suggested rather than enforced.

Before each scene an Interlocutor gives a verse of interpretation like a prologue. This part is taken by some clergyman. The actors are chiefly non-professional, but the acting, if not great, is very effective. I have seen professional actors on the stage play their part in much worse fashion than Livingstone was played by the secretary of one of the great missionary organizations. The first episode portrays an Indian encampment. An

attempted massacre of Eskimos by Indians is interrupted by the timely arrival of a missionary, who brings to the chieftain and his wife their child who has been lost in the forest. The second episode presents the meeting between Livingstone and Stanley in Africa, where Livingstone stifles his home yearnings and refuses to return with Stanley because his work is not yet done. The third episode represents the preparations for the burning of a widow on the funeral pyre of her husband in India. The preparations are all completed, and the torch is about to be applied, when a Government official comes in with a troop of soldiers and declares that suttee is abolished. The fourth episode takes us to Hawaii, where two victims are about to be offered to the irate goddess Pelee, when Queen Kapiolani interferes, defies the goddess, eats the sacred berries, and throws the priest's staff into the crater of the volcano. In the finale the whole company assembles on the stage, swelled by members of the chorus, who join in singing :

"In Christ there is no East nor West,
In Him no South nor North;
But one great fellowship of love
Throughout the great wide earth."

At the close of this chorus a dimly perceived cross upon a great rock in the center of the stage grows gradually luminous, the orchestra strikes the opening note of "Old Hundred," and the congregation rise and join with the company on the stage in singing the Doxology.

This closing scene seems to me to give the keynote to the whole exhibition. It is an interpretation of missions as a great brotherhood movement. Paganism is not represented at its worst. A suggestion to put in the basement a chamber of horrors to illustrate the cruelties of paganism was wisely not adopted. The general effect on the visitor is: These men and women are our brethren. They want something that we can give them. And we want to give it to them. They are ill housed— let us carry them the home; sick-let us carry them the hospital; oppressed-let us carry them liberty and justice; they live under the fear of the gods-let us carry them the inspiration and the joy which our faith in the love of God has given to us. LYMAN ABBOTT.