of this day shall make us braver and stronger.”
The pecuniary success of the Chicago Fair
surprised even the most sanguine among its
projectors. Instead of $25,000, which was
announced in their circular as the sum which
they hoped to raise, the amount actually paid
into the treasury of the Northwestern Branch
of the Sanitary Commission, as the net pro
ceeds of the Fair, was over $78,000. The
total receipts were 500,000, and the expenses
about $11,400. It should be borne in mind
that all this money was used in Chicago in the
purchase of supplies, which were forwarded
to the front by our agents. Not one dollar
ever reached the Central Treasury of the
Commission, which has to maintain the vast
machinery by which the supplies arc rendered
available for the purposes designed.
RECOLLECTIONS OE THE FAIR IN NEW
YORK—NO. 2.
BY A WOUNDED SOLDIER.
THE ART GALLERY
Had the Metropolitan Fair done nothing
else, the Art Gallery, its “ bright consummate
flower,” would have Baved it from disgrace.
There was a long, beautiful room, admirably
lighted by day and by night, with not a bad
picture in it. There was “every creature’s
best;” and Mr. Cozzens, one of New York’s
most distinguished connoisseurs, had made
himself, for weeks before, the Orpheus of pic
tures ; for to his music they danced down from
their galleries, up the outside and down the
middle, cross one and right and left; and if,
after all, he did not want them, they danced
back again; there, thanks to his admirable
powers of persuasion, hung the choicest gems
of private galleries (except the Belmont and
Aspinwall collections, which, with princely
generosity, were thrown open to the public for
the benefit of the Fair). There, at the upper
end of the hall, was Mr. Roberts’ splendid
picture— Leutzes’ masterpiece “Washing
ton Crossing the Delaware”—a good picture
for faint hearts in these times. There were
Leetz.es’ superb “ Venice Victorious,” and his
“ Bi'idge of Sighs,” as dramatic a picture
as the “ Duel after the Masquerade,” by
Gerome. There were the two lovely French
pictures of the “Conscript” and the “Re
turn,” pictures which we see off the
canvas every day. There was Church’s
“ Heart of the Andes,” which makes one want
to stop and pray at the Cross in the Wilderness,
thanking God that the world is so beautiful.
There was Church’s “ Niagara,” where you
could go bathe your bruised sight, after looking
at Hicks’ noble picture of “Booth as lago,”
which is a blaze of color. There was Bier
stadt’s great Rocky Mountain picture, in
which we climb other peaks than those sunny
OITB ID JYI Ij"sr Fabe.
ones, over the heights of Fame. It was my
good fortune to hear this superb picture criti
cised by two distinguished officers of our
army, General Andrew Porter and Colonel
Clitz, who were familiar with the scenery it
represents, and they gave it unqualified appro
bation as truthful in general effects. There
was Baker’s “Blonde,” “a creature,” I should
say, decidedly “too good for human nature’s
daily food,” for how a man could go down
town with such a wife to look at —but we must
not linger.
The Art Gallery alone would make a book.
There are probably no men who have a more
enviable position in their own city than the
New York artists. They are prophets in their
own country. Church, Huntington, Kensctt,
Gifford, Bierstadt, Leutze, Lang, Hart, Casilear,
Hascltine, Ehringer, Stone, Baker, Hicks, Dix,
Hays, Hall, Whittredge, McEntce, and many
others, are not only “names of high renown,”
but every one indicates a patriot and a gentle
man. Their gifts of time and talent to this
Fair cannot be estimated by dollars.
In fact, the utter absence of personal selfish
ness in men to whom “ time was money,” was
most auspicious. Outside of the roll of artists
were many like Mr. Cozzens, who gave up
most important avocations to attend to the
self-imposed duties of the Fair. Mr. William
T. Blodgett, Chairman of the “Arms and
Trophies,” was conspicuous in this way. He
first brought together the most wonderful and
interesting relics of the war, suggestive and
memorial; he then issued a catalogue—itself
a wonder; lie then tore down from his own
walls the “ Heart of the Andes;” he gave,
what was more important, his time and atten
tion, to the glittering room of which he was
custodian, and acted as Treasurer for that and
the Art Gallery. In fact, such instances, and
the records of other Fairs which arc traveling
over our own land, recall these lines of Gold-
“ So bleßt a life these thoughtless realms display,
Thus idly busy rolls their world away;
Theirs are those arts that miud to miud endear
For Honor joins the social temper here.
Honor, that praise which real merit gains,
Or e’en imaginary worth obtains,
Here passes current, paid from hand to hand,
Jt shifts its splendid traffic round the land:
From courts to camps, to cottages it Btrays,
And all are taught an avarice of praise;
They please, are pleased, they join to get esteem,
Till seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.”
Speaking of the “social temper,” it is re
ported to have been lost several times, and the
Police Commissioner, Mr. Kennedy, does not
mention it as among the articles found. It is
now said that in the “Arms and Trophies,”
repartees were made as brilliant and
pointed as the bayonets on the walls; be that,
as it may, it is hoped that “Silence, like a
poultice, came to heal the wounds of sound,”
and that all was forgotten and forgiven.
The company in the “Art Gallery” and in
the “Arms and Trophies” was always interest
ing. Good people came to see good things;
you met the friend you had not seen—the
friend from another city—from across the
water. There w.as room for little children.
You could hold your boy up to look at the torn
banners of Antietnm, or that which kissed the
wave from the mast of the “Cumberland.”
You could show your girls Martha Washing
ton’s plain gown, and endeavor in vain to
make them despise fine clothes. They were
depositories of great ideas, these two rooms.
In the “Art Gallery” were seen
“ in bloodless pomp arrayed,
The pasteboard triumph and the cavalcade.”
In the “ Arms and Trophies ” were the
dread realities. Here were
“ Their rival scarfs of mix'd embroidery,
Their various arms that glitter in tiro air.
****** * *
The Grave shall hear the chiefest prize atvay,
And Havoc scarce for joy can number their array .”
I turn from these rooms with sorrow. I
always left them with regret. They paid
their quota of money nobly into the treasury.
Many a poor fellow at this moment experiences
the blessings which that money has bought,
and yet I do not know if that money were the
chief or greatest good done by the “ Arms and
Trophies ” or the “ Art. Gallery,” for what
man or what woman left either room without
a nobler inspiration of Patriotism ?
PARAGRAPHS OR PETROLEUM,
BY A DISINTERESTED ADMIRER OF THAT ARTICLE,
mllE liberality to the Sanitary Commission,
which has been displayed by the gentlemen
engaged in Petroleum—the irresistible tend
ency of that article to rise from the bottom of
Pennsylvania meadows to the summit of the
stock market—and finally the very perceptible
smell of several thousand rock-oily barrels,
within a few squares of the “ Great Central,”
induces me to lay before my Fare readers a
few remarks on that spontaneous oleaginous
natural product—to which I have referred
only four times in the course of this sentence !
DERIVATION OF THE WORD.
Petroleum, or Rock Oil, is so called—
according to a very intelligent and, apparently,
self-educated drayman, whom I found trans
porting the article—“ from the way the barrels
of it rocks when you rolls ’em along”—“ rock
ing,” as I ascertained, being a technical term
expressive of the gurgling and shifting of the
fluid after much leakage. The organic defini
tion or derivation of the word, current in
Third street, declares, however, that it comes
from the vast amount of rocks (or money )
which have been accumulated by the purchase
and sale of certain stocks based upon this
slippery substance. I am, however, informed