es and nations move with the
chessman. Sally, leaguer, feint, flank-march, triumphant charge are one
after another rehearsed. There, too, moves the game of politics in plot
and counterplot. It is the climax of the subjective. From those lists
the trumpet-blare, the crowd, the glitter, the banners, "the boast of
heraldry and pomp of power," melt utterly away. To the world-champions
who bend above the little board the big glass houses and all the
treasures stared at by admiring thousands are as naught.

[Illustration: SCENE AT ONE OF THE ENTRANCES TO THE GROUNDS--THE
TURNSTILE.]

But man is an animal, and not by any means of intellect all compact. The
average mortal confesses to a craving for the stimulus of great shows,
of material purposes, substantial objects of study and palpable prizes.
It is so in 1876, as it was in 1776, and as it will be in a long series
of Seventy-sixes.

It is the concrete rather than the abstract which draws him in through
the turnstiles of the exposition enclosure. Separated by the divisions
of those ingeniously-contrived gates into taxed and untaxed spectators,
the masses stream in with small thought of the philosophers or the
chess-players. Their minds are reached, but reached through the eye, and
the first appeal is to that. Each visitor constitutes himself a jury of
one to consider and compare what he sees. The hundreds of thousands of
verdicts so reached will be published only by word of mouth, if
published at all. Their value will be none the less indubitable, though
far from being in all cases the same. The proportion of intelligent
observers will be greater than on like occasions heretofore. So will,
perhaps, be that of solid matter for study, although in some specialties
there may be default. He who enters with the design of self-education
will find the text-books in most branches abundant, wide open before him
and printed in the clearest characters. What shortcomings there may have
been in the selection and arrangement of them he will have, if he can,
himself to remedy. There stands the school, founded and furnished with
great labor. The would-be scholar can only be invited to use it. The
centennial that is to turn out scholars ready-made has not yet rolled
round.

DOLORES.

A light at her feet and a light at her head,
How fast asleep my Dolores lies!
Awaken, my love, for to-morrow we wed--
Uplift the lids of thy beautiful eyes.

Too soon art th