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in half dollars, and he got fifty of them. He tied them up in his little handkerchief, and when he got home he untied the handkerchief and spread it all over hte table." (Laughter.)
Colonel Cody—"I have been spreading it ever since."
Mr. Majors—"And he is still spreading it. Now, gentlemen, this is an occasion where a man does not want to hold people long. I could say so much to you on any other occasion when there are not tens of thousansd of people waiting and anxious to see the wind-up of this thing.
"This occasion can never happen on this globe again. The same number of people and the same conditions and circumstances never will occur here on earth again. This is the biggest thing I ever saw, and I was at the World's Fair, and I have been at the expositions in London, in Edinburgh, Scotland and in New York. Bless your precious life Colonel Cody." (Applause.)
SENATOR THURSTON'S ELOQUENT TRIBIUTE.
The closing address of welcome was made by Senator Thurston, who said:
"Colonel Cody, My Fellow Citizens: I will only attempt to add another welcome to our friend, Colonel Cody, and I will make it in language as simple as our welcome is sincere. Colonel Cody, this is your day. (Applause.) This is your exposition. (Applause.) This is your city (Applause), and we all rejoice that Nebraska is your State. (Great applause.) You have carried the fame of our country and of our State all over the civilized world; you have been received and honored by Princes, by Emperors and by Kings; and, Cody, the titled women of the courts of the nations of the world have been captivated by your charm of manner and your splendid manhood. (Cries of "Good!" "Good!") (Applause.) You are known wherever you go, abroad and in the United States as Colonel Cody, the best representative of the great and progressive West. But here you have a better title. It is one that has grown up in the hearts of your fellow citizens, and the title we give you is 'Our Bill.' (Prolonged applause.) You stand here to-day in the midst of a wonderful assembly. Here are representatives of the heroic and daring characters of most of the nations of the world; you are entitled to this honor, and especially entitled to it here. This people know you as a man who has carried this demonstration of yours at home and abroad; you have not been a showman in the common sense of the world; you have been a grand national and international educator of men. (Applause.) You have furnished a demonstration of the possibilities of your own country that has advanced us in the opinion of the world. But we who are here with you for a third, or more than a third, of a century, we remember you more dearly and tenderaly than the others do, for we remember that when this whole Western land was a wilderness, when these representatives of the aborigines were attempting to hold their own against the onward tide if civilization, the settler and the hardy pioneer, the women and the children, always felt safe whenever Cody rode along the frontier, and he was their protector and defender. (Great applause.) Cody, this is your home. God bless you, and keep you, and prosper you in your splendid work."
COLONEL CODY'S RESPONSE.
Another hurricane burst of cheers greeted Colonel Cody as he advanced to the front of the platform to reply to these felicitations, and he was so deeply moved at first his voice well-nigh failed him. As soon as he could regain composure he said:
"You cannot expect me to make adequate response for the honor which you have bestowed upon me to-day. You have overwhelmed my speaking faculties, for I cannot corral enough ideas to even attempt a coherent reply to the honors which you have accorded me.
"JOHNNY BURKE NO NECK."
Found ont he Battlefield of Wounded Knee after the annihilation of Big Foot's Band.
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"How little I dreamed in the long ago that the lonely path of the scout and the pony express rider would lead me to the place to which you have assigned me to-day. And here, near the banks of the mighty Missouri, which flows onward to the sea, my thoughts revert to the early days of my manhood, when I looked across this rushing tide toward the East, to the Atlantic, where then I supposed that all men were rich and all women happy. My friends, that day has come and gone, and I stand among you a witness that nowhere in the broad universe are men richer in manly integrity and women happier in their domestic kingdom than in our own Nebraska. (Great applause.)
"I have sought fortune in many lands, but wherever I have wandered that flag of our beloved State has been unfurled to every breeze. From the Platte to the Danube, from the Tiber to the Clyde, the emblem of our sovereign State has always floated over the Wild West. (Applause.) Time goes on and brings with it new duties and responsibilities, but we old men, we men who are called 'old timers,' cannot forget the trials and tribulations that we had to encounter while paving the path for civilization and national prosperity.
"The whistle of the locomotive has drowned the how of the coyote, the barb-wire fence has narrowed the range of the cow-puncher, but no material evidence of prosperity can obliterate our contribution to Nebraska's imperial progress. (Applause.)
"Gentlemen of the Directory, I will not assume to comment upon what you have done to make this exposition the peer of all that have gone before. Far abler testimony than I can offer has sped on electric wings to the uttermost parts of the earth that what you have done in the interests of Nebraska has been well done. (Applause.)
"Through your kindness to-day I have tasted the sweetest fruit that grows on ambition's tree, and if you will extend that kindness and let me call upon the Wild West, the Congress of Rough Riders of the World, to voice their appreciation for the kindness that you have extended to them to-day?"
At the signal of Colonel Cody the Wild West then gave three ringing cheers for Nebraska and the Trans-Mississippi Exposition. Their band followed with "The Red, White and Blue," and at the last note of the melody the McCook band played the "Star Spangled Banner," and the Wild West fell into line for the parade through the grounds, headed by Colonel Cody, mounted upon the splendid chestnut horse, Duke, presented to him by General Miles soon after the battle of Wounded Knee. At the Administration Arch the cavalcade was reviewed by the members of the Executive Committee of the exposition.
THE OLD-TIME LIONS AT LUNCHEON.
The official and popular reception was notably supplemented by an informal luncheon given to the old-timers by Colonel Cody, and never before had such a party of representative pioneers met around the banquet table and exchanged reminiscences of the stirring days of their younger years. At one long table were seated Governor Holcomb at the head and General T. S. Clarkson at the foot, and on the sides ex-Governors John M. Thayer, James E. Boyd and Alvin Saunders, Senator John M. Thurston, Major John M. Burke, John A. Creighton, Alexander Majors, W. A. Paxton, Capt. J. E. North, E. Rosewater, Louis E. Cooke, Col. W. L. Virscher, ex-Secretary of Agriculture Norman J. Coleman of Missouri, and others. Over the champagne General Clarkson, who acted as toastmaster, called upon those present who were more or less given to oratory for sentiments befitting the occasion, and the result was a number of after-dinner speeches that would have done honor to any occasion that has ever been graced by eloquence in words. The theme was the upbuilding of the West, with Colonel Cody as a factor in guiding empire to the region, and, incidentally, reminiscences of pioneer times.
Ex-Governor Thayer expressed pride in the fact that he had commissioned Colonel Cody on his military staff and sent him abroad to acquaint the Old World with Nebraska's opulence of resource, in which the gallant Colonel had far exceeded what could have been hoped for in that time. He had not only carried to the Old World and its people the story of this great West, but had in the meantime become the associate of princes and potentates, who learned from this representative of the West, in a little time, more than decades of [reaching?] might have taught them. The ex-Governor closed with an earnest commendation of his gallant staff officer, who, by the way, had been an honor to the military staff of all the succeeding Governors of Nebraska.
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STRANGE PEOPLE FROM OUR NEW POSSESSIONS.
FAMILIES OF COSTA RICANS, SANDWICH ISLANDERS AND FILIPINOS.
We have delayed the publication of this historical narrative until the last possible moment, in hopes—which as we go to press we are gratified to be able to announce have been fully realized—that our special agent sent to Porto Rico and the Sandwich and the Philippines Islands would be able to secure the finest representatives of the strange and ingrouped by the fate of war, the hand of progress and the conquering march of civilization under the Old Glory's protecting folds.
These insular and oceanic chiefs and warriors, with their dark-eyed wives and widely cunning children, uniquely and fascinatingly complete the ethnological scope of the Congress of Rough Riders of the World, which thus adds the last and greatest of living novelties and racial object lessons to keep step with the marvelous, potential and gigantic expansion of the nation; the most stirring and romantic episodes in whose history it alone perpetuates, in both personality and heroic action. In semi-civilized and barbaric dress, ornaments and arms, these roamers of tropical jungles and surf-beaten volcanic shores will faithfully illustrate the martial, heathen and home peculiarities of their lives of intermingled feud, pastimes and superstitions; introducing extraordinary feats of strength and skill with primitive weapons, singular and sinuous dances, supple gymnastics, pagan ceremonies and peculiar sports, such as comparatively but few Christian eyes have ever seen.
Paradoxical, too, as it would naturally appear in connection with people born and raised under such insular conditions, there will be found among them horsemen fully meriting the high compliment of a place in COLONEL CODY'S Congress of Rough Riders of the World; equestrians full of nerve and dash and sure of seat, even if their accouterments seem outlandish and their methods surprisingly grotesque to continental riders and audiences. Elsewhere they will receive and everywhere certainly secure, the wider recognition their fine physical characteristics and novel accomplishments so well deserve. Meantime, COL. CODY begs now to, for the first time, cordially introduce them to his and their future fellow-countrymen.
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THE HOME OF HISTORY AND HEROISM.
In concluding this sketch of the pioneer, military and managerial career of Colonel W. F. Cody, and of the historic characters and salient features with which Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World has made mankind familiar, it is worthy of note that their present and sixteenth annual tour will be signalized by a magnitude, interest, value and perfection even surpassing previous efforts an splendid successes. As indicated by the published programme of performances, the result is such an historical, martial and equestrian triumph as but one man could organize and but one country produce.
It is at once a colossal Object School of living lessons and an entertainment radically and exceptionally differing from all other exhibitions, in that it is actually a part of the romantic past it perpetuates, and vitalized by the presence of some of the most noted makers of the frontier history they illustrate. There is no "make beleive" about it; nothing that seems to say, "We will now give you an imitation of somebody doing something," and it does not in any degree rely for its success upon the display of sensational feats that have no other utility than mere spectacular exhibition. The men who participate in it are, in absolute verity, just what they are represented to be, and the things they do are such as they have been accustomed to in war and military life, or in the struggle for existence in their several vocations and conditions. Himself the acknowleded master horseman of his generation, Colonel Cody is a critical judge of the individual, the collective and copmarative merits of the cavalry, Indian, Cossack, Cowboy, Bedouin, Mexican, Cuban, Argentine and other riders he has secured. As an expert he knows just how to most brilliantly and effectively mass these hundreds of representative riders and thier horses in grand review, cosmographic apgeant and kaleidoscopic maneuvers. Himself a famous participant in many fierce battles, pursuits, rescues, and even deadly single combats, he knows how to plan and direct the spectacles of dreadful war and carnage, and of savage ambush and foray, in comparison with which the conflicts in the Coliseum of the Caesars were but spiritless and insignificant affrays.
To those who have followed the march of civilization from the Alleghenies to the Pacific, this exposition is like an illustrated reproduction of events which tranpsired during the long and bloody struggle between the white man and the Indian, in the former's effort to extend his empire and the latter's heroic but hopeless defense of his hunting grounds. The singular and savage characters of the Leather Stocking Tales become striking, electrifying realities. The admirers of Lew and Clarke, the explorers; of Daniel Boones, the pioneer; of Kit Carson, the scout, and of Fremont, Crook, Custer, Sherman, and Miles, the fighters, readily recognize in the exhibition hou courage, indomitable grit, alertness, sagacity, accuracy of aim, acuteness of perception and physical endurance won for them the names so enviably identified with the history of the fierce and prolonged frontier struggles, wherein every piece of ground was disputed inch by inch.
An now, to all the other varied and exclusive feats, facts and features of an illustrious enterprise, stupendously and marvelously true to history, to life upon the deserts, steppes and plains, to nomadic, military and equestrian actoin and prowess, is added to a reproduction of the daring deeds of the Rough Riders at San Juan, which, as a battle spectacle, is superlatively great—something that no American can witness without overpowering emotions of patriotic pride.
JOHN M. BURKE.
COPYRIGHTED BY CODY & SALSBURY, NEW YORK, 1900.
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