33

Chicago Post 4/27

IT IS "RAIN OR SHINE"

Motto of Buffalo Bill's Big Wild
West Entertainment.

AND YESTERDAY IT WAS "RAIN"

Opening of the Unique Show in a Perfect
Deluge - Rain-in-the-Face
Out of Sight.

"Rain or shine" is the motto of "Buffalo
Bill" Cody's Wild West and Congress of
Rough Riders of the World. His Indians,
cowboys, Mexicans, Cossacks and cavalry
men are used to rough weather. They are
as hardy as jockeys on the winter race
tracks and they fear neither cyclone nor
deluge. The man who starts for the big
arena at Sixty-third street and "de track"
may always be sure of a run for his money,
for there will never be a postponement
either afternoon or evening on account of a
heavy track. This can never be more
forcibly demonstrated than it was yesterday
afternoon, when three or four thousand
venturesome people braved the fury of the
elements to attend the opening of the exhibition.
The complete programme was
given, most of it in a drenching rainstorm,
with the lightning playing peek-a-boo behind
the near-by dome of the Illinois building
and hoarse thunder drowning with its
guttural voice the whoop of the redskins.

This big show of Buffalo Bill is splendidly
located. It is just east of the Illinois
Central tracks, between Sixty-second and
Sixty-third streets, with the entrance at
the southwest corner of the inclosure
on the latter thoroughfare. It
is reached by every line of conveyance from
down-town excepting the Henry syndicate
boats, and they might have made the trip
yesterday. All a man has to do is to get
aboard of a car going south, and sooner or
later he will hear the merry crack of the
rifle and the yell of the cowboy. It is a big
inclosure, and at its north end is a structure
of realistic scenery representing a
mountainous country beyond the plain.
This scenery conceals the camp wherein the
redskin and the cavalryman lie down together
and live as they live when there is
an Indian agency in the neighborhood. At
the south end of the inclosure is a grand
stand with reserved seats and boxes, and
covered stands extend from either end of
this halfway down the east and west sides
of the grounds. Beyond are the towers of
the white city and farther still the mosques
and minarets of the Midway plaisance. The
arrangements are perfect and comfortable
seats for 18,000 people are provided. All
this is the result of weeks and months of
"hustling" on the part of Nate Salsbury,
manager of the enterprise, who was once
the heavy villian at Hooley's "parlor home
of comedy," where he organized the Troubadours
who carried his name and fame
abroad, and whose executive ability and
organizing power is the marvel of showmen
the world over.