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BUFFALO BILL PROSPERS.
But Illegitimate shows Outside the Grounds Do No Business.
While beneficient nature smiled its approval upon the glories of the white city and its thousands of happy visitors yesterday, it gazed also upon another class of amusements and amusement seekers without the gates. Stony Island avenue had its throng of people, but their number was appreciably less than all previous Sundays. The crowd that was there came solely for the cheap amusements that they were certain to find. Their ranks were constantly being replenished by transients coming and going who stopped but for a moment at the diversions of the wayside and then passed on.
Two new museums have opened up for business within a block of the former site of Fitzgerald's notorious resort on Stony Island avenue and Sixty third street. The latter is but a short distance east of the Illinois Central viaduct, and presents the usual line of fake delusions and, of course, a papier mache mermaid.
The legitimate places of amusement did a good business, but not equal to that of the previous Sunday. At Buffalo Bill's show the crowd was next to the largest ever gathered in the great amphitheater. Mr. Cody announces that he adds his quota of praise to that of the majority for the commissioners in their opening of the Fair on Sunday. The "Wild West" show has merits of its own that will withstand the most formidable competition--even that of the Exposition itself. Yesterday afternoon the sign "standing room only" was hung out and last night's audience was the largest night audience since the introduction of the "Wild West" to Chicago.
With all it was a quiet day outside the high fence with a dearth of fights and street troubles which have characterized the Sunday afternoons when the Fair was closed to the public.
FIRST SUNDAY ILLUMINATION.
Witnessed by Such a Crowd as Jackson Park has Never Seen.
The first Sunday night illumination at the Fair grounds was quite as splendid as its predecessors and was attended by
Chicago Globe May 29/93.
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Chicago Globe May 29/93
Copied from Chicago Daily News article.
country, will present new songs, jokes and witticisms. The unique and versatile Jimmy Wall will have new specialties, and the musical trio-McLeod. Howe and Wall-will reproduce their Act, "Fun in a Railway Station." Mr. Windom will continue in his great song, "After the Ball," and everybody should hear Eldridge's clever satire, "After the Fair."
A Ballad of Dead Actors. Where are the passions they essayed, And where the tears they made to flow? Where the wild humors they portrayed For laughing worlds to sec and know? Othello's wrath and Juliet's woe? Sir Peter's whims and Timon's gall? And Millamant and Romeo?- Into the night go one and all.
Where are the braveries fresh or frayed? The lines, the armors - friend and foe?
The cloth of gold, the rare brocade, The mantles glittering to and fro? The pomp, the pride, the royal show? The cries of war and festival? The youth, the grace, the charm, the glow? Into the night go one and all.
The curtain falls, the play is played: The Beggar packs beside the Beau: The Monarch troops, and troops the Maid; The Thunder huddles with the Snow. Where are the resetters high add low? The clashing swords? The lover's call? The dancers gleaming row on row?- Into the night go one and all.
ENVOY.
Prince, in one common overthrow The hero tumbles with the thrall; As dust that drives, s straws that blow, Into the night go one and all. W. E. Henley.
TRIBUTE TO COL, CODY.
Murat Halstead Writes Enthuslastically of the Wild West.
Murat Halstead, the field marshal of American journalists, the unequaled raconteur and the brilliant and distinguished editor of both the Brooklyn (N. Y.) Citizen and the Cincinnati (O.) Commercial Gazette, visited Buffalo Bill's Wild West in company with the members of the National Editorial association last week. In writing his impressions of the stupendous aggregation of entertaining things which Col. Cody has brought together at his grounds on Sixty-third street, next to the World's Fair, Mr. Halstead says:
"Another word about Buffalo Bill's Wild West object lesson. He is here in great form, completing the conquest of two worlds. Everyone knows how he took the scalp of Europe and wears the glittering trophy at his belt. He has added largely to the attractiveness of his exbibit and deserves the success he has had and the crowning triumphs before him throughout the season that has opened, so auspiciously for him. There is one new feature worth traveling a thousand miles to see, and that is the cavalry of the four nations-the United States, England, Germany and France. A troop of the cavalry of each of those nations appear in the regulation uniform, bearing their respective flags, and the bold riders going through the most elaborate evolutions, display all the witcheries of consummate horsemanship. They are better worth seeing than the cowboys or the savages, the Mexicans or the cossacks. The one sight that ought to interest
(DRAWING)
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Chicago Evening Journal May 29/93.
THE CHICAGO EVE
ALL FIGHT FOR SPACE
SHOWMEN AND BILL-POSTERS ENGAGE IN LIVELY WAR
Lack of Bill Boards for the Multiplicity of Attractions Causes Strife and Leads to Midnight Trickery--Forepaugh's Coming Likely to Increase the Rivalry to the Point of Danger
Bill-posters are embarrassed with riches, as a rule, but Chicago's knights of the paste brush are doubly so just now. They are literally suffering from a plethora of boodle, and, after the fashion of a South American republic, their inflation is based on paper. On the other hand, the people who are filling the bill-posters' pockets--the managers of theaters, museums, circuses and the hundred and one enterprises which allege they amuse the public--are convinced that their chief troubles lie in the bucket of paste, the brush appertaining to it, and the sheets of paper which make fences and dead walls scream with color.
The World's Fair has multiplied Chicago's places of amusement by ten, to put it mildly. A very large number of these rely more or less upon the bill-poster to blazon forth their attractions before the public eye. The theaters cover a great many acres of space each week with advertising bills. For miles around Chicago the names and titles of the actors and plays to be seen in the city theaters may be read on hundreds of stands. Now, on top of all the theaters, the World's Fair side shows, Buffalo Bill's Wild West, and other attractions already open and more or less certain to run as long as the World's Fair is open, which kept the bill-posters hustling to provide for, Forepaugh's circus looms up on the horizon. The arrival of Forepaugh's promises to bring the tangled and often riotous disputes between the theaters and the bill-posters to a crisis.
It is an open secret that for one thing it is to be war to the knife from the start between Buffalo Bill and Forepaugh. The former has been adding to his resources all the space he could lay his hands upon, so as to snow under Forepaugh's paper wherever it is posted up. This is the hottest spot in the battle, but it is not the whole fight by any means.
Now here is the trouble as it has manifested itself among the theaters proper: A theater is anxious to make the best possible showing with its bill boards, and the manager goes to George A. Treyser Bill-posting Company, which virtually controls all the advertising privileges in the city, and contracts for the putting out of so much paper. An ordinary display used to cost a theater $60 or $70 a week. It is an index of how the World's Fair has swelled the expenses of theater-running, that to make the same impression upon the public a manager must spend from $300 to $350. The life of a bill is commonly a week; that is the bases upon which the poster makes his charges.
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Chicago Daily News May 29/93.
AMY LESLIE AT THE FAIR.
Music Is Not a Breast Soother for the Cliff-Dwellers in Iron Houses.
THE RED MAN AND THE PAPER-CUTTER.
A Medley of Interesting Scenes and Incidents Sketched with Free Hand Skill.
There is something poetic in the sympathy, loyal devotion and hopeless pride of the people of Poland for that nameless outcast country. The gentle fraternity acceptance of inevitable malheur and stanch braving of cruel wrongs is more forcible than the firmness of a kingdom, because the oppressed minority cling together with pathetic courage and their faithful battles are beautifully heroic and genuine.
Poland has no history but that it is fair and unhappy and the nest of buried genius. Pulaski and Petrovoski head a long list of gifted Polish men and women, aristocracy refined in the flames of gnawing ingratitude and poverty; great virtuosi, celebrated painters, tragedians, musicians, frigid but intense literature; Modjeska, Paderewski, Tschaikowski and a golden tablet of names. The Polish representation at the Fair is confined to a pretty little cottage hostelry, where bigos barazez (a wonderful salad steak, augmented with Polish condiments and kuemmel of dynamitic ferocity) is served under the craned necks of typical storks, which stretch their smooth, still necks out from the pouches. Count Rudiemski and Chicago's vote commander, Kiolbassa, engineered this quiet kitchen, and it is perhaps the most popular Bohemian resort in the grounds. Modjeska and Count Bozenta both express great disappointment that the house did not take the picturesque designs of a real Polish cottage, with the peculiar gables, vine-covered windows and odd projecting caves, but at least the brave, impoverished domain is represented at the Exposition and what it lacks in wealth is made up in beautiful completeness by the art exhibit, where all that is classic and soulful speaks from the galleries' favored walls.
Painters of such note and surprise do not come in any other instance from so small and gravely sorrowful a people. Cracow and Warsaw are conspicuous by contributions to the art collection. Men and women whose brushes breathe inspired dreams and tell of rich profligacy in genius. That splendid Polish sensualist with the perfectly inexcusable name who revealed his masterpiece "Nana" to alarmed Chicagoans last year has in the exhibit a superb example of his luxuriant style.
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Western British American Cowboys, May 20/93
WESTERN BRITI[SH]
regiments of the line, who with 100 finely trained horses go through a series of spirited tableaux and evolutions which vividly portray the life and amusements of the British soldiers in camp and on the battle-field. Among the regiments represented are the famous First Life Guards, "Black Watch," Royal Irish Lancers, Royal Artillery and a splendid military band. Manager Leslie will also give a series of military band concerts on Sundays, the building possessing excellent acoustic properties. The British Military Band will be re-inforced by a stringed orchestra and the arena floored over for these concerts, which will be given every Sunday evening. A branch ticket office has been opened at 315 Wabash avenue, in charge of Thomas Morgan, who is said to be one of the few survivors in this country of the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava.
Buffalo Bill's Wild West.- Col. W. F. Cody or, to use the cognomen by which he dwells in the hearts of the American people, "Buffalo Bill," has presented to the public in his "Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World" one of the finest educational exhibitions in existence. Conveniently located as it is on 63d street, just outside the World's Fair grounds, Buffalo Bill's great show affords visitors of all ages an insight into Indian and frontier life that cannot be obtained anywhere else in the world in such convenient and deeply interesting form. The red man is shown encamped in his pristine style and all the every-day round of his wild life is reproduced in realistic form at the great show. Everything about Buffalo Bill's exhibition is genuine. He is himself the grandest of the old frontier scouts and is held in the highest esteem by the Government and the military authorities. Buffalo Bill is no less the boy's hero than the grown people's beau ideal of the dashing frontiersman, and everything connected with his great show teaches an important lesson as well as affording the choicest kind of entertainment. His specimens of the rough riders of the world are taken from almost every nation and their daring evolutions on horseback are greeted with rapturous applause. Lovers of the dreadful will find in the attack on the Deadwood coach and its rescue by the scouts and plainsmen, as well as the other vivid portrayals of wild western life, incidents that will gratify the most sensational appetite. In the "Wild West" Col. W. F. Cody and his able coadjutors, Nate Salisbury and John M. Burke, offer the public an exhibition that has an exhilarating and instructive influence on old and young alike. None of our readers should miss seeing it.