1905.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION. 259 



a wealth of ingenuity and skill and taste, and such an ex- 

 penditure of money, coupled for a given purpose, as was repre- 

 sented by these gardens in the St. Louis 'Exposition grounds. 

 Not a shrub, not a tree was allowed there without reference 

 to its environment and without some suggestion as to its fitness 

 with regard to the surrounding buildings and architecture. 

 It was the genius of the fair. Whoever have seen the Sunken 

 Gardens, or whoever saw those beautiful beds of flowers, with 

 their grouping on the hillside, clear back tow^ard the center of 

 what was called the forest before that was destroyed in order 

 to erect the building, will say they never have seen anything 

 more beautiful, more unique, and more consistent. 



It would, of course, take time to speak of the exhibits. 

 In such a fair they are the world over similar to a large extent, 

 but there were a few that demand special notice. Japan and 

 Germany seem^ed to vie with each other. Their exhibits were 

 great, lavish, and unique. You could go into one building and 

 see Japan, and then pass into another, and so on through the 

 Manufacturers' Building, or into the Palace of Liberal Arts, 

 and no matter where you went, wherever Japan had an exhibit 

 it became a source of wonder as to how it was that they could 

 send so many goods, with such a variety, and have everything 

 carried out with such detail. The exhibits all through were 

 especially excellent for the reason that there was a system and 

 symmetry all through the fair. It was a serious fair. It 

 seemed as though that was one of the chiefest things that the 

 wit of man had given attention to, the study of the symmetrical 

 and the proportionate. 



There were three departments at St. Louis that rendered 

 that exhibition unique in itself. No one of those four depart- 

 ments had ever been exhibited before anywhere on earth. 

 The first was the United States Mint. Of course there have 

 been coin machines and other machines shown of that kind, but 

 this was the first time that there ever was a complete installa- 

 tion of the entire outfit. The United States Mint was shown 

 in detail from the time the metal passes from the crude 

 ore. right through the whole process to the finished coin. If 

 you followed what the lecturer said one could not fail to get 

 a very good idea of it. I had a special letter of introduction 

 to a gentleman who introduced me to a man who had coined 

 more money than any m.an on earth, and under his guidance 



