50 !N^EW YoEK AT THE WoELD's COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION. 



Addebss of Major M. P. Handy, in place of the Diebctoe-Gbnebal, 



ON Behalf of the National Committee. 

 Governor Flower, Ladies and Gentlemen : 



You can regret no more sincerely than do I that the director-general of 

 the World's Columhian Exposition is not here in person to present his 

 homage to the great State of Now York, and to present his congratula- 

 tions and felicitations to the sons of New York upon the event which has 

 brought us together. 



Summoned at a half an hour's notice to discharge this duty in his 

 name, you will hardly expect me to say more than to discharge simply 

 the duty that has been assigned me. New York has always been at the 

 front, and certainly not on this day of all days would any State of the 

 Union or any citizens of the United States ask her to take anything but 

 the frontest of front seats. New York was thought at one time a little 

 slow in coming to the rescue of the World's Fair, but there were those, 

 and they were many in this city and throughout the country (and among 

 them none more conspioious than the director-general in whose name I 

 now appear), there were those, I say, who knew that it was only a ques- 

 tion of time. That imperial State has a habit of doing in her own 

 imperial and imperious way, and if she followed her own sweet, imperious 

 will in this matter, we have no right to complain, provided she got thero 

 at last. It has been known to those who have been in the councils of the 

 exposition from the first that to New York and to many other States we 

 are indebted for much that is noble in our work. It was to the bril- 

 liant brain of a New Yorker that wc are indebted for the plan which 

 shall make these exposition grounds most notable in the future for their 

 landscape beauty. When the buildings were to be constructed, we went 

 to New York and selected architects for four of the buildings which 

 to-day you admire so much, and which shall remain for all time, if not in 

 form, in the history of the exposition, as a monument to what New York 

 architects can do. In the councils of the exposition from the first New 

 York has been potent through the members of her National Commission. 

 Yesterday in the ceremonies which we will all remember to our last days, 

 a New Yorker was most conspicuous, a gifted and able son of New York, 

 because by reason of his high estate he took a most prominent position, 

 and it was his voice that, under the most trying conditions that ever faced 

 an orator, dedicated these grounds aad these buildings to the good of 

 humanity. When the grand procession passed through the streets of our 

 city no man was received by the populace with more applause than the 

 excellent son of New York, her chief executive. 



