72 PROCEEDINGS OP TWENTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERs' CONVENTION. 



my father said, "we would never know the difference in a thousand 

 years," we went to work chopping holes in the floor to let the water out, 

 and getting our fruit out of the snow and rebuilding our stands. We 

 were then as far toward being prepared for the opening as some of the 

 exhibitors, and further along than some of them. On account of this 

 excessively bad weather, others were injured as well as the Californians» 

 You remember, perhaps, that it leaked out that the dedication would be 

 postponed until the 21-st of May; the inference went out that the 

 exhibitors were not ready, which naturally deterred the people from 

 coming. On the 22d of May the fair was opened, but the people thought 

 there was plenty of time, and they didn't come in large numbers. When 



, they began to come the weather began to get warm, and you know what 

 a warm day in the East is. They say we have got hot weather in Cali- 

 fornia, but when it is warm here it is not that smothery, moist heat 

 which causes your clothes to stick to you like poor relations. That 

 kind of heat we don't have in California; ours is a dry, healthy heat. 

 I know all the kinds of weather they have in the Sacramento Valley, 

 and have run a header in the Feather River country at the time they 

 said it burned the handles out of the axes, and where it was 112° in 

 the ice-house. I have seen all kinds of weather. The people at Buffalo 

 thought we would remain until the hot weather was over. I predicted 

 an average attendance of 100,000 a day, and I was gratified, to notice 

 the attendance swelling up with the approach of cold weather to from 

 75,000 to 90,000, and it looked as though my prediction was going to be 

 realized to the fullest extent, when all at once the saddest occurrence 

 that has taken place in the country for years came to pass in the 

 assassination of President McKinley, and the attendance dropped from 



• seventy-odd to thirty-odd thousand, and in spite of all advertisement 

 and inducements to people to come, they would not come. The Expo- 

 sition is short about $300,000. 



I want to say to you people that from the California standpoint it 

 was a howling success, or to put it more gently, it was a great success. 

 Ours was a profitable exhibit. It provoked very favorable comment. It 

 was talked about in the exhibits, and around the halls, and by the vis- 

 itors as " something you must be sure to see." I remember one evening 

 on the cars a gentleman said to me, "Do you know whether this car 

 goes to the Tift House ?" And I said, "Yes." He said, "They have got 

 some fine exhibits out there." "Yes, very good," said 1. He said^ 

 "California's is fine, isn't it?" "Yes; where is that?" said I, and he 

 directed me to it, and I told him I would try and see it to-morrow. He 

 said, "You must, or you will miss the finest thing in the whole show.'^ 

 I said, "Where are you from ?" He said he was attending the Congress 

 of Electricians. I then told him I was connected with the California 

 exhibit, and that I was from California. That is an illustration of 



