THE OPENING 
OF THE NEW FIELD MUSEUM 
I am now thirty years of age; I have not seen Norma nor 
Happy for five years, for they went to England four years 
ago. Contrariwise, I receive letters from them very often. 
They have just sent a picture to me of their little girl, who 
is four years of age, and whose first name is Lorenza. Norma 
told me before she left, that, and with the deepest confidence in 
herself, that if she should bring forth a child, she told me be- 
fore she went to England that her first girl would receive the 
appellation Lorenza. Moreover, Lorenza is a very pretty girl; 
she is the picture of her mother. Thus, I can not keep from 
loving her. Her mouth, nose, ears, all are the inherited char- 
acteristics of femininity that she has been given by her mother. 
I am a fellow who is always desirous of going to the first 
opening of some celebrated spectacle. The New Field Museum 
opens today. I am going to be in front of the building when it 
opens. Hence, I am going to motor there within an hour. 
I have now arrived at my destination. Before I enter this 
building of natural accumulations, a stupendous structure 
wherein there is a collection of various components of nature, 
geologically, archaeologically, ethnologically, classically, and 
so on, before I make my entrance for an observation of the 
different natural collections, I am going to take into considera- 
tion the externality and internality of its architecture and 
various other particulars in a state of meditation, because I 
ve been in the building before its opening for the public. 
For, without doing this, I cannot do justice to our Chicagoan 
structure of knowledge, and, simultaneously, stamp upon our 
Philosophical memory the much thought of services which 
have been rendered us by scientists, philosophers, naturalists 
artists, and finally, mentioning the illustrious appellation of 
its founder, Marshall Field, and its intellectual president of 
today, Stanley Field. 
South of Grant Park just opposite the end of East Roosevelt 
Road is the site of the new Field Museum of Natural History; 
the building is three hundred feet wide and seven hundred 
feet long, its exterior being Georgia white marble of about 
eighty feet high, treated in a monumental manner which is 
based on Greek architecture of the Ionic order. The prin- 
cipal fronts are divided into a large pedimented central pavil- 
ion with two long wings terminated by a smaller pavilion at 
each end. One of the principal features of the structure is a 
terrace, about forty feet wide, which completely surrounds 
the building and rises about six feet above the a jacent terri- 
tory. And, to enter this building, we have to ascend about 
38 
