which for seven months had been the admiration of thousands and an
inspiration to all to do higher and better things, were swept away
almost in a night and soon the whole scene will be restored to a park.
To those who had come to love its majestic structures, its placid
waterways, its attractive vistas and its fairy like illumination, comes
a pang of regret tempered with the feeling of gratefulness that it ever
existed and that it was their privilege to witness it secure in the
knowledge that it shall always be theirs to remember and to dream of.
Most effectually was the whole story told in an address on Chicago Day,
by Ernest McGaphey, a poet from that city.

"In its truest sense this Exposition is epic and dramatic. The mere
prose of it will come to lie neglected on the dusty shelves of
statisticians, but its poetry will be a priceless legacy to generations
that will follow. And thus there is one light only which may not fade
from the windows of Time--one glint to illuminate the flight of the
dying years--that gleam which lives in fancy and in memory.

"And when this vision of magic departs; when the ivory towers have
vanished, and the sound of flowing waters has been stilled, there will
exist with us yet the recollection of it all. And so at the end the most
enduring fabric known to man is woven of the warp and woof of dreams.
The canvas of the great painters will crumble, the curves of noble
statuary be ground into dust by Time, and all this pageantry of art and
commerce disappear. But memory will keep a record of these days as a
woman will treasure old love letters, and in the last analysis the
height and breadth, the depth and scope of this splendid achievement
shall be measured by a dream."