September 2 , 2003

Today is the day to sell all your shares.

Most Objectionable Captions from The Magic City: Original Photographic Views of the Great World's Fair, by J.W. Buel, 1894

"Three Dancing Girls from Egypt:" While their exhibitions were sensationally, if not sensually, amusing, the girls were not otherwise calculated to attract attention to save it be by their immodest costumes. Writers of Oriental stories have created the impression among the uninformed that hours of the East are sylph-like and beautiful; but close contact reveals them as we behold them here, destitute of animation, formless as badly-stuffed animals, as homely as owls, and graceless as stall-fed bovines...Their abdominal muscles were the only portions of anatomy or mind which showed any cultivation, while these, to their shame, were displayed to serve the basest work.

"A Performance in the Egyptian Theatre": The dance du ventre...is a suggestively lascivious contorting of the abdominal muscles, which is extremely ungraceful and almost shockingly disgusting.

"Soudanese Girls": It would be a very imaginary person who could discover signs of beauty in their faces or grace in their movements.

"The Lapland Company": The Laps are a brave people, but they are content to count their wealth in reindeer instead of in lands or money, the commercials instinct being little developed in them; nor are they generally ambitious, and though much more intelligent, they resemble, in some respects, the North American Indians, especially in their indifference to provision against future needs.

"Little Bi-Lo of the Lapland Village:" Babies of strange peoples have a fascination for us greater even than have the customs which often excite our amazement... who is it that would not give a quarter for a peep at a real Chinese baby?