Opening

A Polack's eyes popped at a huge bell, four stories high. He wondered why anyone should want a bell that big. He strolled past a tinselly lagoon and came to five great exhibition halls, not one of which was complete and all of which were sparsely dotted with exhibits. He met some mustachioed Slavic friends who told him of a mysterious Treasure Island, of a quaint restoration of an 18th Century street, to the east of which towered a shining Oriental building, essence of India. He walked wonderingly on, viewed fireworks, stalwart live stock, grassless lawns, a stadium.

The Polack marveled, then he jumped. He marveled at the Sesquicentennial International Exhibition at Philadelphia, into which he had crawled beneath a fence in advance of the earliest crowds. He jumped when a 21-gun salute boomed the opening of the exposition last week.

Meanwhile, 50,000 eager sightseers had rushed to catch a phrase from three distinguished speakers: Mayor Kendrick of Philadelphia, "a visualization of the progress of the world"; Secretary of State Kellogg, "exploitation of our potentialities"; Secretary of Commerce Hoover, "moral and spiritual awakening . . . maintain our position in the world."

Estimates placed the expected attendance at 30,000,000 visitors before the exhibition closes on December first. An advance guard of the many conventions expected appeared last week, when members of 25 Temples of the Mystic Shrine hove to in the lee of many a side-show booth.