Fairs: Into Stride

Each day last week produced new surprises for the folks at New York City's big new fair. King Hussein dropped by to dedicate Jordan's pavilion; Princess Christina came down from Radcliffe to open Sweden's. Jacqueline Kennedy and Daughter Caroline, with the late President's sister, Mrs. Stephen Smith and her two young sons, made a tour of eleven fun spots, lunched at the members-only Terrace Club, where the children begged in vain for hot dogs or hamburgers, settled for roast beef.

The Spanish Pavilion, after an early attack of manana, finally got itself dedicated and hung its old masters—notably Goya's two mayas, clothed and naked—which had been kept crated until the air conditioning was fully functioning to duplicate the exceptionally dry air of Madrid in the exceptionally wet spring air of New York. Even before the dedication, the Spanish had put on a handsome fashion show of seven Spanish designers. Displayed by an armada of imported Spanish beauties, the dresses were themselves spectacular enough—glinting with beads, swirling with bravura—to make many an observer feel that she simply had to be in Pamplona next year for the running of the bulls.

At the Illinois Pavilion, Audio-ani-matronic Abe Lincoln, who had been suffering from electronic megrims until engineers fiddled with the circuitry that makes his eyes blink, his voice rasp and his hands gesture, began to work. Abe rose to greet 500 people at a time, pushed back his coattails and gave them a ten-minute talk on liberty, gleaned from six of his speeches: "What constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoasts . . . Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere . .."

There was more rain, and the rain was not good to Sinclair's Dino the Dinosaur, who somehow got a crick in the long neck he cranes—a crick that turned into a crack when the rain began to work into it. But contrary to pre-fair predictions of hideous tie-ups, fair-bound cars flowed in an untroubled, purring stream.

Best of all, attendance was well ahead of predictions. Despite three cold and rainy days, the fair tolled off a million visitors in its first week.