AMERICAN ENTERPRISE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 104, 20 April 1876, Page 4

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE.

Mr Myers (says the correspondent of the Daily News) is one of those energetic, practical Americans who come to Europe with Vent, vidi, vici views, and do not return until they have carried them out, generally with advantage to themselves, sometimes, but by no means invariably, to that of others. One such is this importation from Transatlantic confines, for common report fathers him wilh colossal wealth, which he has acquired in all the chief cities in Europe by furnishing them with amusements which they are powerless, to provide for themselves. He travels about Europe with impedimenta which Cae.ar and all the family of the Napiers abominated. Noah's Ark would have struck long ere she settled on Mount Ararat had she carried one-half of this adveiiturouß American's pack. He has come to Paris with 250 horses, nine elephants, six white camels, a cage of. lions and tigers, and all manners of beasts, and a troupe of some 200 performers and attendants of divers kinds. Good entertainment for man and beast .can be found at many hostelries in Paris, but lions are not easily lodged, neither are tigers nor elephants ; nor can 250 horses, &c„ be packed in a nut-shell. But Americans know no obstacles. Mr Myers looked about him, and the huge building, the Magasins Reunis, on the. Boulevard, opposite the Chateau d'Eau, was unoccupied. He entered the building and his practised eye espied the spacious courtyard, or Jardin d'Hiver, a space the fellow to which is not to be found even in the Alhambra. He hired the huge dome, sent an army of workmen to convert it into a circus, and lodged a couple of million francs at his bankers to meet the preliminary expenditure. The. clang of myriads of hammers, processions of carts laden with "properties,'' and the presence q. many strange faces betokening more energy and activity than we are wont to see on our Boulevards, drew me into the building yesterday. A spectacle was there unrolled worthier of the gods than pf man. Imagine a gigantic theatre, with boxes, pits, and galleries both before and behind the stage; a circus, which almost rivals the glorious Flavian Amphitheatre at Rome, where no Dacians will be butchered to make a Parisian holiday, where no niorituri will salute Marshal MacMabon, but where he may Bit in state surrounded by bis Court, in greater splendour and space than has hitherto been provided for any spectacle ot this kind. All the arrangements are on a. colossal seals of grandeur; a cafe is annexed with a restaurant, r where gueßfs may^ retire from the cabinets particuliers to their boxes in the theatre, and return again to tbeir cabinet without exposing the ladies to the rough visitations of rude Boreas, who bounds about the Boulevards with a, sharp frost for bis attendant. There will be spacious promenades, decked with tropical plants and splashing fountains, aquaria varied amusements to attract the attention, and gorgeous hangings and ornamentations, which bewilder the eye with their grandeur. The inaguration of this elephantine, equestrian; and pantomimic Pandemonium is promised, ns the workmen assured me, for the 12th of December; but so much remains to be done that the vast work can hardly be completed by that time. Still, American enterprise knows no obstacle, and may be that Mr Myers may come to time; and when he shall throw open his portals the other circenses must close theirs. Franconi and Ferando must hide their diminished heads. Paris is looking forward with immense excitement for the happy hour when it will lake possession, of its new and brilliant and unaccustomed toy.