AMERICAN ENTERPRISE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 237, 25 March 1876, Page 10

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE.

Mr. Myers (says the correspondent of the Daily News) is one of those energetic, practical Americans who come to Europe with Veni, 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 with 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 Caesar and all the family of the Napiers abominated. Noah’s Ark would heve sunk long ere she settled on Mount Ararat had she carried one-half of this adventurous American’s pack. He has come to Paris with 250 horses, nine elephants, six white camels, a cage full of lions and tigers, and all manner 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 nutshell. But Americans know no obstacles. ML Myers looked about him, and saw the huge building, the Magasins Reunis, on the Boulevard, opposite the Chateau d'Eau, 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 “neet the preliminary expenditure.. The clan"- of myriads of hammers, processions of carts laden with “ properties,” and the presence of many strange faces, betokening more energy and activity than we are wont to see. on our Boulevards, drew me into-the building. A spectacle was there unrolled worthier of the gods than of 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 morituri will salute IVTarshal IHacMahon, but where he may sit in state, surrounded by his Court, in greater splendor and space than has hitherto been provided for any spectacle of this kind. All the arrangements are on a colossal scale of grandeur ; a cafe is annexed with a restaurant, where guests may retire from their cabinet particuliers to their boxes in the theatre, and return again to their cabinet without exposing the ladies to the rou°-h visitations of rude Boreas, who bounds “about the Boulevards with a sharp frost for his 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 inauguration of this elephantine, equestrian, and 'pantomimic pandemonium is promised, as 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 Fernando must hide their diminished heads.. Paris is looking forward with immense excitement for the happy hour when it will take possession of its new and brilliant and unaccustomed toy.