GREAT PAGEANT AT OXFORD.
Mark Twain Delighted -- Three Thousand Performers Engaged.
OXFORD, June 27. - Mark Twain was an interested spectator to-day at the opening of the elaborate pageant illustrative of events in the history of Oxford and the university, which occupied seven months in preparation and in the rehearsal of which some 3,000 performers were engaged. The spectacle was favored by fine weather and was pronounced the most brilliant and effective of the kind ever held.
Chancellor Curzon, with the officials of the university in their robes, conducted the distinguished guests, including Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling, to the grounds where the pageant was presented. Sixteen scenes, illustrating a thousand years of history, the arrangement of which has been in the hands of some of Oxford's best scholars and writers, including Stanley J. Weyman, Laurence Housman, and A. T. Quiller-Couch, formed a beautiful spectacle of pictorial imaginative drama. Mark Twain said afterward:
"It ws beyond anything I had imagined. I never meant to journey over any sea again except at my own funeral, but I would cross the Atlantic twice to see it."
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