The Swabian residents of Chicago, yesterday, celebrated what is known in their country as the Cannstaetter Volksfest, the annual festival which is held in the Swabian provinces after the close of the harvest.

In the old country at this time all who can do so, meet together in the city of Cannstatt, situated near Stuttgart, where a monstrous agricultural fair is held, the entire farming population of the country centering there to exhibit the best fruits of their farms, gardens, and stables. The King presides over the festival, and while it lasts, the city is given up to pleasure and sight-seeing. After the fair, the most important feature of the festival is the grand procession, which takes place upon one of the days and it was this feature which the Chicago Swabians aimed especially to imitate in their celebration of yesterday.

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The day's enjoyment was organized and carried to a very successful issue under the auspices of the Chicago Schwaben Verein, and at ten o'clock in the morning fluttering flags and gaily bedight horsemen flitting about the old Hay-market Square on West Randolph Street, showed that part of the procession was already on hand.

A few minutes after eleven o'clock, it started on its march to Ogden Grove, the beauty of its numerous floats securing it an ovation as it made its way through the streets densely thronged by appreciative north siders. In the van of the pageant rode four gorgeously appareled heralds, behind whom came fifteen mounted policemen. The United States flag, some society banners, and a brass band completed the first section of the procession, after which came the various cars intended to do honor to the agricultural successes of the year. The first of these cars was a very grand affair, devoted to the glorification of fruit and vegetable culture. The body of the car was artistically concealed with evergreens, and from the sward which they inclosed arose a huge pillar of fruits and vegetables, whose comingling colors produced a 3delightfully artistic effect. At the corners of the square base of the pillar sat four lovely brunettes, whose dark hair flowed in the breeze, and against it stood a majestic form classically draped and intended as a representation of the Goddess Pomona.

Husbandry was honored next, the cars coming after that just described, bearing in turn the implements used in plowing, sowing, harrowing, and reaping, attended by appropriately costumed men and boys. The shepherd and the haymaker each had a car to himself, and after them came loads of hay and grain bedecked with flags and gracefully arranged festoons of bright foliage. Then came cars symbolizing the vintage, the young wine, and after them a beautiful representation of winter, in which the interior of a mountain cottage was shown, with a venerable dame sitting spinning in the midst of her daughters and grand-daughters, while the head of the house, a gallant chamois hunter, just returned from the chase, peeped through the window with evident pleasure at the domestic joy he was witnessing. A hunter's car containing a dozen stalwart followers of the mountain deer followed, and after it rode twenty horsemen dressed in the Swabian 4cavalry uniform and bearing aloft the flags of the various districts of their fatherland. A long line of carriages brought up the rear of the procession, which reached the grove at about one o'clock.

Here a large party had already gathered, and by four o'clock in the afternoon, at which time the in-coming street-cars still brought teeming loads of picnickers, there were not less than eight-thousand people in the grove.

The amusements to which the Swabians devoted themselves during the afternoon, did not differ in any marked particular from those in vogue at the ordinary North Side public picnic. There was dancing on the platform to the music of a capital band; beer drinking at all parts of the grove; ring throwing at a table which bristled with cheap cutlery; shooting at a target; and a whirligig apparatus whose proprietor managed every five minutes to dispose of a quarter's worth of trumpery crockery for a couple of dollars. The most attractive 5feature of the grove was a beautiful monument of fruits, vegetables, flowers, and foliage which the society had built in the center of the grove.

In its general design, it was similar to the pomological car already described. though on a much larger scale. The base of the monument was of evergreens and maize leaves intertwined, each corner topped with a sheaf of golden wheat. From its center rose a round shaft to a height of forty feet, its surface covered with apples, turnips, onions, beets, pepper-corns, blue and red plums, squashes, potatoes, cucumbers, and other fruits and vegetables, while its summit was crowned with a monster sheaf of wheat, whose drooping heads made a beautiful crown for the structure.

There was but little ceremony attendant upon the afternoon's doings, speeches by his Honor, the Mayor, and Mr. Rapp, of the Staats-Zeitung, being the only set amusements in the program. The weather was cool, but not to an uncomfortable degree; and even after sunset the pleasures of the festival were kept up 6with great spirit, and it was well into the night before the festival came to a close and a day's enjoyment ended, the success of which was largely due to the excellent management of Mr. Demmler of the City Atlas Department, and Deputy-Sheriff Joseph Schoenninger, who had the bulk of the responsibility for the affair upon their shoulders.

Following is the speech of William Rapp of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung:

"It is a year and a few days ago, when I stood in the heart of our beloved Swabia on the heights of Hohen-Rechberg. The splendid landscape before my view was slightly dimmed by nebulous vapors, as with a mourning veil. Every now and then a ray of sunshine would more clearly develop the outlines of a chain of the Alps Mountains, of a small section of the Schurwald and Welzheimer Wald, of a vineyard or hillock covered with grapevines, while the near Hohenstaufen, the most beautiful of our Swabian mountains, looked frowning down upon the surrounding panorama; as if the reminiscences of that monstrous German tragedy with which its name is forever linked would never darken in 7its memory. The impression this view made upon my mind was deep and melancholy. And a similar impression, no doubt, every Swabian-American who, during the last years has revisited his old home, has treasured up in his heart to tell and speak of in the circle of his family and friends in his new adopted fatherland.

"But away with such sad and dark reflections! They are hardly in place, and will not contribute to our pleasure on this day of honor of the Swabians of Chicago, who are determined to enjoy the achievements and the results of their steady labor, obtained in their new home with light Swabian hearts.

"Today Chicago is a larger German city than Stuttgart, because the number of German inhabitants of the former city is greater than the total number of inhabitants of the capital of the Swabian land. Chicago is today a larger Swabian city than Reutlingen, because the number of its Swabian-American inhabitants is greater than the total number of inhabitants of the old German Reichs-Stadt.

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"Many Swabians, male and female, wear in honor of the day the Swabian costume. But whether the heart of the Swabian beats under his national costume or modern attire, it is all the same if only the heart is true and noble; not a narrow, but a warm German heart; not one-sided German, but a heart inclosing with equal love the old and the new fatherland a steady German-American heart."