folded napkin; and you might conceive from his expression and his
attitude, that he is finding fault with the washing. Which is not the
case. Nobody knows what is the matter with him; but everybody feels for
him. Well, you ought not to go into the dome anyhow, because it would be
utterly impossible to go up there without seeing the frescoes in it–and
why should you be interested in the delirium tremens of art?
The capitol is a very noble and a very beautiful building, both within
and without, but you need not examine it now. Still, if you greatly
prefer going into the dome, go. Now your general glance gives you
picturesque stretches of gleaming water, on your left, with a sail here
and there and a lunatic asylum on shore; over beyond the water, on a
distant elevation, you see a squat yellow temple which your eye dwells
upon lovingly through a blur of unmanly moisture, for it recalls your
lost boyhood and the Parthenons done in molasses candy which made it
blest and beautiful. Still in the distance, but on this side of the
water and close to its edge, the Monument to the Father of his Country
towers out of the mud–sacred soil is the, customary term. It has the
aspect of a factory chimney with the top broken off. The skeleton of a
decaying scaffolding lingers about its summit, and tradition says that
the spirit of Washington often comes down and sits on those rafters to
enjoy this tribute of respect which the nation has reared as the symbol
of its unappeasable gratitude. The Monument is to be finished, some day,
and at that time our Washington will have risen still higher in the
nation’s veneration, and will be known as the Great-Great-Grandfather of
his Country. The memorial Chimney stands in a quiet pastoral locality
that is full of reposeful expression. With a glass you can see the cow-
sheds about its base, and the contented sheep nimbling pebbles in the
desert solitudes that surround it, and the tired pigs dozing in the holy
calm of its protecting shadow.
Now you wrench your gaze loose, and you look down in front of you and see
the broad Pennsylvania Avenue stretching straight ahead for a mile or
more till it brings up against the iron fence in front of a pillared
granite pile, the Treasury building-an edifice that would command respect
in any capital. The stores and hotels that wall in this broad avenue are
mean, and cheap, and dingy, and are better left without comment. Beyond
the Treasury is a fine large white barn, with wide unhandsome grounds
about it. The President lives there. It is ugly enough outside, but
that is nothing to what it is inside. Dreariness, flimsiness, bad taste
reduced to mathematical completeness is what the inside offers to the
eye, if it remains yet what it always has been.
The front and right hand views give you the city at large. It is a wide
stretch of cheap little brick houses, with here and there a noble
architectural pile lifting itself out of the midst-government buildings,
these. If the thaw is still going on when you come down and go about
town, you will wonder at the short-sightedness of the city fathers, when
you come to inspect the streets, in that they do not dilute the mud a
little more and use them for canals.
If you inquire around a little, you will find that there are more
boardinghouses to the square acre in Washington than there are in any
other city in the land, perhaps. If you apply for a home in one of them,
it will seem odd to you to have the landlady inspect you with a severe
eye and then ask you if you are a member of Congress. Perhaps, just as a
pleasantry, you will say yes. And then she will tell you that she is
“full.” Then you show her her advertisement in the morning paper, and
there she stands, convicted and ashamed. She will try to blush, and it
will be only polite in you to take the effort for the deed. She shows