Daily Nashville patriot. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1860-1862, 1861-03-15
A Fourth Letter from BIynnk..
No. 2S6 NATIONAL HOTEL,
WASHINGTON, March IL, 1851

at a great city. My prospects were never
brighter. The Nashville POstofhce hangs
like ripe pear just above me, aud have
nothing to do but touch the hair by which it
is suspended, and it drops into my hat. This
shall do in a day or So
/ am extremely Disguised With Washing
ton. would Ike to meet, at a social gath
ering Of four, the ministers of England,
France and Russia, fresh from the flashed
splendors of London, of Paris, aud of ST.
Petersburg, and get them TO tell me candidly
what they think of the Capital OF this great
nation. / think shall do it before leave
here. Everything in Washington is unfu-
ished-except the contents of the Federal
Treasury the late Administration managed
to '.finish" them before they quit. Piles of
brick, mortar, lumber, &C., are scattered ev-
erywhere, but the workmen seem to be per-
petually gone to dinner. There's the new
dome on the Capitol. They have been ham
mering away at it for a number of years, aud
1t is not finished yet. If they had been en-
plsyed by the JOB they would have had it
done in twelve or eighteen months but they
are employed on heavy salaries and by the
day, and don't care how long it takes them
the longer the better. They climb to the
dome occasionally, pull off their coats, take
one tug at a bar of iron, put on their coats
again, and go off and stay week. The whole
thing Is regular swindle, and the Govern
ment seems to like it-perhaps because it is
so much like the Government. This dome,
when completed. will have cost about one
million of dollars. and will have been four, or
five, or six years in building. l can go to
Nashville and have one just like it put up in
twelve moHths for half the money, and clear
large FORTUNE by the job
II all the money that has been appropria-
ted for public buildings. and other impI Owe
ments in Washington, had been judiciously
and honestly expended, this would be
to-day one of the finest cities in the world.
As it Ia, considering all things, it is next to
no city at all. If the Government should
have occasion to build pig pen six feet
square, it could MT possibly be done for less
than fifty thousand dollars, exclusive of the
salaries of the superintendent, the drafts
man and the engineer, which would be about
three thousand dollars each. If private en-
terprises throughout the country swallowed
up money as remarkably fast as public ones
do here. you could ut get your boots BACKED
without mourning an expense of hundred
dollars to save your life
The way the Government gets its work
done is curious. As an illustration, you and
your family meet in convention OF the whole,
and adopt a resolution authorizing the con-
structiou of hen-coop in your back yard.
You at once appoint me superintendent of
of the work, putting a thousand or two of
dollars in bank for me to check on I get
you to appoint my brother-in- law chief engi-
neer. 1 appoint two of my brothers assist
ant superintendent, aud my brother-in-law
appoints two of his brothers assistant engi-
neers-all at your expense. We buy US each
a fast borse-and-buggy, and ride around
town, drink cocktails and play billiards, un-
til the bank deposit gives out, when we make
out q printed report of seyenty-three pages.
furnishing you a complete Typographical sur
vey of your back yard, and vast amount of
statistical informatioe with regard TO the
the next forty years. We wind up the report
with the announcement that the site of the
hen-coop has been selected, and a call for
another appropriation to prosecute the work.
which we assure You will be done with "yi-
gor." You place another thousand or two
in bank, and We employ two hundred bands
at three dollars a day 10 transport seventy
five cents worth of lumber (Which costs you
under our management about ten times that
many dOllars) TO the place of operations,
which requires about three months. In the
mean time we drive aroundand 60 on Wig r
ously with the liquor and the billiards. We
then come up with another report and a
demand for another appropriation. With
this we get the walls of the structure up, and
with one or TWO more appropriations, and
great many more cocktails and billiards, We
get the thing covered in; and at the end of
twelve months, which we very appropriately
style our Fiscal year." we put you in formal
possession of a ten-theusand-dollar hen-coop
that any negro carpenter would have been
glad to knock up some Saturday afternoon
for euit of your old clothes.
meant to write you long letter tonight,
but unhappily find myself placed in sim
gularly unfarorable position for writing with
my accustomed fprce and perspcnity. Ny
room il situated in a wing of the building.
Just opposite Is another wing, with narrow
court yard between. There must be con-
cert or a circus. or some sort of show in
town tonight, for at window Immediately
opposite mine a couple OF very pretty what
I would s:ppose TO be chambermaids have
been putting on their clothes for the last
hour, as If they were fixing up to go some
where. This is very annoying to man of
family. and if IL were not so far down stairs,
I would go and complain to The landlord.
It would require an individual Of tremen-
dous power of concentrating his thoughts 10
write an able letter under such circumstan-
ces. would close the blinds and get further
from the window, but l expect to pay for
staying in this house, and l am not 10 be
driven from pillar TO post by such spectacle
a 10 now before me. There is no community
of feeling between me and the scou1drels
who write such stuff as this, which some i'm
pertinent rascal, With the hope no doubt that
Mrs. B. would End it, has slipped into my
pockes-book:
when lovely woman wells her bosom
with muslin fzshionzbly thin
What man with eyes could e'sr refuse 'sm
From casually peeping ns
aAnd when his ardent gaze returning,
The dry goods heave TO deep-drawn signs
Would not his fingers ends be burning
To p.ess-his hat down DER hu eyes 30
But the girls are now putting On their bon
nets, and hope am at last To be left undis-
tusbsd. have already written enough, how
na~e nxd swiII hid xoz, a afEacfionafa