Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1864-07-13
[Correspondenee of the Chicago JournsL1
THE CITY OF WASHINGTON
As SEN By BENJAMIN E. TAYLOR
WASHINGTON

Everybody has a neighbor who, God
and the people willing,-and sometimes
have thought, "tchslse- or not, means
to go to Washington before he goes TO
Canaan. Albeit it is farther off from
| Heaven than it is from Richmond by Sab
bSth days journeys unnumbered, and
there are several lions in the way, yet to
that multitudinous neighbor, the cate
chism is not Delphic: "the chief end of
man" is Washington. Traitors have
come up hither; men with poor brains
and little of them; with hearts empty
and dusty as the tombs of the prophets;
leaders who have trampsd along the Or
gans of reverence of more than half the
nation straight into place and power, as
if some McAdam had paved the heads of
the people into highway for them to
walk on: human oysters, with nothing
outside the miserable shell they dwell in;
the purest of patriots; the grandest OF
statesmen. And take the long process
ion through, that for more than half a
century has been moving to the Federal
City from the whole broad continent, and
you can tamper with the poets line and
paint it all: .........-..- .-....,
The greatest. wisest. meanest of mankind
But no matter ''who comes there" un-
der what colors or with what coHntersign,
Washington is the Signal Station of the
loyal land, and its corps telegraphs the
world. Here the nations hand is open
ed. and the blossoms of peace drift white
upon its palm; is closed, and it drips red
with the crushed vintage of war The
touch of feet sublime have halloWed the
earth whereon it stands; the air above it
has quivered with the grandest eloquence
of the age; from the Executive Mansion
and the Capitol, utterances have gone
forth that will vibrate with ''the latest
syllables of recorded time"
Approaching Washington from Balti-
more, the railway bars underscore page
of history; for the train touches the bor-
ders of the old, drowsy village of Bia-
densburg, Nd, that, content with having
been the birthplace of the son of the
old Swiss tavern-keeper of the village,
the pure William Writ, and the grateful
memories of its old long-gone trade in
the Indian weed, sleeps on in the sun,
calmly awaiting the resurrection. Bla-
densburg has been once aroused since
the war of the Revolution, for it was
broad awake on the oath of August 1914,
when two thousand of the old Maryland
Line, and Commodore Barney with his
sailors and marines ashore, made a gal
liant stand against the red coats: and Gen
eral Winder's militia, three thousand
strong, in the very food of the battle,
without firing gun for the blue jackets,
heard Macteth's invitation to supper
"stand not on the order of your. going,
but go at oncew-and incontinently fed,
lighted home, some of them, by the glare
of the burning capitol and the archives
of the nation. And then, Bladensburg,
immortalized by the "Bladensburg Ra-
ces," murmuring Sancho Panza's beati-
tudeu upon "the man who invented Sleep"
dropped away again, the Rip Van Win
kle of the Eastern Branch. Perhaps
should not say so, for it used now and
then, to open speculative eye, when such
men as he of Ashland and he of Roanoke. |
met on that narrow and slippery debat-
bic ground, the so-called field Of honor.
But am all wrong; no other such men,
that / remember, ever met at Bladens-
burg as duellists, and despite Clay and
Randolph. the true field of honor is be-
yond the James river to-day.
Nearing Washington is not at all like
coming into the presence of Jurs or ''the
joyous Alps" but very common place
affair indeed. All your dreams of mar
bic palaces, Grecian temples and stately
streets are tucked with your night-cap be-
meath your pillow, for the bell-mouthed
engine is Changing itself through about
the raggedest skirts that city ever showed
to an innocent train. Through novels
and huddles odds and ends; where the
noble Celt is out in his strength of wife,
children and dirt; where the tattered gen.
tleman from Africa, in unassorted sizes, !
fiutter in the breeze; where yellow and
green seas thicken like witches soup in |
the sun; through old traInpled camps,
dismantled and deserted; through the
Jagged ends of unfinished streets in whose
shaping no Providence either sacred or
profane. has had hand; through gasps
and whifs of what cannot be cologne, |
the train makes its way to the depot
The frantic brakeman dashes open the |
car-door, invokes the Father of his coun- |
try, and swears "WashingtonW
But he need not have said word, for, !
lifting in the sun as if it would float away |
with the wind, the glittering dome of the
Capitol has caught the eye, and standing
thereon, like an angel on a cloud. Craw-
ford's statue of Liberty erect before the
Lord. Out from clusters of mean and !
dingy dwellings; out from shops and sheds
and heaps of stone, rises the Capitol like
beautiful miracle. By-and-by, may
have something to write of what Logan
would have called the great white wig
wan of the long knives, but you will par
don me if shall not "de" either it or
anything else / may venture to touch,
since in that sort of pen and ink ''doing"
the reader it is that's "done." Avoiding
the bad fashion of condemnation what
may not understand, and so playing the
fly on the Ephesian dome of which the
frisky DR.. Young makes mention; and
refraining from the easy science of find
ing fault with what is Corinthian be-
cause it is not Doric, or Grecian because
it is not Roman. for the simple sake of
sharing with Goldsmith,s schoolmaster
the growing wonder,
How one small head could carry all he knew"
l hope to give my readers glimpses here
and there of men and things encoun-
tered, and to be in all, quite guiltless of
a plan.
Taking a street car, you tinkle your
way up from the depot and coast around
the grounds of the Capitol, now rich with
the leaves of June, and sweet with the
breath of flowers and the song of birds;
and unless the iron gates set Hospitality
wide shall tempt you in, you curve away
into PENNSYLVANIA Avenue the grand ar |,