The Idaho world. [volume] (Idaho City, Idaho Territory) 1864-1918, 1874-03-05
From Mark Twain's "Gilded Ago."
WASHINGTON CITY.

/
we visit it. Perhaps the reader has
never been there? Very well. You
arrive either at night, rather too late to
do anything or see anything until morn
ing, or you arrive so early in the morn
i ing that you consider it best to go to
your hotel and sleep an hour or two
while the sun bothers along over the
Atlantic. You cannot we'll arrive at a
pleasant intermediate hour, because the
railway corporation that keeps the
keys of the only door that leads into
the town or out of it, take care of that.
You arrive in tolerable good spirits, be-
cause it is only thirty-eight miles from
Baltimore to the capital, and so you
have only been insulted three times
(provided you are not in sleeping car
the average is higher there: once
when you renewed your ticket after
stopping over in Baltimore, once when
YOU are about to enter the ladies car
without knowing it was lady's car,
and once when you sked the conductor
at what hour you would reach Wash
ington.
You are assailed by long rank Of
hackmen who shake their whips III
your face as you step out upon the
sidewalk; You enter what they regard
as Carriage in the capital, and you
wonder why they do not take it out of
service and put it in the museum; we
have few enough antiquities. and it is
little to our credit that we make scarce
~ any effort to preserve the few that
we have. You reach your hotel, pres
ently-and here let Us draw the cur
tain Of charity-bccausc Of course you
have gone to the wrong one. You be-
ing stranger, how could You do other
wise? There are a hundred and eigh-
teen bad hotels and only one good one.
The most renowned and popular hotel
Of them all is perhaps the worst one
known to history.
Ii is winter and night When you
arrived it was showing. When you
reached the hotel il was sleeting. When
When YOU went to bed it was raining.
During the height it froze hard, and the
wind blew some chimncys down. When
you rot up III the morning it was foggy.
When YOU finished breakfast at ten
o'clock and went ont the sunshine was
brilliant, the weather balmy and deli
cious and the mrol and slush deep and
all-pervadine. You will like the eli.
mate when YOU get use 10 ii.
You naturally wish 10 view the city:
SO you take an umbrella, an ovcrcoat
and a fan, and go forth. The promi-
nent features you soon locate aud get
familiar with; first You glimpse tie or
upper works OF long, snowy
palace projecting above grove oil
trees, and a tall, graceful white dome
with q statue on it surmoun;ing the |
palace and pleasantly contrasting with
the background Of blue sky. That
is the Capitol; gossips will
tell you that by the original estimates
it was to cost $l2, 900, 900. and that the |
did not come within S2I.-
200, 1000 Of building it from that sum.
You stand at the back Of the Capitol
to treat yourself 10 a view. and it is |
a noble one. You understand, the Cap
itol stands upon the verge Of high
piece of tablc-land, fine commanding
position, and its front looks out over
this noble situation for city-but it
don't see it, for the reason that when
the Capitol extension was decided upon,
the property-owners at once advanced
their prices to such inhuman figures
hat the people went down and built
.he city in the muddy low marsh behind
he temple of liberty; so now the lord
y front Of the building, with its impos-
ng colonades, its projecting, graceful
wings, its picturesque groups of statu-
lry, and its long terraced ranges of
steps, flowing down in white marble
waves to the ground, merely looks
,ut upon a sorrowful little desert of
heap boarding-houses ;
So you observe that you take your
'iew from the back of the capitol. And
yet not from the airy outlooks of the |
lone, by the way, because to get there ;
'ou must pass through the great ro- {
unda; and to do that, you would have
o see the marvellous historical paint S
ngs that hang there, and the basre- 5
what have you done that you +