Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1874-02-12
From "The Gilded Age."l
Washington City.


to any of us. 1t seems to become
more interesting the oftener we visit
it. Perhaps the reader has never been
there? Very well. You arrive eth.
at night, rather too late to do any
thing until morning, or you arrive so
early in the morning that you consider
it best to 60 to your hotel and sleep
an hour or two while the sun bothers
along over the Atlantic. You can
not well arrive at pleasant intermed-
late hour, because the railway corpo-
ration that keeps the keys of the only
door that leads into the town or out
of it takes care of that. You arrive
in tolcrably good spirits, because it is
only thirty eight miles from Baltimore
to the capital, andy have only been
insulted three times provided you are
not in sleeping-car-the average is
higher there): once when you renew
ed your ticket after stopping over in
Baltimore, once when you were about
to enter 'ladies car" without know
ing it avas a ladies car, and once when
you asked the conductor at what hour
you would reach Washington.
You are assailed by long rank Of
hackmen who shake their whips in
your face as you step out upon the
sidewalk; you then enter what they
regard as 'carriage," in the capital,
and you wonder why they do not take
it out OF service and put it into the
museum; we have few enough anti,
quities, and it is little to our credit
that we make scarcely any effort to
preserve the few we have. You
reach your hotel, presently-and here
let us draw the curtain of charity
because, of course, you have gone to
the wrong one. You being a strang-
er how could you do otherwise i? There
are one hundred and eighteen bad
hotels and only one good one The
most renowned and popular hotel OF
them all is perhaps the worst one
known to history.
1t is winter and night. When you
arrived it was showing. When you
reached the hotel it was sleeting.
When you went to bed it was rain
ing. During the night it troze hard
and the wind blew some chimneys
down. When you got up in the
morning it was foggy. When you
finished your breakfast at ten o'clock
and went out the Sunshine was brill
liant, the weather balmy and delicious,
and the mud and slush deep and all
pervading. You will like the climate
when you get used to it.
You naturally wish to view the
city; so you take an umbrella, an
evercoat and fan, and 60 forth. The
prominent features you soon locate
and get familiar with; first you
glimpse the ornamental upper works
of a long, snowy palace projecting
above grove Of trees, and tall,
graceful, white dome with a statue on
it surmounting the palace and pleas
antly contrasting with the background
of the sky. That building is the
Capitol; gossips will tell you that by
the original estimates it was to cost
S12,0O0,OOO, and that the Government
did come within 1927, 100000 of build.
ing it for that sum.
You stand at the back of the Capt.
tol to treat yourself to a view, and it
is very noble one. You understand,
the Capitol stands upon the verge of
a high piece of table land, fine, com,
manding 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 in
human figures that the people went