The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1880-04-17

preacher as devoid of personal magnet
ism a. plaster statue. The President
never WINGED nor uttered . groan during
this martyrdom, although the boys in
the gallery grinned and punched each
other; girls took refuge in their hymn
or Sunday school books; other and old
er girls semi-firted OFFICIALLY, and one
old gentleman snored. One good fea-
ture Of the official church is the absence
of q professional choir. A precentor
or leader, mounting the platform pulpit
after the hymn is read, gives it out,
strikes the tune and keeps the congre-
cation from straying of. They sing the
good old-fashioned Methodist airs and
Introduce no operate frills or trim
mings, nor new tunes patched up out of
old ones. When the final amen Of
the benediction was pronounced we
grabbed our hats and rushed for the
door within one and half seconds of
the final benedictory syllable, Is is
the custom in many Protestant church.
es. On the sidewalk we formed q line
four or five deep to see the President
come out. This, with some, am grieved
to say, was the sole object in going to
church. The President was accompa-
MED by two young ladies Zone in blue
walking-dress with black velvet trim
ming, very plain, neat and tastefuD.
Mr.. Hayes looks web, walks erect with
vigorous stride, is broad as to should
der, and wore o coat cut by tailor who
knew he wasn't making shirt. He
owns an exuberant growth of iron-gray
hair, growing full behind, and not
sheared and fled down to rudimentary
bristles after the fashion of the day.
The President walked home. There
was no carriage, with champing steeds,
brass harness, iveried coachman and
footman, after the nobby, snobby, shod-
dy style of Fifth Avenue, which keeps
two men shivering and cursing at the
broom-dealing apists of European aris-
tocracy say their prayers within.
NOW FOR THE CAPITOL.
Go up the back steps of the rear front,
and behold the small negro boys wear
ing out the seats of their already worm
out breeches, sliding down the hand-rail.
Go up to the top of successive stairways
and behold the beautiful view of the Po-
tomac and the Vinginian hills. Go in.
Miles of national Legislative halls
Senate at one end of the grand build
ing, lower and less reputable House Of
Representatives at the other. Between,
rotunda under the dome; around, his
torical pictures which every body knows
by heart; overhead, Brumidi, the dead
artists unfinished frescoes, his platform
perched way up aloft, his working coat
and tools lying where he so recently left
them. Then, the hall of statuary, broad
passages and narrow ones, dimly Lit 10
calities, neither hall nor passages, but
waste portions of the old or middle
Capitol, with the ends of pillars rising
through a more recently built floor, q
dark, caverous and useless space; now
you emerge into modern passageway.
Here is the Capitolian Fair, the fancy
bazar-stand after stand of cigars, Of
notable photos, of cakes and pies, of
coffee and crullers, of shells, fancy work,
pictures, wood carvings, and you bring
up at the north door of the house, the
door mainly besieged by constituents
sending in their cards to Congressman.
Here are all sorts of people. Here ara
people out of Office, button-holing MEM
bers; boyish Congressional clerks, full
of eyeglasses and the importance of
their position; Capitol policemen, in
semi-military uniform; . tramp, with q
club, contemplating the statuary and.
picking from the floor cigar-stumps
thrown down as votive offerings
to the great men of the past; cigar,
pie, cake, cruller and photograph stands
ambushed in every corner; negroes in
big boots, and white men with no boots
at all; rooms full of ladies waiting, ever
waiting, to see "the MEMBER (for in
Washington people learn to labor and
to wait, and waiting is the hardest of all
labor); expensive restaurants down
stairs, where lunches the Senator with
his male or female colleague, off the fat
of the land; and more cake and cruller
stands, where the economical, or others
rapidly nearing impecuniosity, lunch off
the lean of the land. Negroes, negroes,
negroes = the representative gentle
mans gallery full of them. Smartly
attired mulatto girls, negro girls in
cheap and faded fnery, girls who ought
to know better, girls who don't know
better, girls who do know better but
persist in doing no better, palatial COM
mittee-rooms, scores of door-keepers
weary with guarding doors, negro en-
ployees all cigar and shirt-sleeves,
young ladies all new clothes, new shoes
and new 'sfronts," old bucolic ladies,
old husbands to match, full of the
consciousness of being in Washington
with struggling retinues of sons and
daughters.
ALL THESE AND MORE,
tramping the long passage from House
to Senate, or back from Senate to House,
and getting lost in the intricacies of the
National Legislature labyrinth, wander
ing into committee-rooms and turned
out, into the Office Of "hdian Affairs
or Naval Affairs" or military Az
fairs" or emerging on the front of the
great ediice and wondering where is
IL a L - A. l. = \