Ashtabula weekly telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1880-1886, 1880-04-09

the custom In many Protestant church,
es. On the sidewalk we formed n line
four or five deep 20 see the President
come out. This, with some, / am grieved
TO say, was the sole object in going 10
church. The President was accompa-
MED by two young ladies Zone in a blue
walking-dress with black velvet trim
ming, very plain, neat and tastefuD.
Mr.. Hayes looks well, walks erect with
q vigorous stride, is broad as TO should
der, and wore 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 10 rudimentary
bristles after the fashion of the day.
The President walked home. There
was no carriage, with champing steeds,
brass harness, liveried coachman and
footman, after the nobby, snobby, shod-
dy style Of Fifth Avenue, which keeps
two men shivering and cursing at the
cold without while the button and
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 To-
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, a
dark, caverous and useless space; now
you emerge into a modern passageway.
Here is the OapitoliaR Fair, the fancy
bazar-stand after stand of cigars, Of
notable photos, of cakes and pies, of
coffee and crullers, of shells, fancy york,
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 are
people out of office, button-holing men,
bers boyish Congressional clerks, full
of eyeglasses and the importance of
their position; Capitol policemen, in
semi-military uniform; tramp, with a
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
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 tinery, 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 "fronts," 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 "Indian Affairs, "
or "Naval Affairs" or military AZ
fairs" OF emerging on the front of the
great edifice and wondering where is
the rear and the road TO their hotel, and
then going in again, and out of sheer
fatigue and mental imbecility buying
photographs of Congressional and Sen.
atOrial SOmebodies, so soon to be No
| bodies. Wandering about, also, much
/ Ouu-lOOhlllg lbllhlCs
carelessness of attire. Hat awry. Hair
badly done up. Skirts unevenly bal
anced. Thin in person, weird in face.
Woman thrown out the social orbit by
force of inherent eccentricity, pestering
members for positions they can never
fill. Sitting statue of Washington
in front. Seems TO have just
changed his fannels, and none other
come from the wash. Has just arisen
from his bath. Sheet about his
legs and towel hanging on one arm.
Classical. But why thus in stone illus
trate a great and good man unclothed,
in the fashion of people who lived 1000
before himP Washington never ap-
peared in public without his pantaloons.
Why should a sculptor thus send him
down TO posterity trouserless in public
Washington's clothes are at the Patent
Office. Equestrian statues in various
parts of Washington of dead Generals
who served during the rebellion. With
out inscription to let coming generations
know who they are. Only name visible,
that of the modeler. Thus the artist
rides on the Generals horse to immor-
tality, and children are going home from
| Washington imbued with the idea that
the equestrian statue of General Thomas
perpetuates the memory of a New York
sculptor.
IN THE TREASURY BUILDING,
If you are particularly favored, they will
allow you to hold two million dollar
package of greenbacks two seconds, and
afterward try your strength on thou
sand-dollar bag of silver dollars. BY
this you get good practical idea of the
comparative convenience of metal VS..
| paper currency. From II q. m. to 2