Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1881-02-25
NO. 8.
WashInr.on city.

II has not grown as other American cities
grow; its progress has been tardy. This
yeanlng Of towns 80 carefully fostered on
the banks OF the Potomac, has not availed IT,
self to any great extent Of that popular meth
cd of improvement so successfully adopted
by Chicago and Boston-the method of burn
ing and its increase has been more a ref1ec-
tion Of the extending magnitude of other CEN
tres than a spontaneous movement More
and more the custom has grown among the
rich OF energetic and inquiring inhabitants Of
other places, Of going TO the capital to see
what IL is like many Of them have been 80
fascinated that they have staid and now
Washington may fairly be called the winter
end Of New York, as Newport is the summer
extension of the metropolis. Add to the en-
otic population the enlarged ranks Of public
officials and clerks, the growing circle Of SCI
entihc and literary people, who from choice
or government connection have been led 10
make their homes there, together with the
needful contingent of small traders who sup
ply the daily wants of these elements and
you have general classification of the hun
dred and sixty thousand heads counted by the
new census. A city without commerce and
without suburbs-drive a mile in any direc-
tion and you find yourself in the midst of
woods set but sparsely with houses or cabins,
and with only the great pillared dome, like q
nAAhihb NAeNA IL Nho hAAf W lOu VI I06
human mass so Washington neverthe-
less wears distinctly the appearance Of cap
ital which has risen to the emergency.
1t has this special charm TO commend il
above other places, that while Boston and San
Francisco and Cincinnati and New York. DESPITE
their numerous points of other than COM
mercial interest, are work-a-day towns, the
maiden capital" shows a gayer disposition,
and devotes itself largely to social pleasures.
IT,. tl,a = 4
friendship and Irritation. You like, you may
love, the particular big local capital where
you live and do business but you approach
Washington with a sense of its being a some
thing piquant and novel, with which you may
trife and entangle yourself in a make believe
attachment having all the stimulus and none
of the drawbacks of steady devotion. Be-
sides, it is city provided with sights"
There are Congress and the Capital there
are Mount Vernon and Kalorama, where
dwet the author of the "Columbiad" in pro-
found conviction of his errand as the Ameri-
can epic poet and Cabin.John Bridge the
longest single arch in the world Arlington,
withits earlier historic and later war memories;
Georgetown, with its observatory its college,
and its convent; besides all these, the Cor
coran Art Gallery, the Smithsonian Institu-
ton, the curiosities of the Patent Office, the
Treasury with its hundreds of rooms and
thousands of employees, where you peer into
the busy brain-cells of the government while
they are full of activity.
You arrive by an early morning train. and
are greeted by gong beating for breakfast
at the station, which makes you feel like an
impossible Chinese embassy. Bnt armed with
pocket copy of the Constitution, you re-as-
sert your birthright, and after going to the
hotel, where you wait some hours for q room,
you step forth into the broad airy streets.
They have continental width and extent,
making it impossible to crowd them except
on rare occasions, and in the more retired
ones children glide peacefully along the
asphalt on roller-skates. Walking these
thoroughfares, you know that the trail of the
Boss is over them all, but it is a picturesque
trail, excellent in its results, whatever it may
have been morally. Many of the houses in
the new northwest end are well set of by
trees and lawns; some stand on terraces
decked with vines and shrubbery and the
avenues are lined with more than q hundred
thousand trees judiciously planted-elm and
tulip, buttonwood and cottonwood, the ash,
the negundo, the maple. The quality of the
houses is still unequal. Here and there you
see a relic of the village era-some little
whitewashed hut sticking pertinaciously TO
the side of fine modern brick structure of
comfortable and tasteful style, like G wasps'
nest attached to a real human habitation;
and it is amusing TO come upon a building
in what is known, according to the barbarous
nomenclature of the place, as E street
which bears on one side the legend, "Law
College of the University of Georgetown"
and on the other, Capitol Laundry" Such
a conjunction is only to be explained by the
tendency of people nowadays to wash their
dirty linen in court Black men and women
are numerous, and laugh very loud on the
streets with refreshing freedom. There is
everywhere about the city a slight but racy
touch of Southern characteristics, interfused
with the vigor of other portions of the Union;
and for the sake of this you are willing to for
give the copious tobacco stains-those blots
on the national escutcheon-which disfgure
sidewalks, and around which you see an Eng
lsh tourist and his wife making their way
with pardonably imperial disdain.- George
p Lathrop, IN Hdrper's Magazine.