Press and daily Dakotaian. (Yankton, Dakota Territory [S.D.]) 1880-1889, 1889-02-22
married Eleanor Harrison, and thus the re-
mote ancestry Of our first and last presidents
We're connected by marriage.
That nemarkable Statue.

The statue in front Of the Capitol at Wash
ington, which was designed by G%reenough,
has been tho butt of all the jokes of senators,
representatives, strangers and guides. Even
Allen G. Thurman is said to have aided in
the ridiculing.
TT outstretched hand of George" re-
marked the Ohio statesman once, seems to
me to say, Here's my sword; my clothes are
in the patent Office"
Another wag, commenting on the statue of
Columbus on the front steps of the capital
balancing the world in his right hand, re.
marked:
George Washington is playing ball with
Columbus and saying, Quit your fooling and
play BALL."
Still this statue has q longer history than
any other at tho Capitol, probably. 1t was
begun at the end of Andrew Jackson's first
term, and took eight years for Horatio
Greenough to make it. He did the work in
Florence, Italy, and made the statue in a si.-
ting posture instead of standing erect, as the
act OF congress commanded. 1t was designed
to stand in the center of the rotunda inside
the Capitol, when it was completed in 1910.
The next question was how to get it from
Italy to America. Congress haggled over it
for some time, and finally sent a man-of-war
to bring it from Genoa to Washington.
In the meanwhile, Mr.. Greenough had
started it to Genoa. 1t weighed twelve tons
and it took twenty-five yoke of oxen to haul
it. AS it went on its way through Italy, the
| peasants thought it an image of some saint,
and here and there they kneeled and crossed
their breasts as it went by. When it got to
Genoa it was found that it was SO large it
could not be gotten through the hatchway of
the man-of-war which was to carry it to
Washington, and a merchant vessel had to
DO chartered.
At last it arrived at the Washington navy
yard, and congress was Mortified to see that
the statue, which they expected was to stand
upright, was sitting in a chair, and that it
was nude to the waist. Henry A. Wise then
said:
1.-THE man does not live, and never did live,
who saw Washington without his shirt"
And the country applauded the sentiment.
But the navy yard is not the Capitol, and
it cost $1,000 to bring the statue from it to
the rotunda. When it reached the Capitol
doors it was found that the statue, Ike the
painting of the Vicar of Wakefeld's family,
was too large to go through, and the mason
ny had to be cut away and the door en-
larged. When it was finally put in, it is
salu tEat Vic uooi peSan toeinh, anu u pedeS
tai had to be built to support it.
1t was soon found that the rotunda was no
place for it. Some people thought it was too
large and out of proportion with its sur
roundings, and others, hurrying from the
senate over to the house, found it an obstacle
in their path; still others insisted that it
lacked artistic merit. But whatever the rea-
son, the statue, after a number of removals,
was taken to where it now stands in the Bit
ter cold, bleak air of the Capitol plateau,
where the winds can how out W~ashington's
agony as they go tearing by, and where his
nakedness ''has the boundiess arch of the sky
for his canopy.'-New York Tribune.