The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1895-04-05
VOL. XL---NO. IL.
AMERICAN WASHINGTON

1t is interesting to watch the people
in the parade before the windows. In
the quieter residence avenues of the
northwestern section one may see the
rich to better advantage, in far sepa-
rated couples or in carriages, and one
may see the mansions and gardens,
and the nurses and those tOddlers
who are the luckiest children i'm the
Union; for of all places Washington is
the most heavenlike for children
But in the mixed throng on Pennsyl-
vania Avenue there is a chance to see
the people of a city so distinctively
American as to contain only $4,000
foreign-b born men and women. The
Southerners attract the eye first
Their soft hats and Prince Albert coats
betray them. The lawyer, the leader
in the South, has set the fashion for
all his people. So it comes that all
Southern men dress like lawyers-in
sober black with long coat tails. In
their carriage one sees strange con-
tlict of pride and slovenliness-pride in
the pose of the head, and Incidence in
their gait; Their women, petted to
the spoiling-point when they are
young, are the life of the Avenue, and
off all Washington. To be typical they
must be blondes, and we see hundreds
of pure blondes in the parade. And
they must be merry and much in evil
dence, having never been restrained.
They are absolutely queens at home,
and hesitate at nothing. Literature,
art, wit, vocaliZation, dramatic en-
terta'nment, reform, equestrianism,
leadership of fashion, social activity
there is nothing into which they do
not plunge; and they and their pecu-
liariUies are all intensified in Washing
ton. Their husbands and brothers
look on in blind idolatary. For them
selves the Southern men ask only to
be considered orators; and that they
all are. What should we do but for
the Southerners in Washington-but
for their spirited and pretty women
especially? But there is no need to
discuss doing without this leaven in
the great lump. And it is fitting that
they should be most conspicuous there
for Washington is a Southern city
geographically. True, George Wash
FAINT, planned to have it grow to the
eastward of the Capitol, on the high
plateau that was best suited for a
city's site. And they intended the
White House to be semi-country-sea
apart from the town. The Souther-
ners were in control then, and where
they thought the city would come they
laid out avenues for their beloved
States-Virginia, Georgia and North
and South Carolina avenues. Alas
for their hopes! the greedy land-own-
ers and spectators held that land too
high, and we built the city so that to-
day the elegant streets are the ones
that bear the names of the down East
Yankee States.
Next in order of notability in the
parade are the Western folk-great in
numbers, as BELTS the representatives
of nearly two-thirds of the Union
There is no installing them, either
Their men are bearded, hot-eyed, in
tense beings, self-concentrated,a as you
can see in their every action and
movement and conversation. Their
women include many of the leaders
of the official and the social sets, and
sailor phrase goes, the Western wo-
men are the ones that come oftenest
raw and ill at ease in the formal,
ultra-c conventional routine of the pub
lie and social life, where power and
place are graded in one set, and ETH
quette and eating rule the other. The
darkies are very conspicuous by rea-
son of their peculiarities and their
numbers. They divide themselves
into two bodies. The elegant and
ambitious form one, and the lazy,
happy. easy-golng work-folk and va
grants form the other. But the dar-
ky mob is most picturesque, with it's
wasted nurse girls, its huge ban
danna crowned ''mammies, ;" its white
bearded, rheumatic old ''uncles'' in
the embarrassing line, its ragtag and
bobtail loafers, out at elbow, toggle.
jointed, loose all over, and content
whenever the sun shines on them
Julian Ralph, in Harper's Magazine.