two or three committee-rooms, likewise, very elaborately, though very questionably, decorated, and usually on exhibition to rural visitors, who gape at them with a happy sense of the proprietorship of such pomp. The least unworthy of these is the room set apart for the Committee on Military Affairs: vivid wreaths of laurel decorate the ceiling much more effectively than do the sprawling females of most of the other places; a couple of large battle-pieces illuminate the walls, and cornice, panel and pilaster are simply adorned with frescoed arms and muniments of war. Another is the room of the Agricultural Committee, where, with his group of Romans, Cincinnatus, called from the plough, fills the upper section of one end, and confronts his modern compeer, Israel Putnam; above two side doors little scenes of grain-harvesting illustrate the difference between the old and the new way of going afield; and circling overhead are the Seasons and their attendants—Spring, with armfuls of blossoms and cherubs letting loose the doves; Summer, whose sprites are shooting down arrows of fervid heat; Autumn, with his grapes and sheaves, and his followers festive with lute and tambourine; and old Winter, moving through angry clouds, while his children pour out the showers and blow blasts from their shells. In the room of the Committee on Naval Affairs on both sides as you enter rise grayly the vestibules of vast temples, typifying, perhaps, the sea as the gateway of all nations: above them, much foreshortened, Neptune and Amphitrite, Æolus, Oceanus, Nereus and Thetis, accompany a new sea-goddess, America, with scores of nymphs interspersed—all of them riding on sea-horses and simpering sadly; while in the great panels around the sides of the room other nymphs, painted at full length in lively colors, are bearing aloft various symbols of the sea—this one a sextant, that a chart, another a compass, a fourth a bannerol, sufficiently prosaic in idea, though not ungraceful in fact, as witness the floating damsel who carries a barometer lightly as a mermaid carries her glass, or the figure with the red-gold hair whose back alone we see as she unrolls her map. But it is not easy to say why we should recur to mythology for our national ornamentation, or why the ancient Greeks should be called in where our own history needs the canvas, or why these aërial young women should so comfortably usurp the place of the Guerriere and Constitution, the dauntless little boat between the fires on Lake Erie, or the unsurpassed sea-scenes of storm and calm along our own coast.
But there is far more than all this pride of the eyes to detain you within the Capitol: there is the great arena where our political athletes contend, and where, by daily observation of their faces, daily hearing of their voices, daily notice of their manners, one becomes familiar as if by personal acquaintance with the heroes of the day. In past times the heroes were such as Webster, Calhoun and Clay. Now they are others—men whom this belittling age of the telegraph and the reporter brings so near us that there is at least little chance of their ever looming up in undue proportion through the mists of tradition. It is Henry Wilson, sitting in the Vice-President's chair, a notable example of the possibilities in a republic; or it is Sumner, with that gray head which all men honor as a type of political integrity, albeit not untinctured with arrogance; or it is another sort of man that engages your attention, one whom you recognize at once, for certainly there is no one but knows that face—a face so easy to caricature that there is no insult of the pencil that has not been offered it, but which is not the less expressive of an indomitable will, an untamable spirit, and a mind like a torch, throwing light on everything it approaches. From the instant that General Butler rises the discussion, however dull before, bristles into excitement, and one could hardly wish for an hour of racier enjoyment than is afforded by the debate when he desires to gain a point over able but envious opponents, who never attack him single-handed, and to meet whom, their shafts flying on every side, he brings up his subtlety of argument, his readiness, his audacity, his wit and repartee and forensic skill, till he winds them in their own toils. Perhaps while you have been observing these and other notabilities of the day, another personage has come upon the floor by prescriptive right of past membership, and has arrested your gaze. He is a gentleman of portly presence, who looks out of a pair of keen dark eyes, and still possesses some of the great personal beauty for which in his youth he was remarkable. He is the last of the old statesmen; he has had a part in many of the scenes that we call history; he was the compeer of Webster and Clay and Crittenden and Calhoun; and one would not marvel if he looked but contemptuously on the fevered measures and boyish ecstasies and advocacies of their successors. Familiar with modern languages and literatures, an encyclopædia of ancient and mediæval learning, a master of the science of government, as old as the century, and one of its conspicuous figures, perhaps but a single thing is wanting to make Mr. Cushing a chief: he does not believe in the people.
Thus it is easily seen that your life at the Federal Capital, if you possess either an eye for beauty or an interest in affairs, may be full of enjoyment and variety. Your companions are people of mark; you learn, by returning, when summer does, to the small scandals and personalities of common towns, how large is the outlook in Washington; the theatre of the world opens before you there; you feel that you assist at the making of history, if you are not yourself a part of events.
But this is one side of life. There is another and a more purely social side which is a very different thing. Into this affairs of state do not enter; with the right or wrong of vital questions it does not concern itself at all; and in fact it is doubtful if politics are not thought there mere subsidiaries to the authority of Fashion, and if the fair wives and daughters of our lawgivers do not regard the great machinery of state as something ordained solely to sustain them in their brilliant round as the wind of the juggler's fan supports his paper butterflies upon their airy flight. In this life an etiquette reigns that has no law of its being save that of vague tradition—an etiquette at variance with that of other regions, and through which the female population is resolved into what might be termed, in the parlance of the place, a committee of the whole on "calling." This etiquette rules the wives of important functionaries with a rod of iron. By some occult method of reasoning they have reached the conclusion that their husbands' popularity, and consequent lease of power, depend upon their own faithful performance of what is considered to be social duty, and they devote themselves to it with a zeal worthy of a better cause. On certain days of the week their houses are open to all who choose to come; and both residents and passing travelers, all who wish to inspect the inside of such homes among the other sights of the town, throng the doors, leave cards and partake of refreshments. Of course many strange occurrences are incidental to such occasions; and so the lady whose beauty had been made famous must have thought when unknown crowds flocked to see her, destroying daily a vase or a statuette, a photograph or a book, but always staring with all their eyes, and one day crowning their enormities with a procession of deaf-mutes from an asylum, which filed in and gazed and filed out again, in total silence of course, save now and then a crack of nimble finger-joints.
All the other days in the week the great lady is occupied in returning these visits, hunting for obscure addresses, trailing her rich garments over third-story stairs; and it is no uncommon thing for her to have the names of one or two thousand people in her visiting-book, on whom she is to call, provided she can find them. Of course the call is brief, the faces are unknown, the conversation is void, and the only satisfaction attained is in checking off that particular name as done with. Certainly this great lady's lot is not altogether enviable. In the daytime she is claimed by calls, in the night-time by balls; at nine in the morning people on business begin to clamor for her husband, at ten, if he is a Congressman, he goes to his committee, at twelve Congress meets to adjourn at five; and if after that some political dinner, at which great things are to be adjusted, does not take him to itself till nearly midnight, constituents, schemers and lobbyists do. What sort of home-life there can be where the master of the house is out all day and the mistress is out all night, remains a matter of conjecture.
But there are wheels within wheels; and all the wheels are not so thoroughly oiled as to make things run with perfect smoothness; and thus in the progress of this very "calling" sad disturbances arise. Shall the Senators' wives make the first call on the Cabinet ministers' wives? By no means: the Cabinet ministers are but creatures of a day, ephemera, who draw their breath by and with the advice and consent of the Senate: they must respect their creator. Shall the Senators' wives call first upon the wives of the justices of the Supreme Court? There is a doubt: the Supreme Court is the last resort of the law of the land, a reverend and hoary institution, and its judges, having a life-lease, will be judges still
