nging in the invisible
sky!... The automobile stops. You get out, stiff, and murmur something
inadequate about the length and splendor of those boulevards. "Oh," you
are told, carelessly, "those are only the interior boulevards....
Nothing! You should see our exterior boulevards--not quite finished
yet!"

III

THE CAPITOL AND OTHER SITES

"Here, Jimmy!" said, briskly, a middle-aged administrative person in
easy attire, who apparently had dominion over the whole floor beneath
the dome. A younger man, also in easy attire, answered the call with an
alert smile. The elder pointed sideways with his head at my two friends
and myself, and commanded, "Run them through in thirty minutes!" Then,
having reached the center of a cuspidor with all the precision of a
character in a Californian novel, he added benevolently to Jimmy, "Make
it a dollar for them." And Jimmy, consenting, led us away.

In this episode Europe was having her revenge on the United States, and
I had planned it. How often, in half a hundred cities of Europe, had I
not observed the American citizen seeing the sights thereof at high
speed? Yes, even in front of the Michael Angelo sculptures in the Medici
Chapel at Florence had I seen him, watch in hand, and heard him murmur
"Bully!" to the sculptures and the time of the train to his wife in one
breath! Now it was impossible for me to see Washington under the normal
conditions of a session. And so I took advantage of the visit to
Washington of two friends on business to see Washington hastily, as an
excursionist pure and simple. I said to the United States, grimly: "The
most important and the most imposing thing in all America is surely the
Capitol at Washington. Well, I will see it as you see the sacred sights
of Europe. By me Europe shall be revenged."

Thus it came about that we had hired a kind of carriage known as a
"sea-going hack," driven by a negro in dark blue, who was even more
picturesque than the negroes in white who did the menial work in the
classic hotel, and had set forth frankly as excursionists into the
streets of Washington, and presently through the celebrated Pennsylvania
Avenue had achieved entrance into the Capitol.

[Illustration: THE APPROACH TO THE CAPITOL]

It was a breathless pilgrimage--this seeing of the Capitol. And yet an
impressive one. The Capitol is a great place. I was astonished--and I
admit at once I ought not to have been astonished--that the Capitol
appeals t