o the historic sense just as much as any other vast legislative
palace of the world--and perhaps more intimately than some. The sequence
of its endless corridors and innumerable chambers, each associated with
event or tradition, begets awe. I think it was in the rich Senatorial
reception-room that I first caught myself being surprised that the heavy
gilded and marmoreal sumptuosity of the decorations recalled the average
European palace. Why should I have been expecting the interior of the
Capitol to consist of austere bare walls and unornamented floors?
Perhaps it was due to some thought of Abraham Lincoln. But whatever its
cause, the expectation was naive and derogatory. The young guide, Jimmy,
who by birth and genius evidently belonged to the universal race of
guides, was there to keep my ideas right and my eyes open. He was
infinitely precious, and after his own fashion would have done honor to
any public monument in the East. Such men are only bred in the very
shadow of genuine history.

"See," he said, touching a wall. "Painted by celebrated Italian artist
to look like bas-relief! But put your hand flat against it, and you'll
see it isn't carved!" One might have been in Italy.

And a little later he was saying of other painting:

"Although painted in eighteen hundred sixty-five--forty-six years
ago--you notice the flesh tints are as fresh as if painted yesterday!"

This, I think, was the finest remark I ever heard a guide make--until
this same guide stepped in front of a portrait of Henry Clay, and, after
a second's hesitation, threw off airily, patronizingly:

"Henry Clay--quite a good statesman!"

But I also contributed my excursionist's share to these singular
conversations. In the swathed Senate Chamber I noticed two
holland-covered objects that somehow reminded me of my youth and of
religious dissent. I guessed that the daily proceedings of the Senate
must be opened with devotional exercises, and these two objects seemed
to me to be proper--why, I cannot tell--to the United States Senate; but
there was one point that puzzled me.

"Why," I asked, "do you have _two_ harmoniums?"

"Harmoniums, sir!" protested the guide, staggered. "Those are roll-top
desks."

If only the floor could have opened and swallowed me up, as it opens
and swallows up the grand piano at the Thomas concerts in Chicago!

Neither the Senate Chamber nor the Congress Chamber was as imposing to
me as the much less spacious former Se