higher branches of
business be more systematically applied by dealers in manual labor? The
men who are reforming the city's outward appearance have an opportunity
of doing something in this direction. A Northern mechanic who reverences
his conscience, and makes the most of his opportunities to gain
knowledge and character, cannot emigrate to a better place than
Washington.

Yet when one looks into the past he thinks that perhaps labor is
improving as fast as other things here. He is inclined to admire it when
he remembers how much worse it used to be. John Adams was the first
occupant of the White House, and this is what his wife said in a private
letter just after moving into it: "To assist us in this great castle,
and render less attendance necessary, bells are wholly wanting, not one
single one being hung through the whole house, and promises are all you
can obtain. If they put me up bells, and let me have wood enough to keep
fires, I design to be pleased. But, surrounded with forests, can you
believe that wood is not to be had, because people cannot be found to
cut and cart it?" Seventy-two years ago the President's wife could get
nothing but promises toward hanging a servant's bell! Washington was in
a forest and couldn't furnish wood enough to warm the presidential
hearthstone! The forests and people of that day are gone, but those
eternal "promises" remain.

The recent building in Washington has been mostly that of dwellings,
which the ordinary visitor, following the old routes between the Capitol
and West End, will hardly notice, although they have covered many acres
within the past four years. Since the Board of Public Works has
settled--some would say unsettled--the foundations of things, we may
expect to see the heavy building for business purposes, which must soon
take place even if there be no change in the character of business,
conducted with a little system and uniformity. The streets themselves
have been made so fine that it will require some moral courage--a thing
for which Washington is not noted--to disfigure them by the hideous
jumbles that accorded so well with the old ways. Such splendid
monstrosities as the Treasury--as a whole, the worst public building in
the city, although good in parts, so situated that one must go down
stairs from Pennsylvania Avenue to get into the grand north entrance,
without proportion, completeness or consistency--it will be impossible
even for Congress to build.

B