s of pedestrians in its broad, shadeless
avenues, it was insufferably hot. Later the avenues themselves shone
like the diverging rays of another sun,--the Capitol,--a thing to be
feared by the naked eye. Later yet it grew hotter, and then a mist arose
from the Potomac, and blotted out the blazing arch above, and presently
piled up along the horizon delusive thunder clouds, that spent their
strength and substance elsewhere, and left it hotter than before.
Towards evening the sun came out invigorated, having cleared the
heavenly brow of perspiration, but leaving its fever unabated.

The city was deserted. The few who remained apparently buried themselves
from the garish light of day in some dim, cloistered recess of shop,
hotel, or restaurant; and the perspiring stranger, dazed by the outer
glare, who broke in upon their quiet, sequestered repose, confronted
collarless and coatless specters of the past, with fans in their hands,
who, after dreamily going through some perfunctory business, immediately
retired to sleep after the stranger had gone. Congressmen and Senators
had long since returned to their several constituencies with the various
information that the country was going to ruin, or that the outlook
never was more hopeful and cheering, as the tastes of their constituency
indicated. A few Cabinet officers still lingered, having by this time
become convinced that they could do nothing their own way, or indeed
in any way but the old way, and getting gloomily resigned to their
situation. A body of learned, cultivated men, representing the highest
legal tribunal in the land, still lingered in a vague idea of earning
the scant salary bestowed upon them by the economical founders of the
Government, and listened patiently to the arguments of counsel, whose
fees for advocacy of claims before them would have paid the life income
of half the bench. There was Mr. Attorney-General and his assistants
still protecting the Government's millions from rapacious hands,
and drawing the yearly public pittance that their wealthier private
antagonists would have scarce given as a retainer to their junior
counsel. The little standing army of departmental employes,--the
helpless victims of the most senseless and idiotic form of discipline
the world has known,--a discipline so made up of caprice, expediency,
cowardice, and tyranny that its reform meant revolution, not to be
tolerated by legislators and lawgivers, or a despotism in which ha