CHAPTER IX.

INSIDE THE CAPITOL.

A Visit to the Capitol-The Lower Hall-Its Cool Tranquillity-Artistic Treasures-The President's and Vice-President's Rooms-The Marble Room-The Senate Chamber--"Men I have Known "-Hamlin-FooteFoster-Wade-Colfax-Wilson-The Rotunda-Great Historical Paintings The Old Hall of Representatives-The New Ilall-The Speaker's Room--Native Art-"The Star of Empire ”—A National Picture.

OME with me.

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This is your Capitol. It is like passing from one world into another, to leave behind the bright June day for the cool, dim halls of the lower Capitol. No matter how fiercely the sun burns in the heavens, his fire never penetrates the twilight of this grand hall, whose eight hundred feet measure the length of the Capitol from end to end.

Here, in Egyptian Colonnades, rise the mighty shafts of stone which bear upon their tops the mightier mass of marble, and which seem strong enough to support the world. In the summer solstice they cast long, cool shadows, full of repose and silence. The gas-lights flickering on the walls, send long golden rays through the dimness to light us on. We have struck below the jar and tumult of life. The struggles of a nation may be going on above our heads, yet so vast and visionary are these vistas opening before us, so deep the calm which surrounds us, we seem far away from the world that we

have left, in this new world which we have found. Every time I descend into these lower regions I get lost. In wandering on to find our way out, we are sure to make numerous discoveries of unimagined beauty. Here are doors after doors in almost innumerable succession, opening into departments of commerce, agriculture, etc., whose every panel holds exquisite gems of illustrative painting. Birds, flowers, fruits, landscapes, in rarest fresco and color, here reveal themselves to us through the dim light.

It would take months to study and to learn these pictures which artists have taken years to paint. They make a department of art in themselves, yet thousands who think that they know the Capitol well are not aware of their existence. At the East Senate entrance, look at these polished pillars of Tennessee marble, their chocolate surface all flecked with white, surrounding a staircase meet for kings. They are my delight. Look at these foliated capitals, flowering in leaves of acanthus and tobacco. Look up to this ceiling of stained glass, its royal roses opening wide their crimson hearts above you; these too are my delight. I am not one of those who can sneer at the Capitol. Its faults, like the faults of a friend are sacred. I know them, but wish to name them not, save to the one who only can remedy. It bears blots upon its fair face, but these can be washed away. It wears ornaments vulgar and vain, these can be stripped off and thrown out. Below them, beyond them all, abides the Capitol. The surface blemish vexes, the pretentious splendor offends. These are not the Capitol. We look deeper, we look higher, to find beauty, to see sublimity, to see the Capitol, august and imperishable!

The four marble staircases leading to the Senate Cham

THE BEAUTIES OF THE MARBLE ROOM.

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ber and Hall of Representatives, in themselves alone embody enough of grace and magnificence to save the Capitol from cynical criticism. We slip through the Senate corridor, you and I, to the President's and Vice-President's rooms. Their furniture is sumptuous, their decoration oppressive. Gilding, frescoes, arabesques, glitter and glow above and around. There is not one quiet hue on which the tired sight may rest. Gazing, I feel an indescribable desire to pluck a few of Signor Brumidi's red legged babies and pug-nosed cupids from their precarious perches on the lofty ceilings, to commit them to nurses or to anybody who will smooth out their rumpled little legs and make them look comfortable.

We are Americans, and need repose; let us, therefore, pass to the Marble Room, which alone, of all the rooms of the Capitol, suggests it—

"The end of all, the poppied sleep."

Its atmosphere is soft, serene, and silent. Its ceiling is of white marble, deeply paneled, supported by fluted pillars of polished Italian marble. Its walls are of the exquisite marble of Tennessee-a soft brown, veined with whiteset with mirrors. One whose æsthetic eyes have studied the finest apartments of the world says that to him the most chaste and purely beautiful of all is the Marble Room of the American Capitol. Americans though we are, we have no time to rest, albeit we sorely need it.

It is not for you or me to linger in marble rooms, maundering of art. Molly, rocking her baby out on the Western prairie, wants to know all about the Senate; baby is going to be a senator some day. Moses, on that little rock-sown farm in New England, has his "chores all

done." He rests in the Yankee paradise of kerosene, butternuts, apples, and cider. Yet to make his satisfaction complete, he must know a little more about the Capitol. Molly and Moses both expect us to see for them what they can not come to see for themselves. So let us peep into the Senate. It can not boast of the ampler proportions of the Hall of Representatives. Its golden walls and emerald doors can not rescue it from insignificance.

The ceiling of this chamber is of cast-iron, paneled with stained glass-each pane bearing the arms of the different States, bound by most ornate mouldings, bronzed and gilded. The gallery, which entirely surrounds the hall, will seat one thousand persons. Over the VicePresident's chair, the section you see separated from the rest by a net-work of wire, is the reporters' gallery. The one opposite, lined with green, is the gallery of the diplomatic corps; next are the seats reserved for the Senators' families. The Senators sit in three semi-circular rows, behind small desks of polished wood, facing the Secretary of the Senate, his assistants, the special reporters of debates, and the Vice-President.

On a dais, raised above all, sits the Vice-President. I have seen six men preside over the Senate. Hamlin, slow, solid, immobile, and good-natured. Foote, silver-haired, silver-toned, the king of parliamentarians. Foster of Connecticut, that most gentle gentleman, who went from the Senate bearing the good will of every Senator whatever his politics. Wade, the most positive power of all, with his high, steep head, shaggy eyebrows, beetling perceptive brow, half roofing the melancholy eyes, the roughhewn nose, the dogged mouth, and broad immovable chin. Life lines our faces according to its will and gaz

"MEN I HAVE KNOWN."

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ing on the furrows of this one, one reads the story of the whole battle. Looking, there was no need that its owner should tell what a warfare life had been since the poor farmer-boy, more than half a century ago, turned his face from the Connecticut Valley and striving with the earth beneath his feet dug his way (on the Erie Canal) toward the West to fortune, and to an honorable fame. Then came Schuyler Colfax, who brought into the silent and stately Senate the habits of the bustling noisy house. It was a hard seat for "Schuyler," that Vice-President's chair, and he came at last to vacate it regularly by two o'clock that he might write in the seclusion of the VicePresident's room a few of those ten thousand popular personal letters which made his chief lever of influence with the people and which he always used to write in the Speaker's chair. As President of the Senate he was usually just, always urbane, never impressive. He had not the presence which filled the seat to the sight, nor the dignity which commanded attention, and silence. Under his ruling the Senate changed its character perceptibly from a grave august body to a buzzing and inattentive one. As the President of the Senate seldom listened to a speaker, the Senators as rarely took the trouble to listen to each other. The question discussed might be of the gravest import to the whole nation, the speaker's words, to himself, might be of the most tremendous importance to the national weal, just the same he had to empty them upon vacancy, speaking to nothing in particular, while the Vice-President looked another way, and his colleagues went on scribbling letters, whispering political secrets to each other, munching apples in the aisles or smoking in the open cloak-rooms, with feet aloft.