The list of the unique prodigies of Washington is without limit. But
marvels heaped together cease to be marvellous, and of all places in
the world a museum is the most tiresome. So, amid the whirl and roar
of winter-life in Washington, when one has no time to read, write, or
think, and scarcely time to eat, drink, and sleep, when the days fly by
like hours, and the brain reels under the excitement of the protracted
debauch, life becomes an intolerable bore. Yet the place has an intense
fascination for those who suffer most acutely from the _tedium vitae_ to
which every one is more or less a prey; and men and women who have lived
in Washington are seldom contented elsewhere. The moths return to the
flaming candle until they are consumed.

In conclusion, it must be admitted that Washington is the Elysium of
oddities, the Limbo of absurdities, an imbroglio of ludicrous anomalies.
Planned on a scale of surpassing grandeur, its architectural execution
is almost contemptible. Blessed with the name of the purest of men, it
has the reputation of Sodom. The seat of the law-making power, it is the
centre of violence and disorder which disturb the peace and harmony
of the whole Republic,--the chosen resort for duelling, clandestine
marriages, and the most stupendous thefts. It is a city without commerce
and without manufactures; or rather, its commerce is illicit, and its
manufacturers are newspaper-correspondents, who weave tissues of fiction
out of the warp of rumor and the web of prevarication. The site of the
United States Treasury, it is the home of everything but affluence. Its
public buildings are splendid, its private dwellings generally squalid.
The houses are low, the rents high; the streets are broad, the crossings
narrow; the hacks are black, the horses white; the squares are
triangles, except that of the Capitol, which is oval; and the water is
so soft that it is hard to drink it, even with the admixture of alcohol.