night--true American rain was descending in sheets--I was carrying away
with me an impression, as it were, of a gigantic plantation of public
edifices in a loose tangle and undergrowth of thoroughfares: which
seemed proper for a legislative and administrative metropolis. I was
amused to reflect how the city, like most cities, had extended in
precisely the direction in which its founders had never imagined it
would extend; and naturally I was astonished by the rapidity of its
development. (One of my friends, who was not old, had potted wild game
in a marsh that is now a park close to the Capitol.) I thought that the
noble wings of the Capitol were architecturally much superior to the
central portion of it. I remembered a dazzling glimpse of the White
House as a distinguished little building. I feared that ere my next
visit the indefatigable energy of America would have rebuilt
Pennsylvania Avenue, especially the higgledy-piggledy and picturesque
and untidy portion of it that lies nearest to the Capitol, and I hoped
that in doing so the architects would at any rate not carry the cornice
to such excess as it has been carried in other parts of the town. And,
finally, I was slightly scared by the prevalence of negroes. It seemed
to me as if in Washington I had touched the fringe of the negro problem.

* * * * *

It was in a different and a humbler spirit that I went to Boston. I had
received more warnings and more advice about Boston than about all the
other cities put together. And, in particular, the greatest care had
been taken to permeate my whole being with the idea that Boston was
"different." In some ways it proved so to be. One difference forced
itself upon me immediately I left the station for the streets--the
quaint, original odor of the taxis. When I got to the entirely admirable
hotel I found a book in a prominent situation on the writing-table in my