out into broad Pennsylvania Avenue, but for the confusion and
absurdity of its architectural structures, the handsomest
thoroughfare in America. (Some day I am going to carry a bill into
Congress and read it, and become famous as having been the means of
making Pennsylvania Avenue the handsomest highway in the world.)

Warburton leaned back luxuriously against the faded horse-hair
cushion and lighted a cigar, which he smoked with relish, having had
a hearty breakfast on the train. It was not quite nine o'clock, and a
warm October haze lay on the peaceful city. Here were people who did
not rush madly about in the pursuit of riches. Rather they proceeded
along soberly, even leisurely, as if they knew what the day's work
was and the rewards attendant, and were content. Trucks, those
formidable engines of commerce, neither rumbled nor thundered along
the pavements, nor congested the thoroughfares. Nobody hurried into
the shops, nobody hurried out. There were no scampering, yelling
newsboys. Instead, along the curbs of the market, sat barelegged
negro boys, some of them selling papers to those who wanted them, and
some sandwiched in between baskets of popcorn and peanuts. There was
a marked scarcity of the progressive, intrusive white boy. Old negro
mammies passed to and fro with the day's provisions.

Glancing over his shoulder, Warburton saw the Capitol, shining in the
sun like some enchanted palace out of Wonderland. He touched his cap,
conscious of a thrill in his spine. And there, far to his left,
loomed the Washington monument, glittering like a shaft of opals.
Some orderlies dashed by on handsome bays. How splendid they looked,
with their blue trousers and broad yellow stripes! This was before
the Army adopted the comfortable but shabby brown duck. How he longed
to throw a leg over the back of a good horse and gallop away into the