Chapter III



Without A Country



So I came to Washington. So I entered the capital of the government that
commanded my allegiance and inspired my fear. I wonder whether another
American ever saw that city with such eyes of envy, of aspiration, of
wistful pride, of daunted admiration. Here were all the consecrations of
a nation's memories, and they thrilled me, even while they pierced me
with the sense that I was not, and might well despair of ever being, a
citizen of their glory. Here were the monuments of patriotism in
Statuary Hall, erected to the men whose histories had been the
inspiration of my boyhood; and I remember how I stood before them,
conscious that I was now almost an outlaw from their communion of
splendor. I remember how I saw, with an indescribable conflict of
feelings, the ranked graves of the soldiers in the cemetery at
Arlington, and recollected that this very ground had been taken from
General Lee, that heroic opponent of Federal authority--and read the
tablet, "How sleep the brave who sink to rest by all their country's
wishes bless'd,"--and bowed in spirit to the nation's benediction upon
the men who had upheld its power. I was awed by a prodigious sense of
the majesty of that power. I saw with fear its immovability to the
struggles of our handful of people. And at night, walking under the
trees of Lafayette Park, with all the odors of the southern Spring among