15. CHAPTER XV.
CLOSING SCENES OF THE SESSION AT WASHINGTON.
The paradox of “the more one does, the more one
can do,” is resolved in life at Washington with more
success than I have seen it elsewhere. The inexorable
bell at the hotel or boarding-house pronounces the
irrevocable and swift transit of breakfast to all sleepers
after eight. The elastic depths of the pillow have
scarcely yielded their last feather to the pressure of
the sleeper's head, before the drowse is rudely shaker
from his eyelids, and with an alacrity which surprises
himself, he finds his toilet achieved, his breakfast over,
and himself abroad to lounge in the sunshine till the
flag waves on the capitol. He would retire to his
chamber to read during these two or three vacant
hours, but the one chair in his pigeon-hole creaks, or
has no back or bottom, or his anthracite fire is out, or
is too hot for the size of the room; or, in short. Washington,
from whatever cause, is a place where none
read except those who stand up to a padlocked newspaper.
The stars and stripes, moving over the two
wings of the capitol at eleven, announce that the two
chambers of legislation are in session, and the hardworking
idler makes his way to the senate or the
house. He lingers in the lobby awhile, amused with
the button-hole seizers plying the unwilling ears of
members with their claims, or enters the library,
where ladies turn over prints, and enfilade, with their
battery of truant eyes, the comers-in at the green
door. He then gropes up the dark staircase to the
senate gallery, and stifles in the pressure of a hot
gallery, forgetting, like listeners at a crowded opera,
that bodily discomfort will unlink the finest harmonies
of song or oratory. Thence he descends to the rotunda
to draw breath and listen to the more practical, but
quite as earnest eloquence of candidates for patents;
and passes, after while, to the crowded gallery of the
house, where, by some acoustic phenomena in the
construction of the building, the voices of the speakers
comes to his ear as articulate as water from a narrow-necked
bottle. “Small blame to them!” he thinks,
however: for behind the brexia columns are grouped
all the fair forms of Washington; and in making his
bow to two hundred despotic lawgivers in feathers and
velvet, he is readily consoled that the duller legislators
who yield to their sway are inaudible and forgotten.
To this upper house drop in, occasionally, the younger
or gayer members of the lower, bringing, if not political
scandal, at least some slight résumer of what Mr.
Somebody is beating his desk about below; and thus,
crammed with the day's trifles or the day's business,
and fatigued from heel to eyelid, our idler goes home
at five to dress for dinner and the night's campaign,
having been up and on his legs for ten mortal hours.
Cold water and a little silence in his own room have
rather refreshed him, and he dines at six with a party
of from fifteen to twenty-five persons. He discusses
the vital interests of fourteen millions of people over
a glass of wine with the man whose vote, possibly,
will decide their destiny, and thence hurries to a ball-room
crammed like a perigord-pie, where he pants,
elbows, eats supper, and waltzes till three in the
morning. How human constitutions stand this, and
stand it daily and nightly, from the beginning to the
end of a session, may well puzzle the philosophy of
those who rise and breakfast in comfortable leisure.
I joined the crowd on the twenty-second of February,
to pay my respects to the president, and see the
cheese. Whatever veneration existed in the minds of
the people toward the former, their curiosity in reference
to the latter predominated, unquestionably.
The circular pavé, extending from the gate to the
White House, was thronged with citizens of all classes,
those coming away having each a small brown paper
parcel and a very strong smell; those advancing manifesting,
by shakings of the head and frequent exclamations,
that there may be too much of a good thing,
and particularly of a cheese. The beautiful portico
was thronged with boys and coach-drivers, and the
odor strengthened with every step. We forced our
way over the threshold, and encountered an atmosphere,
to which the mephitic gas floating over Avernus
must be faint and innocuous. On the side of the
hall hung a rough likeness of the general, emblazoned
with eagle and stars, forming a background to the
huge tub in which the cheese had been packed; and
in the centre of the vestibule stood the “fragrant gift,”
surrounded with a dense crowd, who, without crackers,
or even “malt to their cheese,” had, in two hours,
eaten and purveyed away fourteen hundred pounds!
The small segment reserved for the president's use
counted for nothing in the abstractions.
Glad to compromise for a breath of cheeseless air,
we desisted from the struggle to obtain a sight of the
table, and mingled with the crowd in the east room.
Here were diplomates in their gold coats and officers
in uniform, ladies of secretaries and other ladies,
soldiers on volunteer duty, and Indians in war-dress
and paint. Bonnets, feathers, uniforms, and all — it
was rather a gay assemblage. I remembered the descriptions
in travellers' books, and looked out for
millers and blacksmiths in their working gear, and for
rudeness and vulgarity in all. The offer of a mammoth
cheese to the public was likely to attract to the
presidental mansion more of the lower class than would
throng to a common levee. Great-coats there were,
and not a few of them, for the day was raw, and unless
they were hung on the palings outside, they must remain
on the owners' shoulders; but, with a single exception
(a fellow with his coat torn down his back,
possibly in getting at the cheese), I saw no man in a
dress that was not respectable and clean of its kind,
and abundantly fit for a tradesman out of his shop.
Those who were much pressed by the crowd put their
hats on; but there was a general air of decorum
which would surprise any one who had pinned his
faith on travellers. An intelligent Englishman, very
much inclined to take a disgust to mobocracy, expressed
to me great surprise at the decency and proper
behavior of the people. The same experiment in
England, he thought, would result in as pretty a riot
as a paragraph-monger would desire to see.
The president was down stairs in the oval reception
room, and, though his health would not permit him
to stand, he sat in his chair for two or three hours, and
received his friends with his usual bland and dignified
courtesy. By his side stood the lady of the mansion,
dressed in full court costume, and doing the honors
of her place with a grace and amenity which every one
felt, and which threw a bloom over the hour. General
Jackson retired, after a while, to his chamber, and
the president-elect remained to support his relative,
and present to her the still thronging multitude, and
by four o'clock the guests were gone, and the “banquet
hall” was deserted. Not to leave a wrong impression
of the cheese. I dined afterward at a table to
which the president had setn a piece of it, and found
it of excellent quality. It is like many other things,
more agreeable in small quantities.
Some eccentric mechanic has presented the president
with a sulkey, made entirely (except the wheels)
of rough-cut hickory, with the bark on. It looks
rude enough, but has very much the everlasting look
of old Hickory himself; and if he could be seen driving
a high-stepping, bony old iron-gray steed in it,
any passer by would see that there was as much fitness
in the whole thing as in the chariot of Bacchus and
his reeling leopards. Some curiously-twisted and
gnarled branches have been very ingeniously turned
into handles and whip-box, and the vehicle is compact
and strong. The president has left it to Mr. Van
Buren.
In very strong contrast to the sulkey, stood close by,
the elegant phaeton, made of the wood of the old
frigate Constitution. It has a seat for two, with a
driver's box, covered with a superb hammercloth, and
set up rather high in front; the wheels and body are
low, and there are bars for baggage behind; altogether,
for lightness and elegance, it would be a creditable
turn out for Long Acre. The material is excessively
beautiful — a fine-grained oak, polished to a very high
degree, with its colors delicately brought out by a coat
of varnish. The wheels are very slender and light, but
strong, and, with all its finish, it looks a vehicle capable
of a great deal of service. A portrait of the Constitution,
under full sail, is painted on the panels.
