Chapter II: Part 2

We are told by the historian that there were originally two distinct classes of Indians occupying the territory now embraced by the United States, viz., the village Indians or horticultural Indians, and the extremely rural Indians or nonhorticultural variety.

The village Indians or horticulturalists subsisted upon fruits and grain, ground in a crude way, while the non-horticulturalists lived on wild game, berries, acorns and pilgrims.

Of the latter class few traces remain, excepting rude arrow heads and coarse stone weapons. These articles show very little skill as a rule, the only indication of brains that I ever discovered being on a large stone hammer or Mohawk swatter, and they were not the brains of the man who made it either.

The village Indians, however, were architects from away up the gulch.

They constructed a number of architectural works of great beauty, several of which I have visited. They were once, no doubt, regarded as very desirable residences, but now, alas, they have fallen into innocuous desuetude--at least that is what it looked like to me, and the odor reminded me of innocuous desuetude in a bad state of preservation.

In New Mexico, over 300 years ago, there were built a number of pereblos or villages which still stand up, in a measure, though some of them are in a recumbent position. These pereblos or villages are formed of three or four buildings constructed in the retrousse style of architecture, and made of adobe bricks. These bricks are generally of a beautiful, soft, black and tan color, and at a distance look like the first loaf of bread baked by a young lady who has been reared in luxury but whose father has been suddenly called away to Canada. The adobe brick is said to be so indigestible, in fact, that I am confident the day is not far distant when it will be found on every hotel bill of fare in our broad sin-cursed land.

One of these dwellings was generally about 200 feet long, with no stairways in the interior, but movable ladders on the outside instead. This manner of reaching the upper floor had its advantages, and yet it was not always convenient. One feature in its favor was the isolation which a man could pull around himself by going in at the second-story window and pulling the ladder up after him, as there was no entrance to the house on the ground floor. If a man really courted retirement, and wanted to write a humorous lecture or a $2 homily, he could insert himself through the second-story window, pull in the staircase and go to work. Then no one could disturb him without bribing a hook and ladder company to come along and let him in.

But the great drawback was the annoyance incident to ascending these ladders at a late hour in the night, while under the influence of Aztec rum, a very seductive yet violently intoxicating beverage, containing about eight parts cheer to ninety-two parts inebriate.

These residences were hardly gothic in style, being extremely rectangular, with a tendency toward the more modern dry-goods box. It is believed by abler men than I am, men who could believe more in two minutes than I could believe in a lifetime if I had nothing else to do, that those houses contained about thirty-eight apartments on the first floor and nineteen on the second. These apartments were separated by some kind of cheap and transitory partition, which could not stand the climatic changes, and so has gone to decay; but these Indians were determined to have their rooms separated in some way, for they were very polite and decorous to a fault. No Aztec gentleman would emerge from his room until he had completed his toilet, if it cost him his position.

I once heard of an Aztec who lived away down in old Mexico somewhere several centuries ago and who was the pink of politeness. He wore full-dress winter and summer, the whole year round, and studied a large work on etiquette every evening. At night he would undress himself by unhooking the german-silver ring from his nose and hanging it on the back of a chair.

One night a young man from the capital, named Ozone, or something like that, a relative of the Montezumas, came over to stay a week or two with this Aztec dude. As a good joke he slipped in and nipped the nose-ring of his friend just to see if he would so far violate the proprieties as to appear at breakfast time without it.

Morning came and the dude awoke to find the bright rays of a Mexican sun streaming in through his casement. He rose, and, bathing himself in a gourd, he looked on the back of the chair for his clothing, but it was not there. A cold perspiration broke out all over him. He called for assistance, but no one came. He called again and again, louder and still more loud, but help came not. He went to the casement and looked out upon the plaza. The plaza did not turn away. A Mexican plaza is not easily dashed.

He called till he was hoarse, but all was still in the house. Hollow echoes alone came back to him to mock him.

At night, when the rest of the household returned from a protracted picnic in the distant hills, young Ozone ascended the ladder which he carried with him in a shawl-strap, and entering the room of the Aztec dude gave him the nosering with a hearty laugh, but, alas! he was greeted with the wild, piercing shriek of a maniac robbed of his clothing; the man had suffered such mental tortures during the long, long day, that when night came, reason tottered on her throne. It is said that he never regained his faculties, but would always greet his visitors with a wild forty-cent shriek and bury his face in his hands. His friends tried to get him into society again, but he could not be prevailed upon to go. He seemed to be afraid that he would be shocked in some way, or that some one might take advantage of him and read an immoral poem to him.

IN THE SOUTH

|ASHEVILLE, N.C., December 9.--There is no place in the United States, so far as I know, where the cow is more versatile or ambidextrous, if I may be allowed the use of a term that is far above my station in life, than here in the mountains of North Carolina, where the obese 'possum and the anonymous distiller have their homes.

Not only is the Tar-heel cow the author of a pale but athletic style of butter, but in her leisure hours she aids in tilling the perpendicular farm on the hillside, or draws the products to market. In this way she contrives to put in her time to the best advantage, and when she dies, it casts a gloom over the community in which she has resided.

The life of a North Carolina cow is indeed fraught with various changes and saturated with a zeal which is praiseworthy in the extreme. From the sunny days when she gambols through the beautiful valleys, inserting her black, retrousse and perspiration-dotted nose in to the blue grass from ear to ear, until at life's close, when every part and portion of her overworked system is turned into food, raiment or overcoat buttons, the life of the Tar-heel cow is one of intense activity.

Her girlhood is short, and almost before we have deemed her emancipated from calfhood herself we find her in the capacity of a mother. With the cares of maternity other demands are quickly made upon her. She is obliged to ostracize herself from society, and enter into the prosaic details of producing small, pallid globules of butter, the very pallor of which so thoroughly belies its lusty strength.

The butter she turns out rapidly until it begins to be worth something, when she suddenly suspends publication and begins to haul wood to market. In this great work she is assisted by the pearl-gray or ecru colored jackass of the tepid South. This animal has been referred to in the newspapers throughout the country, and yet he never ceases to be an object of the greatest interest.

Jackasses in the South are of two kinds, viz., male and female. Much as has been said of the jackass pro and con, I do not remember ever to have seen the above statement in print before, and yet it is as trite as it is incontrovertible. In the Rocky mountains we call this animal the burro. There he packs bacon, flour and salt to the miners. The miners eat the bacon and flour, and with the salt they are enabled to successfully salt the mines.

The burro has a low, contralto voice which ought to have some machine oil on it. The voice of this animal is not unpleasant if he would pull some of the pathos out of it and make it more joyous.

Here the jackass at times becomes a coworker with the cow in hauling tobacco and other necessaries of life into town, but he goes no further in the matter of assistance. He compels her to tread the cheese press alone and contributes nothing whatever in the way of assistance for the butter industry.

The North Carolina cow is frequently seen here driven double or single by means of a small rope line attached to a tall, emaciated gentleman, who is generally clothed with the divine right of suffrage, to which he adds a small pair of ear-bods during the holidays.

The cow is attached to each shaft and a small singletree, or swingletree, by means of a broad strap harness. She also wears a breeching, in which respect she frequently has the advantage of her escort.

I think I have never witnessed a sadder sight than that of a new milch cow, torn away from home and friends and kindred dear, descending a steep, mountain road at a rapid rate and striving in her poor, weak manner to keep out of the way of a small Jackson democratic wagon loaded with a big hogshead full of tobacco. It seems to me so totally foreign to the nature of the cow to enter into the tobacco traffic, a line of business for which she can have no sympathy and in which she certainly can feel very little interest.

Tobacco of the very finest kind is produced here, and is used mainly for smoking purposes. It is the highest-priced tobacco produced in this country. A tobacco broker here yesterday showed me a large quantity of what he called export tobacco. It looks very much like other tobacco while growing.

He says that foreigners use a great deal of this kind. I am learning all about the Tobacco industry while here, and as fast as I get hold of any new facts I will communicate them to the press. The newspapers of this country have done much for me, not only by publishing many pleasant things about me, but by refraining from publishing other things about me, and so I am glad to be able, now and then, to repay this kindness by furnishing information and facts for which I have no use myself, but which may be of incalculable value to the press.

As I write these lines I am informed that the snow is twenty-six inches deep here and four feet deep at High Point in this State. People who did not bring in their pomegranates last evening are bitterly bewailing their thoughtlessness to-day.

A great many people come here from various parts of the world, for the climate. When they have remained here for one winter, however, they decide to leave it where it is.

It is said that the climate here is very much like that of Turin. But I did not intend to go to Turin even before I heard about that.

Please send my paper to the same address, and if some one who knows a good remedy for chilblains will contribute it to the Sabbath Globe, I shall watch for it with great interest. Yours as here 2 4.

Bill N ye.

P.S.--I should have said relative to the cows of this State that if the owners would work their butter more and their cows less, they would confer a great boon on the consumer of both. B. N.

IN THE PARK

|TO the general public I may say that I violate no confidence in saying that spring is the most joyful season of the year. But June is also a good month. Well has the poet ejaculated, "And what is so rare as a day in June?" though I have seen days in March that were so rare that they were almost raw. This is not a weather report; however. I started out to state that Central Park just now is looking its very best, and opens up with the prospects of doing a good business this season. A ride through the Park just now is a delight to one who loves to commune with nature, especially human nature.

The nobility of New York now turns out to get the glorious air and ventilate its crest. I saw several hundred crests and coats-of-arms the other day in an hour's time, and it was rather a poor day, too, for a great many of our best people are just changing from their spring to their light, summer coats-of-arms.

One of the best crests I saw was a nice, large, red crest, about the size of an adult rhubarb pie, with a two-year-old Durham unicorn above it, bearing in his talons the unique maxim, "_Sans culottes, sans snockemonthegob, sans ery sipelas est_."

And how true this is, too, in a great many cases.

Another very handsome crest on the carriage of the van Studentickels consisted of a towel-rack penchant, with cockroach regardant, holding in his beak a large red tape-worm on which was inscribed: "_Spirituous frumenti, cum homo to-morrow_."

Many of the crests contained terse Latin mottoes, taken from the inscriptions on peppermint conversation candies, and were quite cute. A coat-of-arms, consisting of a small Limburger cheese couchant, above which stood a large can of chloride of potash, on which was inscribed the words, "Miss, may I see you home?" I thought very taking and just mysterious enough to make it exciting.

Some day I am going to get myself a crest. I am only waiting for something to put it on. It will consist of a monkey with his eye knocked out and a bright green parrot with his tail pulled off, and over this the simple remark: "We have had a high old time," or words to that effect.

Not so many equestrians were out as usual on the day I visited the park, but those who were out afforded the observer a beautiful view of the park between their persons and the saddle. The equestriennes were more numerous, and one or two especially were as beautiful as anything that nature ever turned out. One young woman, in a neat-fitting plug hat, looked to me like a peri. It has been a good while now since I saw a peri, but I have always heard them very highly spoken of, and I hope she will not be offended when she reads these lines and finds that I regard her in that light.

Carriage-horses are dressing about as they did last season, except that pon-pon tails are more worn, especially at the end. Neck-yokes are cut low this year so as to show the shoulders of the wearer, and horses in mourning wear their tails at half-mast.

The porous plastron is not in favor this year, but many horses who interfere are wearing life-preservers over the fetlock, and sometimes a small chest-protector of russet leather over the joint, according to the taste of the wearer.

Polka-dot or half-mourning dogs are much affected by people who are beginning to get the upper hand of their grief. Much taste is shown in the selection of dogs for the coming season, and many owners chain their coachman to the dog, so that if any one were to come and try to abduct the dog the coachman could bite him and drive him away. A good coachman to take care of a watch-dog is almost invaluable.

A custom of taking the butler along in the seat with the coachman is growing in favor for two reasons: First, it shows that you have a butler, and, second, you know that while he is out with you he is not putting paste in the place of your diamonds at home. So I had almost said that it paste to do this.

The automatic or jointless footman is still popular, and a young man who has a good turning-lathe leg and an air of impenetrable gloom can get a job most any time.

Many New York gentlemen who are fond of driving take their grooms out to Central Park every afternoon for an airing. This is a wise provision, for those who have associated much with grooms will agree with me that a little airing now and then is just what they need.

There ought to be a book of park etiquette printed soon, however, for the guidance of its patrons. In the first place, it should be considered.

Autre for a gentleman to hire a coupe by the hour in order to recover from alcoholic prostration, and then sleep up and down the drive with his feet out the window. It is not respectful, and besides that the blood is liable to all rush to his head.

Drunken cab-drivers, too, should not be permitted to drive in the park, for only a little while ago one of them is said to have fallen from his high perch and injured his crest.

A park policeman should be specially detailed as a breath tester to stand at each entrance and smell the breath of all drivers and other patrons of the park. Let us enforce the law.

But the most curious feature about the exhibition afternoon spin in the Park is the great prevalence of mourning symbols. Almost, if not quite, one-third of the carriages one meets is decorated with black in every possible way, till sometimes it looks like a runaway funeral procession.

Why people should come to Central Park to advertise their woe by means of long black mourning tassels at their horses' heads and a draped driver with broad bands of bombazine concealing the russet tops of his boots, sometimes dressed in black throughout, is more than I can understand.

The honest, earnest and genuine affection of a good woman for a worthy man, alive or dead, is too sacred to treat lightly and the love that survives the wreck and ruin of gathering years has inspired more than one man to deeds of daring whereby he has won everlasting renown, but the woe that is divided up among the servants and shared in by the horses is not in good taste, it is not in good order and there are flies on it.

It is like saying to the world come and see how I suffer. It is parading your sore toe in Central Park, where people with sore toes are not supposed to congregate. It is like a widow wailing her woe through the "Want" column of a healthy morning paper. It is, in effect, saying to Christendom, come and hear me snort and see me paw up the ground in my paroxysms of wild and uncontrollable anguish. My grief is of such a penetrating nature and of that searching variety that it has broken out at the barn, and even the horses that I bought two weeks after the funeral, with a part of the life insurance money, have gone into mourning, and the coachman who got here day before yesterday from Liverpool has tied himself up in black bombazine and takes special delight in advertising our sorrow.

I do not believe that it will always be popular to wear mourning for our friends unless we feel a little doubtful about where they went.

Black is offensive to the eye, offensive to the nose, and it makes your flesh crêpe to touch it. Will the proofreader please deal gently with the above joke and I will do as much for him sometime.

Henry Ward Beecher had the right idea of the way to treat death, and when at last it came his turn to die his home and his church both seemed to say: "The great preacher is gone, but there is nothing about the change that is sad."

There is something the matter with grief that works itself up into black rosettes and long black banners that sweep the ground and shut out the sky and look like despair and feel like the season-cracked back of a warty dragon.

But wealth has its little eccentricities and we must bear with them. But he alone is indeed rich who is content and who does not look under the bed every night for an indictment. Look at poor old Mr. Sharp, with his stock of Aldermen depreciating on his hands--men for whom he paid a big price only a few years ago and who would not attract attention now on a ten-cent counter, while he don't feel very well himself.

No, I would not swap places with J. Sharp and ride through Central Park behind a pair of rip, snorting horses, with mourning rosettes on their heads, and feel that I must hurry back to help select an unprejudiced jury. I would rather hang on to the brow of a Broadway car till I got to Fifty-second street, and then stroll over to the menagerie and feed red pepper to the Sacred Cow and have a good, plain, quiet time than to wear fine clothes and be wealthy and hate myself all the time. I believe that I am happier in my untroubled, dreamless sleep on my quiet couch, which draws a salary during the daytime as an upright piano; happier browsing about at a different restaurant each day, so that the waiters will not get well acquainted with me and expect me to give them the money that I am saving up to go to Europe with; happier, I say, to be thus tossed about on the bosom of the great, heaving human tide than to have forty or fifty millions of dollars concealed about my person that I cannot remember how I obtained.

I dislike notoriety, and nothing irritates me more than the coarse curiosity of people who ride at night in the elevated trains and peer idly into my room as I toil over my sewing or go gayly about humming a simple air as I prepare the evening meal over my cute little portable oil stove, and though I have not courted this interest on the part of the people, and though I would prefer to live less in the eye of the public, I feel that, occupying the position I do, I cannot expect to wholly consult my own wishes in the matter, and I am content to live quietly and enjoy good health rather than wear good clothes and feel rocky all the time.

I would rather have a healthy alimentary

Than he garnished all over with passementerie.

LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD.

|WHEN Patrick Henry put his old cast-iron spectacles on the top of his head and whooped for liberty, he did not know that some day we would have more of it than we knew what to do with. He little dreamed that the time would come when we would have more liberty than we could pay for. When Mr. Henry sawed the air and shouted for liberty or death, I do not believe that he knew the time would one day come when Liberty would stand knee deep in the mud of Bedloe's Island and yearn for a solid place to stand upon.

It seems to me that we have too much liberty in this country in some ways. We have more liberty than we have money. We guarantee that every man in America shall fill himself up full of liberty at our expense, and the less of an American he is the more liberty he can have. If he desires to enjoy himself, all he needs is a slight foreign accent and a willingness to mix up with politics as soon as he can get his baggage off the steamer. The more I study American institutions the more I regret that I was not born a foreigner, so that I could have something to say about the management of our great land. If I could not be a foreigner, I believe I would prefer to be a Mormon or an Indian not taxed.

I am often led to ask, in the language of the poet, "Is the Caucasian played out?" Most everybody can have a good deal of fun in this country except the American. He seems to be so busy paying his taxes all the time that he has very little time to mingle in the giddy whirl with the alien. That is the reason that the alien who rides across the United States on the "Limited Mail" and writes a book about us before breakfast wonders why we are always in a hurry. That is the reason we have to throw our meals into ourselves with a dull thud, and hardly have time to maintain a warm personal friendship with our families.

We do not care much for wealth, but we must have freedom, and freedom costs money. We have advertised to furnish a bunch of freedom to every man, woman or child who comes to our shores, and we are going to deliver the good whether we have any left for ourselves or not.

What would the great world beyond the seas say to us if some day the blue-eyed Mormon, with his heart full of love for our female seminaries and our old women's homes, should land upon our coasts and find that we were using all the liberty ourselves? What do we want of liberty anyhow? What could we do with it if we had it? It takes a man of leisure to enjoy liberty, and we have no leisure whatever. It is a good thing to keep in the house "for the use of guests only," but we don't need it for ourselves.

Therefore, I am in favor of a statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, because it will show that we keep it on tap winter and summer. We want the whole broad world to remember that when it gets tired of oppression it can come here to America and oppress us. We are used to it, and we rather like it. If we don't like it, we can get on the steamer and go abroad, where we may visit the effete monarchies and have a high old time.

The sight of the Goddess of Liberty standing there in New York harbor night and day, bathing her feet in the rippling sea, will be a good thing. It will be first-rate. It may also be productive of good in a direction that many have not thought of. As she stands there day after day, bathing her feet in the broad Atlantic, perhaps some moss-grown Mormon moving toward the Far West, a confirmed victim of the matrimonial habit, may fix the bright picture in his so-called mind, and remembering how, on his arrival in New York, he saw Liberty bathing her feet with impunity, he may be led in after years to try it on himself.

HE SEES THE CAPITAL

|WHEN I got off the Pennsylvania train yesterday I went to a barber shop before I did anything else. I have a thick, Venetian red, chinchilla beard, which grows rapidly, and which gives me a fuzzy appearance every twenty-four hours, unless I place myself frequently into the hands of a barber. At first I used to shave myself, but I cut myself to pieces in such a sickening manner, without seeming to impede the growth of the rich and foxy beard, that until last summer I gave up being my own barber. At that time I was presented with a safety razor which the manufacturer said would not cut my face, because it was impossible for it to cut anything except the beard. The safety razor resembles in appearance several other toilet articles, such as the spoke shave, the road scraper, the can opener, the lawn mower and the turbine water wheel, but it does not look like a razor. It also looks like a carpet sweeper some, and reminds me of a monkey wrench. It is said that you can shave yourself on a train if you will use this instrument. I tried it once last winter while going west. In fact, I took the trip largely to see if one could shave on board the train safely with this razor. I had no special trouble. At least I did not cut off any features that I cared anything about, but I was disappointed in the results, and also in the length of time consumed in cleaning the razor after I got through. I was shaving myself only from Forty-second street to Albany, but it took me from Albany to Omaha to pull the razor apart, and to dig out the coagulated lather and the dear, dear whiskers. I now employ a valet whose name is Patria McGloria. He irons my trousers, shaves and dresses me, and mows the lawn. When I come to Washington, I am too democratic to travel with a valet, fearing that it might cost me several thousand votes some day, and so I leave my maid at home to wash and dress the salad. In that way he does not miss me, and I get the credit at Washington of being a man who spends so much time thinking of his country's welfare that he doesn't have a chance to look pretty.

I did not fall into a very gaudy barber shop. The appointments were like some of the president's appointments, I thought--viz., in poor taste, but this is not a political letter. I do not wish to antagonize anybody, especially the president of the United States. He has always treated me well.

I will now return to the barber shop. It was a plain structure, with beautiful sarsaparilla pictures here and there on the walls and a faint odor of rancid pomatum and overworked hair restoratives.

There were three chairs richly upholstered in two-ply carpeting of some inflammatory hue, with large vines and the kind of flowers which grow on carpets but nowhere else. I have seen blossoms woven into ingrain carpets, varying in color from a dead black to the color of a hepatized lung, but I have never seen one that reminded me of anything I ever saw in nature. The chair I sat in also had springs in it. They were made of selections from the Washington monument.

The barber who waited on me asked me if I wanted a shave. A great many barbers ask me this during the year. Sometimes they do it from habit, and sometimes they do it to brighten up my life and bring a smile to my wan cheek. As I have no hair, the thinking mind naturally and by a direct course of reasoning arrives at the conclusion that when I go into a barber shop and climb into a chair, I do so for the purpose of getting shaved and not with the idea of having my fortune told or my deposition taken. Still barbers continue to ask me this question and look at each other with ill concealed mirth.

I said yes, I would like a shave unless he preferred to take my temperature, or amuse me by making a death mask of himself. He then began to strap a large razor with a double shuffle movement and to size me up at the same time.

He was a colored man, but he had lived in Washington a long time and knew a great deal more than he would if his lot had fallen elsewhere. He spoke with some feeling and fed me with about the most unpalatable lather I think I ever participated in. He also did an odd thing when he went for the second time over my face. I never have noticed the custom outside of that shop. Most barbers, in making the second trip over a customer's face, moisten one side at a time with a sponge or the damp hand as they go along, but in this case a large quantity of lather was put in my ear and, as he needed it, he took out what he required from time to time, using his finger like a paint brush and spreading on the lather as he went along. So accurately had he learned to measure the quantity of lather which an ear will hold that when he got through with me and I went away there was not over a tablespoonfnl in either ear and possibly not that much.

While I sat in the chair I heard a man, who seemed to be in about the third chair from me, saying that a certain bill numbered so-and-so had been referred to a certain committee and would undoubtedly by reported favorably. If so, it would in its regular order come up for discussion and reach a vote so-and-so. I was charmed with the man's knowledge of the condition of affairs in both houses and the exact status of all threatened legislation, because I always have to stop and think a good while before I can tell whether a bill originates on the floor of the house or in the rotunda.

I could not see this man, but I judged that he was a senator or sergeant-at-arms. He talked for some time about the condition of national affairs, and finally some one said something about evolution. I was perfectly wrapped up in what he was saying and remember distinctly how he referred to Herbert Spencer's definition of evolution as a change from indefinite, coherent heterogeneity through continuous differentiations and integrations.

When I arose from my chair and looked over that way I saw that the gentleman who had been talking on the condition of congressional legislation was a colored hotel porter of Washington, who was getting shaved in the third chair, and the man who was discussing the merits of evolution was the colored man who was shaving him.

Here in Washington the colored man has the air of one who is holding up one corner of the great national structure. Whether he is opening your soft boiled eggs for you in the morning, or putting bay rum on your nose, or checking your umbrella or brushing you with a wilted whisk broom, his thoughts are mostly upon national affairs. He is naturally an imitator wherever he goes, and this old resident of Washington has watched and studied the air and language of eminent statesmen so carefully that when he goes forth in the morning with his whitewashing portfolio on his arm he walks unconsciously like Senator Evarts or John James Ingalls. I saw a colored man taking a perpendicular lunch at the depot yesterday, and evidently the veteran Georgia senator is his model, for he cut his custard pie into large rectangular hunks and pushed it back behind his glottis with a caseknife, after which he drew in a saucerful of tea, with a loud and violent ways-and-means committee report which reminded me of the noise made by an unwearied cyclone trying to suck a cistern dry. I think that the colored man exaggerated the imitation somewhat, but he was evidently trying to assume the table manners of Senator Brown of Georgia.

For this reason, if for no other, members of the cabinet, senators, representatives, judges and heads of departments cannot be too careful in their daily walk and conversation. Unconsciously they are molding the customs, the manners, and the styles of dress which are to become the customs, the manners, and the dress of a whole race. If I could to-day take our statesmen all apart, not so much for the purpose of examining their works, but so that we could be alone and talk this matter over by ourselves, I would strive in my poor, weak, faltering way to impress upon them the awful responsibility which rests upon them not only as polite and fluent conversationalists, classical and courteous debators. speaking pieces for the benefit of future conventions, of referring to each other as liars, traitors, thieves, deserters, bummers, beats, and great moral abscesses on the body politic; rehearsing campaign speeches in congress at an expense of $20 per day each, and meantime obstructing wholesome tariff legislation, but as the conservators of etiquette, statesmanship, and morality for a race of people the great responsibility for whose welfare still rests upon us as a nation.

Only the day before yesterday I saw a thin, wiry, and colored gentleman pawing around in an ash barrel for something, and I waited to see what he was after. He resurrected a sad and dejected plug hat, and, though it was not half so good as the one he wore, he seemed much pleased with it and put it on. I ventured to ask him why he had done so without improving his appearance, and he said that for a long time he had been looking for a hat which would highten the resemblance which people had often noticed and remarked in days gone by, both in person, sah, and general carriage, walk, and conversation, sah, also in the matter of clear cut and logical life sentences, as existing between himself, sah, and Senator Evarts, sah. He believed that he had struck it, sah.

As spring warms up the air about Washington the heating apparatus of the capitol building begins to relax its interest, and now you can visit most any part of the stately pile without being scrambled in your own embonpoint. Last winter I heard Senator Frye of Maine make his great tariff speech, and although there was nothing, about the speech itself which seemed to evolve much exercise or industry--for it was the same speech in every essential quality that I have heard every November since I began to take an interest in politics--the perspiration ran down his face in small washouts and sweatlets and fell in the arena with a mellow plunk.

I believe this unnatural heat to be the cause of much ill health among our law-makers, and I freely admit that the unhealthy surroundings of Washington and the great contrast between the hot air of the capitol and the cold air outside have done a great deal towards keeping me out of the senate. The night air of Washington is also filled with malaria and is much worse than any night air I have ever used before.

HE SEES THE NAVY

|IT HAS become such a general practice to speak disrespectfully of the United States Navy that a few days ago I decided to visit the Brooklyn Navy Yard for the purpose of ascertaining, if possible, how much cause there might be for this light and airy manner of treating the navy, and, if necessary, to take immediate steps towards purifying the system.

I found that the matter had been grossly misrepresented, and that our navy, so far as I was able to discover, is self-sustaining. It has been thoroughly refitted and refurnished throughout, and is as pleasant a navy as one would see in a day's journey.

I had the pleasure of boarding the man-of-war Richmond under a flag of truce and the Atlantic under a suspension of the rules. I remained some time on board each of these war ships, and any man who speaks lightly of the United States Navy in my presence hereafter will receive a stinging rebuke.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard was inaugurated by the purchase of forty acres of ground in 1801. It has a pleasant water-front, which is at all times dotted here and there with new war vessels undergoing repairs. Since the original purchase others have been made and the land side of the yard inclosed by means of a large brick wall, so that in case there should be a local disturbance in Brooklyn the rioters could not break through and bite the navy. In this way a man on board the Atlanta while at anchor in Brooklyn is just as safe as he would be at home.

In order to enter and explore the Navy Yard it is necessary that one should have a pass. This is a safeguard, wisely adopted by the Commandant, in order to keep out strangers who might get in under the pretext of wishing to view the yard and afterwards attack one of the new vessels.

On the day I visited the Navy Yard just ahead of me a plain but dignified person in citizen's dress passed through the gate. He had the bearing of an officer, I thought, and kept his eye on some object about nine and one-fourth miles ahead as he walked past the guard. He was told to halt, but, of course, he did not do so.

He was above it. Then the guard overhauled him, and even felt in his pockets for his pass, as I supposed. Concealed on his person the guard found four pint bottles filled with the essence of crime. They poured the poor man's rum on the grass and then fired him out, accompanied by a rebuke which will make him more deliberate about sitting down for a week or two.

The feeling against arduous spirits in the United States Navy is certainly on the increase, and the day is not far distant when alcohol in a free state will only be used in the arts, sciences, music, literature and the drama.

The Richmond is a large but buoyant vessel painted black. It has a front stairway hanging over the balcony, and the latch-string to the front door was hanging cheerily out as we drew alongside. During an engagement, however, on the approach of the enemy, the front stairs are pulled up and the latch-string is pulled in, while the commanding officer makes the statement, "April Fool" through a speaking-trumpet to the chagrined and infuriated foe.

The Richmond is a veteran of the late war, a war which no one ever regretted more than I did; not so much because of the bloodshed and desolation it caused at the time, but on account of the rude remarks since made to those who did not believe in the war and whose feelings have been repeatedly hurt by reference to it since the war closed.

The guns of the Richmond are muzzle-loaders, _i.e._, the load or charge of ammunition is put into the other or outer end of the gun instead of the inner extremity or base of the gun, as is the case with the breech-loader. The breech-loader is a great improvement on the old style gun, making warfare a constant source of delirious joy now, whereas in former times in case of a naval combat during a severe storm, the man who went outside the ship to load the gun, while it was raining, frequently contracted pneumonia.

Modern guns are made with breeches, which may be easily removed during a fight and replaced when visitors come on board. A sort of grim humor pervades the above remark.

The Richmond is about to sail away to China. I do not know why she is going to China but presume she does not care to be here during the amenities, antipathies and aspersions of a Presidential campaign. A man-of-war would rather make some sacrifices generally than to get into trouble.

I must here say that I would rather be captured by our naval officers than by any other naval officers I have ever seen. The older officers were calm and self-possessed during my visit on board both the Richmond and Atlanta, and the young fellows are as handsome as a steel engraving. While gazing on them as they proudly trod the quarter deck or any other deck that needed it, I was proud of my sex, and I could not help thinking that had I been an unprotected but beautiful girl, hostile to the United States, I could have picked out five or six young men there to either of whom I would be glad to talk over the details of an armistice. I could not help enjoying fully my hospitable treatment by the officers above referred to after having been only a little while before rudely repulsed and most cruelly snubbed by a haughty young cotton-sock broker in a New York store.

When will people ever learn that the way to have fun with me is to treat me for the time being as an equal?

It was wash-day on board ship, and I could not help noticing how the tyrant man asserts himself when he becomes sole boss of the household. The rule on board a man-of-war is that the first man who on wash-day shall suggest a "picked-up dinner" shall be loaded into the double-barrelled howitzer and shot into the bosom of Venus.

On the clothes-line I noticed very few frills. The lingerie on board a war vessel is severe in outline and almost harsh in detail. Here the salt breezes search in vain for the singularly sawed-off and fluently trimmed toga of our home life. Here all is changed. From the basement to the top of the lightning rod, from pit to dome, as I was about to say, a belligerent ship on washday is not gayly caparisoned.

The Atlanta is a fair representative of the modern war vessel and would be the most effective craft in the world if she could use her guns. She has all the modern improvements, hot and cold water, electric lights, handy to depots and a good view of the ocean, but when she shoots off her guns they pull out her circles, abrade her deck, concuss her rotunda, contuse the main brace and injure people who have always been friendly to the Government. Her guns are now being removed and new circles put in, so that in future she would be enabled to give less pain to her friends and squirt more gloom into the ranks of the enemy. She is at present as useful for purposes of defense as a revolver in the bottom of a locked-up bureau drawer, the key of which is in the pocket of your wife's dress in a dark closet, wherein also the burglar is, for the nonce, concealed.

Politics has very little to do with the conduct of a navy-yard. No one would talk politics with me. I could not arouse any interest there at all in the election. Every one seemed delighted with the present Administration, however. The navy-yard always feels that way.

In the choky or brig at the guard-house I saw a sailor locked up who was extremely drunk.

"How did you get it here, my man?" I asked.

"Through thinfloonee of prominent Democrat, you damphool. Howje spose?" he unto me straightway did reply.

The sailor is sometimes infested with a style of arid humor which asserts itself in the most unlooked-for fashion. I laughed heartily at his odd yet coarse repartee, and went away.

The guard-house contains a choice collection of manacles, handcuffs, lily irons and other rare gems. The lily irons are not now in use. They consist of two iron bands for the wrists, connected by means of a flat iron, which can be opened up to let the wrists into place; then they are both locked at one time by means of a wrench like the one used by a piano-tuner. With a pair of lily irons on the wrists and another pair on the ankles a man locked in the brig and caught out 2,000 miles at sea in a big gale, with the rudder knocked off the ship and a large litter of kittens in the steam cylinder, would feel almost helpless.

I had almost forgotten to mention the drug store on board ship. Each man-of-war has a small pharmacy on the second floor. It is open all night, and prescriptions are carefully compounded. Pure drugs, paints, oils, varnishes and putty are to be had there at all times. The ship's dispensary is not a large room, but two ordinary men and a truss would not feel crowded there. The druggists treated me well on board both ships, and offered me my choice of antiseptics and anodynes, or anything else I might take a fancy to. I shall do my trading in that line hereafter on board ship.

The Atlanta has many very modern improvements, and is said to be a wonderful sailor. She also has a log. I saw it. It does not look exactly like what I had, as an old lumberman, imagined that it would.

It is a book, with writing in it, about the size of the tax-roll for 1888. In the cupola of the ship, where the wheel is located, there is also a big brass compass about as large as the third stomach of a cow. In this there is a little index or dingus, which always points towards the north. That is all it has to do. On each side of the compass is a large cannon ball so magnetized or polarized or influenced as to overcome the attraction of the needle for some desirable portion of the ship. There is also an index connected with the shaft whereby the man at the wheel can ascertain the position of the shaft and also ascertain at night whether the ship is advancing or retreating--a thing that he should inform himself about at the earliest possible moment.

The culinary arrangements on board these ships would make many a hotel blush, and I have paid $1 a day for a worse room than the choky at the guard-house.

In the Navy-Yard at Brooklyn is the big iron hull or running gears of an old ship of some kind which the Republicans were in the habit of hammering on for a few weeks prior to election every four years. Four years ago, through an oversight, the workmen were not called off nor informed of Blaine's defeat for several days after the election..

The Democrats have an entirely different hull in another part of the yard on which they are hammering.

The keel blocks of a new cruiser, 375 feet long are just laid in the big ship-house at the Brooklyn Navy-Yard. She will be a very airy and cheerful boat, I judge, if the keel blocks are anything to go by.

In closing this account I desire to state that I hope I have avoided the inordinate use of marine terms, as I desire to make myself perfectly clear to the ordinary landsman, even at the expense of beauty and style of description. I would rather be thoroughly understood than confuse the reader while exerting myself to show my knowledge of terms. I also desire to express my thanks to the United States Navy for its kindness and consideration during my visit. I could have been easily blown into space half a dozen times without any opportunity to blow back through the papers, had the navy so desired, and yet nothing but terms of endearment passed between the navy and myself.

Lieut. Arthur P. Nazro, Chief Engineer Henry B. Nones, Passed Assistant Engineer E. A. Magee, Capt. F. H. Harrington, of the United States Marine Corps; Mr. Gus C. Roeder, Apothecary Henry Wimmer and the dog Zib, of the Richmond; Master Shipwright McGee, Capt. Miller, captain of the yard, and Mr. Milligan, apothecary of the Atlanta, deserve honorable mention for coolness and heroic endurance while I was there.

MORE ABOUT WASHINGTON

|WASHINGTON, D.C. I Have just returned from a polite and recherche party here.

Washington is the hot-bed of gayety, and general headquarters for the recherche business. It would be hard to find a bontonger aggregation than the one I was just at, to use the words of a gentleman who was there, and who asked me if I wrote "The Heathen Chinee."

He was a very talented man, with a broad sweep of skull and a vague yearning for something more tangible--to drink. He was in Washington, he said, in the interests of Mingo county. I forgot to ask him where Mingo county might be. He took a great interest in me, and talked with me long after he really had anything to say. He was one of those fluent conversationalists frequently met with in society. He used one of these web-perfecting talkers--the kind that can be fed with raw Roman punch and that will turn out punctuated talk in links, like varnished sausages. Being a poor talker myself and rather more fluent as a listener, I did not interrupt him.

He said that he was sorry to notice how young girls and their parents came to Washington as they would to a matrimonial market.

I was sorry also to hear it. It pained me to know that young ladies should allow themselves to be bamboozled into matrimony. Why was it, I asked, that matrimony should ever single out the young and fair?

"Ah," said he, "it is indeed rough!"