I was impressed with Washington. It is truly a city of beautiful streets and magnificent buildings. Undoubtedly it is the city de luxe of America. Being the capital, wealth is lavished upon it. No factories or barren wastes disfigure its graceful countenance. Every street or avenue glistens at night with a bewildering multitude of illuminated signs. This method of advertising is typically American. The first impression of a stranger visiting a large American city at night is that he is in a children's luminous palace. There are illuminations and decorations of every conceivable nature. Sometimes a single sign advertising perhaps some particular brand of chewing-gum or cigarette or motor-car has thousands and tens of thousands of lights wonderfully displayed in different colours and arranged in different series, one series flashing into view as another disappears, then a few seconds later giving place to another still more wonderful, and finally there comes a grand climax in which all the colours and all the series and all the figures blaze forth in an indescribable orgy of light.
When I found myself finally back in my hotel I was to be the victim of still another disillusionment. No country anywhere could rival America for hotels, I had thought. But I had not then experienced the "National" at Washington. The room allotted to me was literally an outrage. It was of the very poorest that one would expect to find in an East End boarding-house in the Old Kent Road. It had one window, which faced on to an unimaginably dreary "area." The carpet was threadbare and colourless. The furniture, consisting of one bed, one dressing-table, one wardrobe and one chair was obviously suffering from advanced senile decay. There was a washbasin in one corner that boasted of two taps and a piece of wood to stop the hole up with. The door showed signs of having been minus a lock for many a long day. I was too tired, however, to bother about trivialities of detail, so putting my revolver under the blanket near me in case of possible eventualities, I laid me down in peace to sleep.
Nothing occurred, however, to disturb my peace of mind or body throughout the night. The following morning found me hot on the warpath after a bathroom. After sundry peregrinations I unearthed a clue. It was in the form of a very corpulent negress—evidently a chambermaid. "Bathroom?" "No, dere am no bathroom h'yar," she informed me. But I persisted in my inquiries, suspecting her reply to be a mere excuse for sheer laziness. Finally, as a last resort, I absent-mindedly took my "life preserver" from my hip pocket and looked at it vacuously. Its effect was magical. "Yes, saar, yes, saar, come right h'yar!—I find you bathroom!"
When I came to square up that morning I paid my respects and three dollars to the management.
"See here, Mister Manager," I said in such a tone that everyone within hearing distance had the benefit of it as well, "I've done a bit of travelling here and there, but never in any city at any time have I struck any hotel that for sheer rottenness compares with this one!"
I have an idea at the back of my mind that that manager-man doesn't love Englishmen!
Now that I had seen America's capital, I turned my face to the west, and began to make rash estimates and frivolous promises to myself concerning my destination for the day. Could I get to Cincinnati next day? How long would it take to do the odd 550 miles or so? And what would be my reception when I got there? I had some friends in Cincinnati, friends that I had never even seen. What would they think when they saw this specimen roll up to their front door in Clifton Avenue? Was Lizzie going to stand up to it all right? When should I get to the coast? What kind of roads should I meet "out West"? And so I wondered on.