Mysteries of Washington City, during Several Months of the Session of the 28th Congress

by Caleb Atwater

We hear to-day also, that a monomaniac, another one altogether, thinks that if he can get a certain man elected president in 1844, he, the maniac, will be elected president in 1848! Still other maniacs expect to be foreign ministers! What strange delusions in this deluded and deluding world are all these vagaries of the brain? Shall we call in Dr. Mayo, or shall we import forthwith all the helebore which both the Anticyras produce and administer it all to these afflicted patients? or what shall we do to restore these men to a sound state of mind? Who can calculate the chances of the next election? We cannot tell by 400,000 individual votes, and we suppose we know just as much about it as the voters themselves do at this moment.

Sanguine politicians think they know, but they do not know more than we do, whose minds are not made up yet what we shall do, or how we shall vote—perhaps, not at all this autumn. Instead of “a light house of the skies” and buildings for “storm kings,” telegraphs, &c. &c. why not appropriate money for a lunatic asylum of such large dimensions that it could accommodate thousands who come here with their humbugs of all sorts, asking for national aid and support?

Perhaps we ought to have added a chapter on Humbugs, in addition to our Mysteries, of this city. Kind reader, it is too late now for such a chapter, our whole little volume being all filled up and nearly all its contents are already printed.

LOCAL INFORMATION.

Meeting of Courts.

Supreme Court of the United States, second Monday in January.

Circuit Court of the District of Columbia for Washington county, fourth Monday of March, and fourth Monday of November.

Circuit Court of the District of Columbia for Alexandria county, first Monday in May and first Monday in October.

Criminal Court of the District of Columbia for Washington county, second Monday of March, first Monday of June, fourth Monday of October, and last Monday of December.

Criminal Court of the District of Columbia for Alexandria county, first Monday of April, and first Monday of November.