It is quite unnecessary. For a brief instant Washington is forgotten. In that instant the crowd regards the second or third best-known man in America—silently and curiously. The lecturer brings them back to their dollar's worth. He boldly points out the Larz Anderson house as the home of "the richest real estate man in the country," the new home of Perry Belmont as having "three stories above ground and three below"—an excursionist from Reading, Pa., interrupts to ask how much coal they will need to fill such a cellar—you see the home of the late Mr. Walsh with "a forty-five hundred dollar marble bench in the yard, all cut out of a single piece," the sedate and stately house of Gifford Pinchot.
It is pleasant, driving through these smooth Washington streets, even if the low-hanging tree branches do make you jump and start at times. You go up this street, down that, past long rows of neat Colonial houses that some day are going to look neat and old—turn by one of the lovely open squares of the city. They have just erected a statue there—grandstands are already going up around about it and there will be speeches and oratory before long.
Washington is constantly in the throes of an epidemic of dedications. There are now more statues in the city than Mr. Baedeker ever can tally and each of them has undergone dedication—at least once. The President has been corralled, if possible, although Mr. Wilson has already shown a reticence for this sort of thing. If the President simply will not come, a Governor or a rather famous Senator will do as well. And in the far pinch there are many Representatives in Washington who are mighty good orators. You can almost get a Representative at the crook of your finger, and you cannot have a real dedication without a splurry of oratory. It is almost as necessary as music—or the refreshments.
As you slip by one of those statues—"the equestrian figure of General Andrew Jackson on horseback"—the gentleman from Reading demands that the car stop. He wants to ask a question and apparently he cannot ask a question and be in motion at the same time. So he demands that the car be stopped. It is one of the privileges of a man who has paid a perfectly good dollar for the trip. The car stops—abruptly.
You will probably recall that Jackson statue, standing in the center of Lafayette square and directly in front of the White House. Perhaps General Jackson rode a horse that way and perhaps he did not, but there the doughty old warrior sits, his bronze mount plunging high upon hind legs.
"What is ever going to keep that statue from falling over some day?" demands the man from Reading. He has a keen professional interest in the matter, for he has been a blacksmith up in that brisk Pennsylvania town for many a year.
Through the portals of this Union Station come all the visitors to Washington
The lecturer explains that the tail of the bronze horse is heavily weighted and that the whole figure is held in balance that way. But the blacksmith is Pennsylvania Dutch—of the sort not to be convinced in an instant—and he sets forth his opinion of the danger at length, to the bald-headed man from Baltimore, who sits just behind him.
The lecturer goes forward once again. You look at the proud old mansion that faces Lafayette square, and gasp when the intelligent young man with the megaphone tells you that it was given to Daniel Webster by the American people and that he gambled it away. You notice the house that Admiral Dewey got from the same source, and wonder if he could not have contrived possibly to gamble it away. You note St. John's church—"the Church of State," the young man calls it—and turn into Sixteenth street. But alas, it is Sixteenth street no longer. Through a bit of the official snobbery that frequently comes to the surface in the governing of the national capital that fine highway has been named "the Avenue of the Presidents," a name that is so out of harmony of our fine American town that it will probably be changed in the not distant future.