"In the first place, we went to the Capitol. It's built of white marble, and it's very large. There are quantities of long steps on different sides of it, and so many doors, and passages, and rooms, and pillars. I never could find my way out, in the world, alone. I wonder the Senators don't get lost sometimes.
"About the first place you come into is a round room, called the rotunda. Uncle says rotunda means round. There are some pictures there. One of them is Washington crossing the Delaware, with great cakes of ice beating up against the boat. One of the men has a flag in his hand. Gypsy and I liked it ever so much.
"Oh!—the dome of the Capitol isn't quite finished. There is scaffolding up there, and it doesn't look very pretty.
"Well, then we went upstairs, and I never saw such handsome stairs! They are marble, and so wide! and the banisters are the most elegant variegated marble,—a sort of dark brown, and they are so broad! Why, I should think they were a foot and a half broad, but then I don't know exactly how much a foot is.
"We went into two rooms that Gypsy and I both liked best of anything. One is called the Marble Room, and the other the Fresco Room. The Marble Room is all made of marble,—walls, floor, window-sills, everything but the furniture. The marble is of different colors and patterns, and just as beautiful! The furniture is covered with drab damask.
"The Fresco Room is all made of pictures. Frescoes are pictures painted on the ceilings, Uncle says. He says Michael Angelo, the great sculptor and artist, used to paint a great many, and that they are very beautiful. He says he had to lie flat on scaffoldings while he was painting the domes of great churches, and that, by looking up so, in that position, he hurt his eyes very much. This room I started to tell about is real pretty. I've almost forgotten what the furniture is covered with. Seems to me it is yellow damask, or else it's the Marble Room that's yellow, and this is drab,—or else—I declare! We've seen so much to-day, I've got everything mixed up!
"Uncle has just been correcting our journals, and he says it isn't proper to say 'I've got,' but I ought to say 'I have.'
"Oh, I forgot to say that the Senators' wives and daughters who are boarding here are very stylish people. When I grow up I mean to marry a Senator, and come to Washington, and give great parties.
"I don't see why I don't hear from father. You know it's nearly three weeks now since I had a letter. I thought I should have one last week, just as much as could be."
GYPSY'S JOURNAL.