Gypsy's Cousin Joy

by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

"Eight o'clock, Monday Night.

"Joy has told ever so much about the Capitol, and I don't want to tell it all over again. If I forget it, I can look at her journal, you know.

"But she didn't tell about Congress. Well, you see if we'd come a little later we shouldn't have seen them at all; and if it didn't happen to be a long session we shouldn't see them so late in the season. But then we did. I'm very glad, only I thought it was rather stupid.

"I liked the halls, anyway. They're splendid, only there's a great deal of yellow about them; and then there are some places for pictures, and the pictures aren't put up yet.

"There's a gallery runs round, where visitors sit. The Senators and Representatives are down on the floor. We went into the Senate first. They sat in seats that curved round, and the President of the Senate—that's Vice-President Hamlin—he sits in a sort of little pulpit, and looks after things. If anybody wants to speak, they have to ask him, and he says, 'The Senator from so-and-so has the floor.' Then when they get into a fight, he has to settle it. Isn't it funny in such great grown-up men to quarrel? But they do, like everything. There was one man got real mad at Mr. Sumner to-day.

"I didn't care about what they were talking about, but it was fun to look down and see all the desks and papers, and some of them were just as sleepy as could be. Then they kept whispering to each other while a man was speaking, and sometimes they talked right out loud. If I should do that at school, I guess Miss Cardrew would give it to me. But what I thought was queerest of all, they all talked right at the Vice-President, and kept saying, 'Mr. President,' and 'Sir,' just as if there weren't anybody else in the room.

"Some of the Senators are handsome, and a good many more aren't. Joy stood up for Mr. Sumner because he came from Massachusetts. He is a nice-looking man, and I had to say so. He has a high forehead, and he looks exactly like a gentleman. Besides, father says he has done a noble work for the country and the slaves, and the rest of New England ought to be just as proud of him as Massachusetts.

"We went into the House of Representatives, too, and it was a great deal noisier there than it was in the Senate, there were so many more of them. I saw one man eating peanuts. Most all of them looked hungry. The man that sits up behind the desk and takes care of the House, is called the Speaker. I think it's real funny, because he never makes a speech. As we came out of the Capitol, father turned round and looked back and said: 'Just think! All the laws that govern this great country come out from there.' He said some more about it, too, but there was the funniest little negro boy peeking through the fence, and I didn't hear.

"We went to the White House next. Father says it's something like a palace, only some palaces are handsomer. It's white marble like the Capitol. We went up the steps, and a man let us right in. We saw two rooms. One is called the Red Room and one the Green Room.

The Red Room is furnished in red damask and the Green is all green. They were very handsome, only all the furniture was ranged along the walls, and that made it seem so big and empty. Father says that's because these rooms are used for receptions, and there is such a crowd.