Meanwhile she remained in seclusion in her father's house.
It was to this delightful town house, so like the country in its isolation, that Ishmael Worth was invited.
It was just at sunrise on Tuesday morning that the old steamer "Columbia," having Ishmael on board, landed at the Seventh Street wharf, and the young man, destined some future day to fill a high official position in the Federal government, took his humble carpetbag in his hand and entered the Federal city.
Ah! many thousands had entered the National capital before him, and many more thousands would enter it after him, only to complain of it, to carp over it, to laugh at it, for its "magnificent distances," its unfinished buildings, its muddy streets, and its mean dwellings.
But Ishmael entered within its boundaries with feelings of reverence and affection. It was the City of Washington, the sacred heart of the nation.
He had heard it called by shallow-brained and short-sighted people a sublime failure! It was a sublime idea, indeed, he thought, but no failure! Failure? Why, what did those who called it so expect? Did they expect that the great capital of the great Republic should spring into full-grown existence as quickly as a hamlet around a railway station, or village at a steamboat landing? Great ideas require a long time for their complete embodiment. And those who sneered at Washington were as little capable of foreseeing its future as the idlers about the steamboat wharf were of foretelling the fortunes of the modest-looking youth, in country clothes, who stood there gazing thoughtfully upon the city.
"Can you tell me the nearest way to Pennsylvania Avenue?" at length he asked of a bystander.
"Just set your face to the north and follow your nose for about a mile, and you'll fetch up to the broadest street as ever you see; and that will be it," was the answer.
With this simple direction Ishmael went on until he came to the avenue, which he recognized at once from the description.
The Capitol, throned in majestic grandeur upon the top of its wooded hill at the eastern extremity of the Avenue, and gleaming white in the rays of the morning sun, seeming to preside over the whole scene, next attracted Ishmael's admiration. As his way lay towards it, he had ample time to contemplate its imposing magnificence and beauty.