"Harry Furniss' eclipse of the gayety of John Bull, with facile pencil and brilliant tongue, attracted a cultured assemblage to the Columbia Theatre. Furniss, a plump lump of a man, all curves from pumps to poll, in gesture and in the breezy flourish of his sentences, genially cynical like Voltaire, cuts an engaging figure in his black coat that he wears with the inborn grace of a well-dined Londoner, a bon vivant, whose worldly shaft tickles and never bites, for he is a gentleman whose wit wins and never wounds. Furniss is Thackeray in the satirist's mellow moments, and there is no little of the Thackerian spirit radiating in the pictures of this rotund and quaint little caricaturist."
I did very bad business in Washington, largely due to bad management. Five o'clock teas had become the rage of Washington Society, and my appearances in the theatre were between 4.15 and 6 o'clock in the afternoon. Alluding to this a critic wrote in the Morning Times: "It may help Mr. Furniss to forgive the small audiences here in Washington if he is informed that during this season none of his English friends have made a very glittering success; nearly all of them have lost money or made very little. We seem to be somewhat down on Englishmen this year."
As Washington is the capital of America, so the Capitol, where Congress meets, is the cap of the capital, the dome, of course, being the Capitol's cap, and a capital cap it is, covering the collective councillors of the country. The Capitol itself looks like a huge white eagle protecting the interests of the States. Audubon's Bird of Washington is the name of the eagle well-known to naturalists, but this rara avis is the Falcho Washingtoniensis. At its heart is seated the Supreme Court, keeping an eagle eye on the laws of the land; under its right wing is the Senate (equivalent to the English House of Lords); and the left shelters the House of Representatives (corresponding to our House of Commons). At first this bird of buildings had no wings, and the three representative assemblies sat in the Central Edifice; afterwards the wings were added, and now the Capitol is fly enough for anything. It soars high above the city, and from its summit a capital birdseye view is naturally obtained.
The Senate in the American Congress answers to the House of Lords in the British Parliament. The "sporting editor" would doubtless say that each in its respective country is the right hand of the Government, and when there happens to be a genuine stand-up fight, as foreseen with Spain, an international contest, although the "left," in prize ring phraseology (the House of Representatives in America and the House of Commons in England), does all the preliminary work, it is reserved for the right, when the critical moment arrives, to administer the knock-out blow.
THE THRONE IN THE SENATE.
In both the Old Country and the New these superior senators are politically alike. Representatively they are as different as iced water is to old port.
THE THRONE, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.