And so many people seem to have come under the great dome to rest. You wonder where they could all have appeared from. They are not at all the people who crowd and hurry through the corridors in winter—the claimants, the lobbyists, the pleasure-seekers from great cities who come to spend the “season” in Washington. Nearly all are people from the country, the greater proportion brides and grooms, to whom the only “season” on earth is spring—the marriage season. Pretty pairs! They seem to be gazing out upon life through its portal with the same mingling of delight and wonder with which they gaze through the great doors of the Capitol upon the unknown world beyond. Early summer always brings a great influx of bridal pairs to Washington. Whence they all come no mortal can tell; but they do come, and can never be mistaken. Their clothes are as new as the spring’s, and they look charmingly vernal. The groom often seems half to deprecate your sudden glance, as if, like David Copperfield, he was afraid you thought him “very young.” And yet he invites you to glance again, by his conscious air of proud possession, which says: “Behold! I may be young—very. But I have gotten me a wife; she is the loveliest creature upon earth.” The affections of the lovely creature seem to be divided between her new lord and her new clothes. She loves him, she is proud of him; but this new suit, who but she can tell its cost. What longing, what privation, what patient toil has gone into its mouse or fawn-like folds; for this little bride, who regretfully drags her demi-train through the dust of the rotunda in summer, is seldom a rich man’s daughter. You see them everywhere repeated, these two neophytes—in the hotel-parlor, in the street-cars, in the Congressional galleries.
When Jonathan read to Jane, in distant Mudville, the record of Congressional proceedings in Washington, in the Weekly Tribune, both imagined themselves deeply interested in the affairs of their country; but here, on the spot, how small seem Tariff, Amnesty, Civil Rights, and Ku-Klux bills beside the ridiculous bliss of these two egotists. They do not even pretend to listen. But they have some photograph cards, and seek out their prototypes below. On the whole, Jane is disappointed. She was not prepared for so many bald heads, or for so much of bad manners. After all, not one of these men, in her mind, can compare with the small law-giver, the newly-found Lycurgus by her side. Before she became calm enough to reach this judicial decision, she visited the ladies’ dressing-room and shook out her damaged plumes.
“Is Washington always so dusty?” she asked, with a sigh, looking down on her pretty mouse-colored dress, with its piping decidedly grimed.
“Nearly always,” I answered.
“Then how can people live here?” she exclaimed.
When she goes home, she will tell that the dome of the Capitol is very high; that Conkling looks thus, and Sumner so. But what she will tell oftenest and longest—perhaps to her children’s children—will be that it was in Washington she ruined her wedding dress.
“I was married yesterday, and see how I look!” said Jane, ruefully.
“You look very pretty,” I said. “It will all shake off.” Wherewith Jane proceeded to shake, to wash her face, and brush her curls over her fingers. I helped her re-drape her lace shawl, and was repaid a moment later by her graceful posé in the front seat of the Senate Gallery, her hand in Jonathan’s. It was refreshing, in the face of such a conglomeration of doubtful wisdom, to see two happy idiots, if they did not know it. The city is full of Janes and Jonathans.
The Capitol grounds are lovely as the gardens of the blessed, these hours.
The armies of violets which swarmed its green slopes a month ago are gone, and the dandelions have gone up higher, and are now sailing all around us through the deep, still air. There is a ripple in the grass that invites the early mower. The fountains toss their spray into the very hearts of the old trees that bend above them, and on the easy seats beneath their shadow, sit black and white, old and young, taking rest.