The interpreter informed us that this was the first time the Sioux-killer had come among the whites. He had disliked them always till now, but he said he had seen enough to keep him telling tales all the rest of his life. Power offered them cigars, which they refused. We expressed our surprise; and the Sioux-killer said that the Indians who smoked gave out soonest in the chase; and White Cloud added, very gravely, that the young women of his tribe did not like the breaths of the smokers. In answer to an enquiry I made about the comparative size of Indians and white men, the chief said that the old men of the whites were larger than old Indians, but the young whites were not so tall and straight as the youths of his tribe. We were struck with the smallness of the chief’s hands and feet; but he seemed very much mortified when the interpreter translated our remark to him. He turned the little sallow fingers over and over, and said that old White Cloud, his father, who had been a great warrior, had small hands like his. The young chief, we were told by the interpreter, has never yet been in an engagement, and is always spared from the heavier fatigues undergone by the rest of the tribe.
They showed great good nature in allowing us to look at their ornaments, tomahawks, &c. White Cloud wore a collar of bear’s claws, which marked him for a chief; and the Sioux-killer carried a great cluster of brass bells on the end of his tomahawk, of which he explained the use very energetically. It was to shake when he stood over his fallen enemy in the fight, to let the tribe know he had killed him. After another tumbler of champagne each, they rose to take their leave, and White Cloud gave us his hand, gently, with a friendly nod. We were all amused, however, with the Sioux-killer’s more characteristic adieu. He looked us in the eye like a hawk, and gave us each a grip of his iron fist, that made the blood tingle under our nails. He would be an awkward customer in a fight, or his fixed lips and keen eye very much belie him.
WASHINGTON AFTER THE SESSION.
The leaf that is lodged in some sunny dell, after drifting on the whirlwind—the Indian’s canoe, after it has shot the rapids—the drop of water that has struggled out from the phlegethon of Niagara, and sleeps on the tranquil bosom of Ontario—are faint images of contrast and repose, compared with a Washingtonian after the session. I have read somewhere, in an oriental tale, that a lover, having agreed to share his life with his dying mistress, took her place in the grave six months in the year. In Bagdad it might have been a sacrifice. In Washington I could conceive such an arrangement to make very little difference.
Nothing is done leisurely in our country; and, by the haste with which everybody rushes to the rail-road the morning after the rising of Congress, you would fancy that the cars, like Cinderella’s coach would be changed into pumpkins at the stroke of twelve. The town was evacuated in a day. On the fifth of March a placard was sent back by the inn-keepers at Baltimore, declaring that there was not so much as a garret to be had in that city, and imploring gentlemen and ladies to remain quietly at Washington for twenty-four hours. The railroad engine twice a day, tugged and puffed away through the hills, drawing after it, on its sinuous course, a train of brick colored cars, that resembled the fabulous red dragon trailing its slimy length through the valley of Crete. The gentlemen who sit by the fire in the bar-room at Gadsby’s, like Theodore Hook’s secretary, who could hear his master write “Yours faithfully” in the next room, learned to distinguish “Received payment,” from “Sundries,” by listening to the ceaseless scratch of the book-keeper. The ticket-office at the depot was a scene of struggle and confusion between those who wanted places; while, looking their last on these vanishing paymasters, stood hundreds of tatterdemalions, white, yellow, and black, with their hands in their pockets, and (if sincere regret at their departure could have wrung it forth) a tear in their eye. The bell rang, and the six hundred departures flocked to their places—young ladies, with long faces, leaving the delights of Washington for the dull repose of the country—their lovers, with longer faces, trying, in vain, to solve the X quantity expressed by the aforesaid “Sundries” in their bill—and members of congress with long faces, too—for not one in twenty has “made the impression” he expected; and he is moralizing on the decline of the taste for eloquence, and on the want of “golden opportunity” for the display of indignant virtue!
Nothing but an army, or such a concourse of people as collects to witness an inauguration, could ever make Washington look populous. But when Congress, and its train of ten thousand casual visiters are gone, and only the official and indigenous inhabitants remain, Balbec, or Palmyra, with a dozen Arabs scattered among its ruins, has less a look of desolation. The few stragglers in the streets add to its loneliness—producing exactly the effect sometimes given to a woodland solitude by the presence of a single bird. The vast streets seem grown vaster and more disproportionate—the houses seem straggling to greater distances—the walk from the President’s house to the capitol seems twice as long—and new faces are seen here and there, at the doors and windows—for cooks and inn-keepers that had never time to lounge, lounge now, and their families take quiet possession of the unrented front parlor. He who would be reminded of his departed friends should walk down on the avenue. The carpet, associated with so many pleasant recollections—which has been pressed by the dainty feet of wits and beauties—to tread on which was a privilege and a delight—is displayed on a heap of old furniture, and while its sacred defects are rudely scanned by the curious, is knocked down, with all its memories, under the hammer of the auctioneer. Tables, chairs, ottomans—all linked with the same glowing recollections—go—for most unworthy prices; and while, humiliated with the sight, you wonder at the artificial value given to things by their possessors, you begin to wonder whether your friends themselves, subjected to the same searching valuation, would not be depreciated too! Ten to one, if their characters were displayed like their carpets, there would come to light defects as unsuspected!
The person to whom this desolation is the “unkindest cut” is the hackney-coachman. “His vocation” is emphatically gone! Gone is the dollar made every successive half hour! Gone is the pleasant sum in compound addition, done “in the head,” while waiting at the doors of the public offices! Gone are the short, but profitable trips to the theatre! Gone the four or five families, all taken the same evening to parties, and each paying the item of “carriage from nine till twelve!” Gone the absorbed politician, who would rather give the five-dollar bill than wait for his change! the lady who sends the driver to be paid at “the bar;” the uplifted fingers, hither and thither, which embarrass his choice of a fare—gone, all! The chop-fallen coachy drives to the stand in the morning and drives home at noon; he creeps up to Fuller’s at a snail-pace, and, in very mockery of hope, asks the homeward-bound clerk from the department if he wants a coach! Night comes on, and his horses begin to believe in the millennium—and the cobwebs are wove over his whip-socket.
These changes, however, affect not unpleasantly the diplomatic and official colony extending westward from the president’s. The inhabitants of this thin sprinkled settlement are away from the great thoroughfare, and do not miss its crowds. The cessation of parties is to them a relief from night journeys, colds, card-leavings, and much wear and tear of carriage-horses. They live now in dressing-gowns and slippers, read the reviews and the French papers, get their dinners comfortably from the restaurateurs, and thank Heaven that the capitol is locked up. The attachés grow fat, and the despatches grow thin.
There are several reasons why Washington, till the month of May, spite of all the drawbacks in the picture delineated above, is a more agreeable residence than the northern cities. In the first place, its climate is at least a month earlier than that of New York, and, in the spring, is delightful. The trees are at this moment (the last week in March) bursting into buds; open carriages are everywhere in use; walking in the sun is oppressive; and for the last fortnight, this has been a fair chronicle of the weather. Boston and New York have been corroded with east winds, meantime, and even so near as Baltimore, they are still wrapped in cloaks and shawls. To those who, in reckoning the comforts of life, agree with me in making climate stand for nine-tenths, this is powerful attraction.
Then the country about Washington, the drives and rides, are among the most lovely in the world. The banks of Rock creek are a little wilderness of beauty. More bright waters, more secluded bridle-paths, more sunny and sheltered hill-sides, or finer mingling of rock, hill, and valley, I never rode among. Within a half-hour’s gallop, you have a sylvan retreat of every variety of beauty, and in almost any direction; and from this you come home (and this is not the case with most sylvan rides) to an excellent French dinner and agreeable society, if you like it. You have all the seclusion of a rural town, and none of its petty politics and scandal—all the means and appliances of a large metropolis, and none of its exactions and limitations. That which makes the charm of a city, and that for which we seek the country, are equally here, and the penalties of both are removed.