Turns about Town

by Robert Cortes Holliday

IV

Senator New's secretary, in his room on the second floor of the Senate Office building, was opening a wooden box that had come by mail. No; he wasn't exactly opening this box, either. He was looking at it suspiciously and cautiously tipping it from side to side. "Feels like it was a snake," he said fearsomely. "Soft, live-like weight in there. I don't believe I'll open it. You see," indicating the stamps, "it's from India, too."

"But why would anybody be sending Senator New a snake?" inquired my friend.

"Goodness gracious! We get lots of things just as queer as snakes," replied Mr. Winter. "I guess the Senator must be coming in pretty soon," he remarked, glancing about. "So many people coming in," he added, and continued: "It's a remarkable thing. Visitors seem to have some sort of psychic knowledge of when the Senator will be in. Same way out in Indianapolis, we could always tell when Tom Taggart was likely to be back soon from French Lick—so many people (who couldn't have heard from him) looking for him at the Denizen House."

"Everybody," someone observed, "always comes to Washington at least once a year." All United-Statesians, at any rate, one would say looking about the city, probably do. And among visiting United-Statesians not habitually seen in such profusion elsewhere one would certainly include, Indians, Mormons, Porto-Ricans, Civil War veterans, pedagogues, octogenarians, vegetarians, Virginians, Creoles, pastors, suffragettes, honeymooners, aunts, portly ladies of peculiar outline, people of a very simple past, and a remarkable number of gentlemen who still cling to white "lawn" ties, hard boiled shirts and "Congress shoes."

Also, of course, that vast congregation of people who "want" something in Washington. "What are you looking for around here?" a remark commonly overheard in the hotel lobbies.

But there are other American cities to which "everybody" goes, too, now or then, though the visitors are not perhaps so recognizable. Coming out of the Capitol, passing through the grounds of the White House, what do you frequently overhear? Frequently some such remark as this: "Haven't you ever been in the subway? To the Bronx? When you go back you certainly must go in it."

And out in Los Angeles they boastfully tell you that one way in which Los Angeles "is like New York" is this: That whereas a man may or may not happen to go to Richmond or to Detroit, sooner or later you are bound to see him on the streets of Los Angeles. That, as I say, is what they tell you out there.

But what are those aspects of Washington which are peculiar to that city, and make it so unlike any other city in the United States? And which in some cases make it an influence for the bad to many of its visitors? And which in some cases it is so strange should be the aspect of such a city?

For one thing, the first thing which must strike any stranger to the city is the enormous extent of the souvenir business there. It is perhaps natural enough that this should be so, and that souvenir shops should range themselves in an almost unbroken stretch for miles. What is not altogether so easy to answer is why nearly all of the souvenirs should be the kind of souvenirs they are.