Brickyards were in the center of the city, from which all the bricks had
been taken, leaving only dust, which was stirred by gusts of wind
filling the air at times to suffocation. Pennsylvania Avenue was
grotesque with its big and little buildings, its small and impoverished
shops set between the more splendid windows of jewelry and fabrics. It
was in such sharp contrast with Chicago. No noise here. No smell.
Instead of lumbering drays, many carriages; instead of bustle, leisure;
instead of commercial haste, languid strolling along Pennsylvania
Avenue. And there at its head stood the unfinished Capitol; and at its
other end the executive mansion now occupied by President Polk, and
soon to be the residence of the hero of the Mexican War, Zachary Taylor;
and soon of Millard Fillmore.
Dorothy and I and Mother Clayton visited the places of interest at once.
We went to the Patent Office and saw the model of the Morse telegraph.
We looked at the Declaration of Independence displayed in a glass case
at the Department of State. We stood before Trumbull's pictures of the
celebrated men of an earlier day. We went to the room of the Spring
Court, saw the judges in their black robes, the thin intellectual Chief
Justice Taney at the center. We went to the slave market, where the
capital of the republic trafficked in human flesh for itself and the
surrounding country.
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