Among the further perfections of our land yacht were separate and secluded apartments for our married friends and other privileged parties, and ample berths for less favored mortals; there was also a spacious dining-room, and a generous lounging place at the end of the car, where after-dinner chats could be indulged in and mornings happily passed while watching the landscape as it seemed to fly past us and vanish in the ever-changing distance. But let us return to the events of our first day's trip. The marshes of the Hackensack valley were soon crossed, and at our first stop, at Newark, we rejoiced to find the Rev. Dr. Frank Landon Humphreys and his sweet wife, who were to make us glad with their company as far as Washington; and certainly this was done. There were quips and jokes without number from the ever versatile Doctor; and roars of good-natured fun, which he provoked, made us oblivious of the naked landscape, as yet with little more than a hint here and there of the coming springtime. We had summer along with us, however, if good nature and pleasant chat can symbolize the warmth and comfort of that happy season. The ladies' bonnets and wraps, discovered by the Reverend Doctor in one of the staterooms, made impromptu material for much rapid-change dramatic performances, exquisitely absurd, and altogether entertaining. On we sped, with our jolly company, through New Jersey, rich and populous; on to Philadelphia, our great city neighbor, which, however, seems to most of us as far distant and unknown as Mars or the moon. Yet what a happy home place it is to those who dwell therein, and know the many advantages of its vast area, and consequent freedom from tenement drawbacks and other evils which we know too well. On we went through old Wilmington on the Delaware, with its red brick sidewalks and black lounging denizens; on through Baltimore, famous for good living and beautiful women; until in the afternoon we reached Washington and looked with admiration at the stately Capitol in the distance, with its splendid and graceful dome, and gazed with a sort of awe at the far-off Washington monument, that huge white obelisk, so gigantic, so spectral, so magnificent, but which is yet so chimney-like in its immensity as to be almost forbidding, if not revolting, to the aesthetic sense. I presume, though, that a nearer approach to the vast structure would overawe us with its colossal appearance. I have been told that the effect of that unbroken shaft near by, eighty feet wide at its base, and mounting skyward without a break, in perfect plainness, for five hundred and fifty-five feet, is almost supernatural and overwhelming. The very sight of the Capitol could not but bring to our hearts the great crisis which was there impending. The huge dome seemed, as it were, to cover in the great brain of the nation struggling with the question, "Is America to engage in war? Is the nation which stands most