Swinging around the corner of the Treasury Building, with a distant glimpse of the stately Grecian temple reared by a loving people in memory of their murdered President, the procession passed the White House, rising, pale and lovely, from amid its trees and flowers. At the corner of Madison Place our first French friend, Lafayette, extended a welcoming hand to his countrymen, and awaiting them, a few rods beyond, was Rochambeau, who commanded the French armies at Yorktown. In the center of the square Andrew Jackson, the frontiersman who at New Orleans routed the Peninsular veterans of Wellington, sat on his prancing horse, guarded by captured cannon, and raised his cocked hat in hearty greeting. Then past the statue of Baron von Steuben, the adjutant and friend of Frederick the Great, who exchanged the glitter of the Prussian Court for the misery of Valley Forge, and who, were he alive to-day, would, I fancy, once again be fighting on the side of freedom. A stone’s throw beyond, in front of the house where Dolly Madison once held her republican court, stood Kosciusko, the Polish light-horseman, who, when his sword was no longer needed by America, returned to his own people and lies buried in the Cathedral of Cracow. Then the cortège, with its cloud of clattering troopers in blue and yellow, swerved sharply into Sixteenth Street, the beautiful thoroughfare which should, and some day doubtless will, be dignified by being named “The Avenue of the Presidents,” and was lost to sight amid its foliage and its fluttering flags. The procession was not as effective as it might have been, first, because it moved so rapidly as to give the impression that those in charge of it were worried and anxious to get it over with, and secondly, because so many generals and admirals and cabinet ministers were crowded into the automobiles that the people on the streets had great difficulty in distinguishing them. In a foreign country there would have been lines of soldiers and police to push the onlookers back and keep the way clear, but here there was nothing of the sort, for the men in the crowd acted as their own police and looked after their guests themselves, which was more democratic and essentially American. But the most memorable feature of the affair, when all is said and done, was the extraordinary warmth and spontaneity of the welcome which the people extended to their visitors. The sidewalks surged with waving hats and upraised hands as the cortège passed and the cheers rose into a roar which drowned the chorus of the motor-horns and the clatter of the cavalry. The women in the windows and on the balconies waved their handkerchiefs and cheered, and the men beat the air with their hats and cheered, and the white-mustached old soldier raised his hand again and again to the visor of his scarlet _képi_ and smiled at the people and winked away the tears in his eyes.