Our attendant unlocks and throws open a door, flourishes a tiny lamp above his head, then, with an extra flourish, sets it on the table, inquiring with a hoarse voice, as though he had just made a meal of sawdust, “do we want anything more”; as we had had nothing we could not very well require any more of it. By the light of our blinking lamp we inspect our apartment, which is at least amply supplied with beds; there are three of them, each of Brobdignagian proportions--rivals to the great bed of Ware--they fill the room to overflowing and seem struggling to get out of the window. We are soon lost in a wilderness of feathers and wandering through the land of Nod. It seems to me that the worst room in the house is always reserved for the punishment of late arrivals, which is bad diplomacy on the part of hotel proprietors, as it frequently drives their guests away in search of better quarters. It might have been so with us; but the next morning our smiling host appears and ushers us into a delightful suite of rooms on the ground floor, opposite the gardens of the Capitol, where the playful squirrels are so numerous and so tame that they will come jumping across the road to your windows to be fed, take nuts from your hand, and sit demurely by your side and crack them. CHAPTER II. To-day and the yesterdays.--Richmond.--Its monuments.--Its surroundings.--The sculptor’s studio.--Andromache. It is at Richmond we get our first view of the South and the Southern people. Although we are only twelve hours from the booming, hustling city of New York, yet we feel we have entered a strange land. The difference is not so much in mere externals, as that the whole character of life is changed, and from all sides it is borne upon us that we are in the land of a “lost cause;” it impregnates the very air we breathe, and is written on the grave earnest faces of the people; it reveals itself everywhere and in everything.