I cannot imagine why this black brute should thus wantonly insult an inoffensive person like me, and especially a crippled ex-soldier who had walked all the way from Georgetown to see his old camping-ground: but I have given the words as he spoke them. I do not relate the incident because it will please or displease any political party: I simply tell the truth. No one will fail to admit that it was humiliating and mortifying to me, after having helped to build the fort, to be insolently turned away from it by a coarse and ignorant negro. Had a white soldier been on post there, he would have received me cordially, and if his orders not to admit any one had been very strict, he would have sent some one to his officer and asked permission to let me go in. There is always a certain sympathy between soldiers of one race; but I never yet saw any between white and black soldiers. Although I had been in Washington many times, I had never yet ascended the dome of the Capitol, or visited the embryo “Washington Monument;” so, next day, I determined to visit both. In the Capitol, at the base of the stairway leading to the dome, the doorkeeper asked me if I had a pass to go up. “No,” I replied; “I was not aware that any was required.” “Yes, visitors are not admitted to the dome without passes.” “If you will tell me where to get one,” I rejoined, “I will go and——” “O, never mind,” he interrupted. “I won’t send _you_ for a pass. But can you walk to the top?” “O, yes.” “Go ahead then, and never mind the pass. Don’t fall.” “Thank you,” I replied, beginning the ascent. I must say this much for my race—for this was a _white_ man—that it is not made up entirely of selfishness. I frequently meet with little courtesies like this, and they are very gratifying to me: not for their intrinsic merit, alone, but because they show cheerful little gleamings of the bright side of the human heart. When I reached the top of the dome, I felt a little tired; but probably not much more so than others who ascended. It is a fatiguing task for any one, to ascend to the height of three hundred feet, by means of a winding stairway. That same afternoon I visited the unfinished monument erected to the memory of George Washington. This monument is beautiful in design. It was to have been five hundred feet high, surrounded at the base by a pantheon one hundred feet high and two hundred and fifty feet in diameter. But it has only reached the height of one hundred and seventy feet, having there abruptly stopped. It stands now a monument of the forgetfulness and ingratitude of the American people. Till it is finished—which I fear will never be—the whole land ought to be covered with one broad blush of shame.