Well, sisters, that chunky woman on the top of the great iron wash-bowl, that some giant seems to have turned upside down on the roof of the Capitol, has more to do than any other female I'm acquainted with, if she can keep the flock of men they call Congress in any kind of order. No wonder she has the look of the kitchen about her, and seem to be carrying a bundle of soiled clothes on her head for a wash in the clouds! for, of all the sloppy places I ever heard of, this great marble building seems to be the beatomest. Congressmen seem to be always getting out dirty clothes here, beside whitewashing every now and then, raking each other over the coals, and doing all sorts of kitchen and garden work. Cousin Dempster told me all this before I went up to see exactly what Congress was, and it certainly upset me, you may just believe. That great building, which might be cut up into half a dozen palaces for kings to live in, turned into a wash-house and national laundry! The very thought made me creep all over. I always like to investigate matters from the foundation, so the first thing I did was to go into the basement story of the building, and see what the kitchen arrangements amounted to. Of course Cousin D. could be of no use to me, and Cousin E. E. declined the subterranean raid, as she nippingly called it, which ended in my going into the underground department alone. Well, the first thing that struck me was the duskiness of the place; it was like travelling through a sunset that had no color in it. The whole building seemed to have put on a gray mantle and gone to sleep. I went upstairs and downstairs, travelled over miles of stone floors, and through forests of great stone posts that looked strong enough to have a world built atop of them. Once in a while I caught sight of a man scooting along in the dusk before me like a black ghost; and once I heard noises like the rush of a steamboat down below me, and began to suspect that the wash-house and lime-slacking department was lower down yet. I opened two or three doors, and looked into a good many dark and deserted rooms piled up with books and crowded full of all sorts of things. Once or twice I saw the head of a man popping up between piles of books, but no sign of washing, as yet.