I hurried back to my boarding-house, packed up that pink silk dress and things, put on my alpaca dress, tied a thick brown veil over my beehive, and packed my satchel till it rounded out like an apple dumpling. We started that night. Cousin D. wanted me to go into a long car where people slept, he said; but I saw a good many men with carpet-bags going in there, which looked strange, and though I have great faith in the integrity of Cousin Dempster, a young lady in my peculiar circumstances cannot be too particular; I declined to go into that curtained, long car, and sat up in a high-backed chair all night, wide awake as a whip-poor-will, for Cousin Dempster was on the next seat sleeping like a mole, and his head more than once came down so close to my shoulder that it made me shudder for fear that people might not know that he was my cousin's husband, and snap up my character before I got to Washington. Well, at last we got out of that train, I stood with both feet in the heart of the nation, and a great, flat, straggling heart it is. "There it is--there is the Capitol," says Cousin Dempster. "Look how beautifully the sunshine bathes the dome and the white marble walls." I looked upward--there, rising up over a lot of tall trees and long, green embankments, rose a great building, white as snow, and large as all out-doors. The sun was just up, and had set all its windows on fire, and a great, stout woman perched on the top of a thing they call the dome--which is like a mammoth wash-bowl turned wrong side up--looked as if she was tired out with carrying so much on her head, and longed to jump down and have a good time with the other bronze-colored girls that show themselves off, just like white folks inside the building. Well, later that day, I went right up to that heap of marble, which in its length and breadth and depth filled my soul with pride and patriotic glory. I really don't believe there is another building like it on the face of the earth. Freedom, honesty, and greatness _ought_ to preside there. Why, sisters, there are whole rooms here of clouded marble, ceiling, floor, walls--everything polished like the agate stone in your brooch, and I do think that the hottest sun can hardly force a beam of warmth through. Down in the great wandering cellars you come upon staircases of beautiful marble, fenced in with railings of iron and gold and brass all melted together and called bronze, up which deer, as big as young lambs, are jumping, and branches of trees are twisted. There are ever so many of these staircases, and they cost one hundred thousand dollars apiece. Think of that! and mostly where it is so dark that you can't but just see them. "I hadn't only one day and night to look about in, so I went up there before Congress got to work, as I wanted to see things without having people know that I was there. But by and by a lot of men came swarming in, and I felt like making myself scarce.