When the cotton is taken out of the gin, it is ready to go to the compress and be pressed into bales or huge bundles. A bale is about the size of a traveling man's sample trunk and the cotton is squeezed in so tightly that the bales have to be wrapped in burlap and bound with iron bands to keep the cotton from bursting out. These great bales weigh about five hundred pounds and we have seen the river boats loaded down to the water's edge and railroad stations piled high with them. They are sent to the cotton mills in various parts of our own country and in foreign lands to be made into cloth. People all over the world use cloth that once grew on our southern plantations. When we learned this, we looked at the fluffy tufts with new interest. Perhaps this tuft would be woven into a Kimona for a Japanese girl. Maybe that one would someday be in the sail of a fishing boat off New Foundland or a tent on the Sahara Desert, or a sheet on a hospital cot in San Francisco or New York. Cotton is grown some in other countries, but American cotton is considered the best and brings in great wealth to our Uncle Sam. [Illustration: Reading Room Library of Congress Arlington Cemetery South Front of White House Lincoln Memorial Mount Vernon CITY OF WASHINGTON] In SEEING AMERICA FIRST, we have left Washington till the last just as you have cake and ice cream to wind up a dinner. The capitol is like a great marble palace and it would be easy to get lost in those long corridors. We saw the House of Representatives with the congressmen sitting at their desks like grown-up schoolboys in a very handsome school-room. We climbed into the huge dome, and we went into the Senate Chamber. The most impressive place was the Supreme Court with the Chief Justices in their long black silk robes. We wondered how people ever dared to break any American laws. We walked a mile on Pennsylvania Avenue to get to the White House, where the President lives and has his business offices. It certainly is a fine place and its grounds and rooms are very grand and stately. The American flag never looked better to us than when we saw it floating at Arlington, the National Cemetery, where 16000 soldiers are buried. Our country honors its heroes here and by many fine monuments, and buildings, in the parks and squares of Washington. Some of these, like the Lincoln Memorial, are very fine. If a person were very old and had seen all the sights in the world, he might possibly auto over 200 miles of smooth pavement in Washington, visit the Capitol, White House, Department Buildings, and Arlington without having a thrill, but it would be a dried-up old Methuselah who could go through the Library of Congress without getting excited. We heard a man say as he stood on the great stairway, "It is so wonderful that it takes all my words away!"