Where the “Slough of Despond” spread its waxen mud across the acres of the West End, where pedestrians were “slumped,” and horses “stalled,” and discomfort and disgust prevailed, we now see broad carriage drives, level as floors, over which grand equipages and pony phaetons glide with a smoothness that is a luxury, and an ease of motion which is rest. Where ravines and holes made the highway dangerous, now the concrete and Nicholson pavements stretch over miles on miles of inviting road. Where streets and avenues crossed and re-crossed their long vistas of shadeless dust, now plat on plat of restful grass “park” the city from end to end. Double rows of young trees line these parks far as the sight can reach. In these June days they fill the air with tender bloom. Gazing far on through their green arcades the sight rests at last where poor Major L’Enfant dreamed and planned that it one day would,—on the restful river, with its white flecks of sails, upon distant meadows and the Virginia hills. Old Washington was full of small Saharas. Where the great avenues intersected acres of white sand were caught up and carried through the air by counter winds. It blistered at white heat beneath your feet, it flickered like a fiery veil before your eyes, it penetrated your lungs and begrimed your clothes. Now where streets and avenues cross, emerald “circles” with central fountains, pervading the air with cooling spray, with belts of flowers and troops of children, and restful seats for the old or the weary take the place of the old Saharas. In every direction tiny parks are blooming with verdurous life. Concrete walks have taken the place of their old gravel-stone paths. Seats—thanks to General Babcock—everywhere invite to sit down and rest beneath trees which every summer cast a deeper and more protecting shadow. The green pools which used to distill malaria beneath your windows are now all sucked into the great sewers, planted at last in the foundations of the city. The entire city has been drained. Every street has been newly graded. The Tiber, inglorious stream, arched and covered forever from sight, creeps in darkness to its final gulf in the river. The canal, drained and filled up, no longer breeds pestilence. Pennsylvania avenue has outlived its mud and its poplars, to be all and more than Jefferson dreamed it would be,—the most magnificent street on the continent. Its lining palaces are not yet built, but more than one superb building like that of the Daily National Republican soars high above the lowly shops of the past, a forerunner of the architectural splendor of the buildings of the future. Cars running every five minutes have taken the place of the solitary stage, plodding its slow way between Georgetown and the Capital. Capitol Hill, which had been retrograding for more than forty years, has taken on the look of a suddenly growing city. Its dusty ways and empty spaces are beginning to fill with handsome blocks of metropolitan houses.