The four marble staircases leading to the Senate Chamber and Hall of Representatives, in themselves alone embody enough of grace and magnificence to save the Capitol from cynical criticism. We slip through the Senate corridor, you and I, to the President’s and Vice-President’s rooms. Their furniture is sumptuous, their decoration oppressive. Gilding, frescoes, arabesques, glitter and glow above and around. There is not one quiet hue on which the tired sight may rest. Gazing, I feel an indescribable desire to pluck a few of Signor Brumidi’s red legged babies and pug-nosed cupids from their precarious perches on the lofty ceilings, to commit them to nurses or to anybody who will smooth out their rumpled little legs and make them look comfortable. We are Americans, and need repose; let us, therefore, pass to the Marble Room, which alone, of all the rooms of the Capitol, suggests it— “The end of all, the poppied sleep.” Its atmosphere is soft, serene, and silent. Its ceiling is of white marble, deeply paneled, supported by fluted pillars of polished Italian marble. Its walls are of the exquisite marble of Tennessee—a soft brown, veined with white—set with mirrors. One whose æsthetic eyes have studied the finest apartments of the world says that to him the most chaste and purely beautiful of all is the Marble Room of the American Capitol. Americans though we are, we have no time to rest, albeit we sorely need it. It is not for you or me to linger in marble rooms, maundering of art. Molly, rocking her baby out on the Western prairie, wants to know all about the Senate; baby is going to be a senator some day. Moses, on that little rock-sown farm in New England, has his “chores all done.” He rests in the Yankee paradise of kerosene, butternuts, apples, and cider. Yet to make his satisfaction complete, he must know a little more about the Capitol. Molly and Moses both expect us to see for them what they can not come to see for themselves. So let us peep into the Senate. It can not boast of the ampler proportions of the Hall of Representatives. Its golden walls and emerald doors can not rescue it from insignificance. The ceiling of this chamber is of cast-iron, paneled with stained glass—each pane bearing the arms of the different States, bound by most ornate mouldings, bronzed and gilded. The gallery, which entirely surrounds the hall, will seat one thousand persons. Over the Vice-President’s chair, the section you see separated from the rest by a net-work of wire, is the reporters’ gallery. The one opposite, lined with green, is the gallery of the diplomatic corps; next are the seats reserved for the Senators’ families. The Senators sit in three semi-circular rows, behind small desks of polished wood, facing the Secretary of the Senate, his assistants, the special reporters of debates, and the Vice-President.