The Olivia Letters: Being Some History of Washington City for Forty Years as Told by the Letters of a Newspaper CorrespondentBriggs, Emily Edson
History
The Olivia Letters: Being Some History of Washington City for Forty Years as Told by the Letters of a Newspaper Correspondent
Briggs, Emily Edson
United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1933; Washington (D.C.) -- History
The governor’s mansion is admirably arranged for entertaining
large companies. The rooms seemed to be fastened to the arc of a
circle. The guests entered the broad folding doors, followed on
from room to room, and came out near the point where they started;
a turning wheel of glaring colors, a huge human kaleidoscope--what
better comparison? We will suppose you are behind the governor, as
Mephistopheles is said to have stood behind Faust. But then you are
only a harmless correspondent, and the image is in the very worst
taste; and yet, even in newspaper comparisons, it is well to keep
all the best things for one’s self. You are behind the shadow of the
governor--invisible, you see nothing, but you feel a great deal. A
turn of the wonderful kaleidoscope and there comes to view the great
warrior Tecumseh, sometimes called General Sherman, the Beau Brummel
of fashionable life in Washington. Straight as one of those guns he
carried so successfully to the sea, and just about as useful at the
present day, yet very dear to us, because he is the best paid for
the least work of any man in the Union. And yet he was seen at the
Burns Festival, as well as many other places, with Vinnie Ream on
his arm, and who knows what the veteran warrior may have suffered?
Vinnie is not large, neither is a Minie ball, and yet if either one
should hit the mark the most direful consequences might follow. When
we compare Vinnie Ream to the great men who work in stone she grows
beautifully less, but when we compare her with women she rises almost
beyond feminine proportions. She is a very small man, but a very
great woman. Go ahead, Vinnie! Bust Tecumseh, or somebody else will!
Our great men must be busted by some one, and women ought to have a
hand in that kind of work. We intend to write a book about the famous
women of Washington, and you, dear, persecuted, self-sacrificing
little sprite, shall have almost the best place.
Another turn of the wheel. Who comes there? It is our tall, lordly
speaker of the House--our handsome would-be next President--polished
as steel, and Colfaxian to the last degree, except the smile. But
he is our Speaker of the House, and, as Don Quixote said about his
own Dulcinea, we challenge the world in his defence, and if an enemy
chooses to break a lance they can do so at their own risk.
Here comes Mrs. Blaine, frozen as a New England landscape in
midwinter. The salt mist of the gray sea! Ugh! ugh! Turn the
kaleidoscope quick. The air is so cold the artificial flowers are
nipped by the frost.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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