But in the Capitol Square one forgets to-day and relives yesterday. Beneath the calm eyes of the warlike statue of the First American little children chase gray squirrels across the grass, and infant carriages with beruffled parasols are drawn in white and pink clusters beside the benches. Jefferson and Marshall, Henry and Nelson are secure in bronze when mere greatness has decayed. To the left of the Capitol a gravelled drive leads between a short avenue of lindens to the turnstile iron gates that open before the governor's house. Here, too, there is an atmosphere of the past and the picturesque. The lawn, dotted with chrysanthemums and rose trees, leads down from the rear of the house to a wall of grapevines that overlooks the street below. In front the yard is narrow and broken by a short circular walk, in the centre of which a thin fountain plays amid long-leaved plants. The house, grave, gray, and old-fashioned--the square side porches giving it a delusive suggestion of length--faces from its stone steps the thin fountain, the iron gates, beyond which stretches the white drive beneath the lindens, and the great bronze Washington above his bodyguard of patriots. Between the house and the city the square lies like a garden of green. It was on a bright morning in January that Ben Galt entered one of the iron gateways of the square and walked rapidly across to the Capitol. He ascended the steep flight of stone steps, and paused for an instant in the lobby which divided the Senate Chamber from the House of Delegates. The legislature had convened some six weeks before, and the building was humming like a vast beehive. In the centre of the tesselated floor of the lobby, which was fitted out with rows of earthenware spittoons, stood Houdon's statue of Washington, and upon the railing surrounding it groups of men were leaning as they talked. Occasionally a speaker would pause to send a mouthful of tobacco juice in aimless pursuit of a spittoon, or to slice off a fresh quid from the plug he carried in his pocket. Galt, stopping behind a stout man with sandy hair, tapped him carelessly on the shoulder. "Eh, Major?" he exclaimed. The major turned, presenting a florid, hairy face, with small, shrewd eyes and an unpleasant mouth. His name was Rann, and he was the most important figure in the Senate. It was said of him that he had never made a speech in his life, but that he was continually speaking through the mouths of others. He could command more votes in both branches than any member of the Assembly, but his ambition was confined to the leadership of the men about him; he had been in the State Senate fifteen years, and he had never tried to climb higher, though it was reported that he had sent a United States senator to Washington.