For the original plan of a statue, an obelisk of granite and marble was substituted, which by its simplicity of lines, its towering height, and its purity of color, should symbolize the exceptional character and services of the foremost American. The building fund held out pretty well till a politico-religious quarrel arose over the acceptance, for incorporation in the monument, of a fine block of African marble sent by the Pope; and on Washington’s birthday, 1855, a Know-Nothing mob descended upon the headquarters of the Society, seized its books and papers, and took forcible possession of the monument. The Know-Nothing party ended its political existence three years later, and the monument went back to its former custodians; but the riotous demonstration had checked the orderly progress of the work, and, as the Civil War was imminent, the shaft, then one hundred seventy-eight feet high, was roofed over to await the return of normal conditions. It was not till 1876 that, under the patriotic impetus of the centenary, Congress was induced to coöperate. The work was vigorously pushed from 1880 to 1884; and in the spring of 1885, when it had attained a height of five hundred fifty-five feet and five and five-tenths inches, occurred the formal dedication of the Washington National Monument as we see it to-day. For the benefit of any one whose pleasure in a masterpiece is measured with a plummet, it may be noted that the Monument falls less than fifty feet short of the Tower of Babel; to him who revels in terms of distance, the glistening pile will appeal on the ground that it is visible from a crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains, more than forty miles away as the bee flies. But most of its neighbors in Washington find it for other reasons an unceasing joy. To us it is more truly at the heart of things than even the Capitol. It is the hoary sentinel at our water-gate; or, spread the city out like a fan, and the Monument is the pivot which holds the frame together.