American Towns and People (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920. Excerpt: ... Washington, the Cosmopolitan NY one trying to catch and write down cities is forever being delighted and surprised at the way in which the look of buildings, streets, and gardens betrays the character of places and their inhabitants. If some lonely stranger were to visit the capital of these United States and leave it, having talked with no one, he would, for all that, carry away shining memories of almost all that was needed for the understanding of Washington. He would first of all remember that upon a hill at one end of the town the Capitol, the most beautiful building in America, lies like a fair white cloud. At the other end of a great avenue, he would have gone by the President's House sitting upon a green lawn. From a small, smooth knoll among leafy groves near the broad river he would have seen a gleaming white shaft incredibly pierce the blue of a soft, Southern sky. And he would know that the business of governing the country is the only one going on in Wash quality of towns and mgtdiij,5in tft$Y.pplitics is, always has been, and always will be the town's one great preoccupation. As Petrograd rose as if by magic from the marshes of the Neva, so did Washington, something over a century ago, from the lovely wooded hills along the Potomac. The capital grew more slowly. The stories are well known of Mrs. Adams's domestic difficulties at the White House. Outside the President's Palace, things were worse in a city which a visiting Frenchman wittily described as consisting of streets without houses and houses without streets. The early memoirs are largely concerned with carriages, freighted with elegant females, stuck in the main avenues in mud which rose to the very hubs of their wheels. Things are better now. Washington has grown to be populous and w...