dim account of the
underground department of Congress. In fact, it was so dim down there,
that I couldn't see anything clearly. I hope this report will have a
little more brightness in it; but of that I am not at all certain, for a
downright honest look at anything here in Washington is like snatching
at a handful of fog.

After wandering over all that town of cellars and basements, in search
of the whitewashing department and the washing-room, I came away without
seeing a sign of them. It seems to me that the cooking and eating is all
that one finds done openly here. About that, too, there is something
that riles the New England blood in my veins. No wonder I couldn't make
out half that those waiter chaps said to me.

There, in the great kitchen of the first nation on the face of the
earth, free-born American citizens sit down contentedly and eat French
dishes, with bull-frogs in them, I dare say, and eat them, too, on the
European plan. The European plan! as if the fine old fashion set by the
Pilgrim Fathers was not good enough for their descendants! It's enough
to curdle the blood in one's veins to see what our country is coming to,
with a plan of broken-down old Europe in the very basement of our
Capitol. Do our members of Congress remember the time when their fathers
ate samp and milk on a table set against the wall, with one leaf spread?
Sometimes the richest of them in our State got a little maple molasses
with the samp, but oftener it was skim milk, and nothing else. But men
were men in those days; I--that is, I have heard my mother say so--of
course, I wasn't old enough to know exactly at what time samp and milk
got out of fashion as a first-class domestic meal. I can't help but
think, sisters, that the male sex began to degenerate while we were
children, or we should never have been left in our native village to
form a society, which seems destined to enlighten this generation,
without increasing it.

Well, sisters, Cousin Dempster found me sitting on those hard, beautiful
marble steps, thinking over these things in a saddening way. He insisted
on it that I should leave off my subterraneous investigations, as he
called my travels in the basement, and see Congress meet.

I declare, it's a Sabbath day's journey from one end of that great long
marble building to the other. The marble stairs I had been resting on
came up near the Senate chamber. Cousin Dempster said, "But perhaps we
had better go over to the