, who smiled
faintly at our pleasantries, always with a certain reserve of suspicion,
and a gleam of the shrewdness that all men get who live in the
atmosphere of horses. He drove us round by the Capitol grounds, white
with tents, which were disgraced in my eyes by unsoldierly scrawls in
huge letters, thus: THE SEVEN BLOOMSBURY BROTHERS, DEVIL'S HOLE, and
similar inscriptions. Then to the Beacon Street of Harrisburg, which
looks upon the Susquehanna instead of the Common, and shows a long front
of handsome houses with fair gardens. The river is pretty nearly a mile
across here, but very shallow now. The codling told us that a Rebel spy
had been caught trying its fords a little while ago, and was now at Camp
Curtin with a heavy ball chained to his leg,--a popular story, but a
lie, Dr. Wilson said. A little farther along we came to the barkless
stump of the tree to which Mr. Harris, the Cecrops of the city named
after him, was tied by the Indians for some unpleasant operation of
scalping or roasting, when he was rescued by friendly savages, who
paddled across the stream to save him. Our youngling pointed out a very
respectable-looking stone house as having been "built by the Indians"
about those times. Guides have queer notions occasionally.

I was at Niagara just when Dr. Rae arrived there with his companions and
dogs and things from his Arctic search after the lost navigator.

"Who are those?" I said to my conductor.

"Them?" he answered. "Them's the men that's been out West, out to
Michig'n, aft' Sir Ben Franklin."

Of the other sights of Harrisburg the Brant House or Hotel, or whatever
it is called, seems most worth notice. Its facade is imposing, with a
row of stately columns, high above which a broad sign impends, like a
crag over the brow of a lofty precipice. The lower floor only appeared
to be open to the public. Its tessellated pavement and ample courts
suggested the idea of a temple where great multitudes might kneel
uncrowded at their devotions; but from appearances about the place where
the altar should be, I judged, that, if one asked the officiating priest
for the cup which cheers and likewise inebriates, his prayer would not
be unanswered. The edifice recalled to me a similar phenomenon I had
once looked upon,--the famous Caffe Pedrocchi at Padua. It was the same
thing in Italy and America: a rich man builds himself a mausoleum,
and calls it a place of entertainment. The fragrance of innumerable
libati