mb
in front of it, under a tree."

By half-past seven, Cynthia and Ephraim with his green umbrella were
in the street, but it would be useless to burden these pages with a
description of all the sights they saw, and with the things that Ephraim
said about them, and incidentally about the war. After New York, much of
Washington would then have seemed small and ragged to any one who lacked
ideals and a national sense, but Washington was to Cynthia as Athens
to a Greek. To her the marble Capitol shining on its hill was a sacred
temple, and the great shaft that struck upward through the sunlight,
though yet unfinished, a fitting memorial to him who had led the
barefoot soldiers of the colonies through ridicule to victory. They
looked up many institutions and monument, they even had time to go to
the Navy Yard, and they saved the contemplation of the White House till
the last. The White House, which Cynthia thought the finest and most
graceful mansion in all the world, in its simplicity and dignity, a
fitting dwelling for the chosen of the nation. Under the little tree
which Jethro had mentioned, Ephraim stood bareheaded before the walls
which had sheltered Lincoln, which were now the home of the greatest
of his captains, Grant: and wondrous emotions played upon the girl's
spirit, too, as she gazed. They forgot the present in the past and the
future, and they did not see the two gentlemen who had left the portico
some minutes before and were now coming toward them along the sidewalk.

The two gentlemen, however, slowed their steps involuntarily at a
sight which was uncommon, even in Washington. The girl's arm was in the
soldier's, and her face, which even in repose had a true nobility, now
was alight with an inspiration that is seen but seldom in a lifetime. In
marble, could it have been wrought by a great sculptor, men would have
dreamed before it of high things.

The two, indeed, might have stood for a group, the girl as the spirit,
the man as the body which had risked and suffered all for it, and still
held it fast. For the honest face of the soldier reflected that spirit
as truly as a mirror.

Ephraim was aroused from his thoughts by Cynthia nudging his arm. He
started, put on his hat, and stared very hard at a man smoking a cigar
who was standing before him. Then he stiffened and raised his hand in
an involuntary salute. The man smiled. He was not very tall, he had a
closely trimmed light beard that was growing a li