and a generous lounging place at the end of the
car, where after-dinner chats could be indulged in and mornings happily
passed while watching the landscape as it seemed to fly past us and
vanish in the ever-changing distance. But let us return to the events
of our first day's trip. The marshes of the Hackensack valley were soon
crossed, and at our first stop, at Newark, we rejoiced to find the Rev.
Dr. Frank Landon Humphreys and his sweet wife, who were to make us glad
with their company as far as Washington; and certainly this was done.
There were quips and jokes without number from the ever versatile
Doctor; and roars of good-natured fun, which he provoked, made us
oblivious of the naked landscape, as yet with little more than a hint
here and there of the coming springtime.

We had summer along with us, however, if good nature and pleasant chat
can symbolize the warmth and comfort of that happy season. The ladies'
bonnets and wraps, discovered by the Reverend Doctor in one of the
staterooms, made impromptu material for much rapid-change dramatic
performances, exquisitely absurd, and altogether entertaining. On we
sped, with our jolly company, through New Jersey, rich and populous; on
to Philadelphia, our great city neighbor, which, however, seems to most
of us as far distant and unknown as Mars or the moon. Yet what a happy
home place it is to those who dwell therein, and know the many
advantages of its vast area, and consequent freedom from tenement
drawbacks and other evils which we know too well. On we went through
old Wilmington on the Delaware, with its red brick sidewalks and black
lounging denizens; on through Baltimore, famous for good living and
beautiful women; until in the afternoon we reached Washington and
looked with admiration at the stately Capitol in the distance, with its
splendid and graceful dome, and gazed with a sort of awe at the far-off
Washington monument, that huge white obelisk, so gigantic, so spectral,
so magnificent, but which is yet so chimney-like in its immensity as to
be almost forbidding, if not revolting, to the aesthetic sense. I
presume, though, that a nearer approach to the vast structure would
overawe us with its colossal appearance. I have been told that the
effect of that unbroken shaft near by, eighty feet wide at its base,
and mounting skyward without a break, in perfect plainness, for five
hundred and fifty-five feet, is almost supernatural and overwhelming.
The very sight