If there is much in first impressions, I was not likely to be enchanted
with Washington.
The snow, just then beginning to melt, lay inches deep on the
half-frozen soil; everything looked unnaturally and unutterably dreary
in the bleak leaden dawn-light; and, as I drove down Pennsylvania avenue
(after rejection at the lodgings to which I had been recommended), the
first object that caught my eye was a huge placard:
EMBALMING OF THE DEAD.
These ghastly advertisements are not unfrequent in that part of the
city, and I was informed that the advertisers occasionally do a very
brisk business.
After waiting for two hours in the hall of the Metropolitan, like a
client in some patrician antechamber, they _did_ accord me a tolerable
room on the sublimest story.
I called that same afternoon on Lord Lyons, to whom I brought an
introductory letter. I have to thank the British Legation for much
courteous kindness, and for two very pleasant evenings, on the first of
which I was the guest of the chief, on the second, of his secretaries.
Here will (if I ever leave it behind me) begin and end my agreeable
reminiscences of Washington. I disliked it cordially at first sight; I
was thoroughly bored before I had got through my stay of seventy hours;
I utterly abominate and execrate the city
From turret to foundation-stone,
at this moment, as I catch a narrow glimpse of its outskirts through the
rusty window-bars of the Old Capitol.
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