White City

“ Here they took the famous “whaleback” steamer for the City. They never had passed a day like that! No one ever passed such a day as one’s first day at the Exposition, and none ever will again.
The Past emptied itself there; the Future anticipated there her glory. The Fair! the Fair! It was all the world was, is, or ever could be.
“Father,” said young Ephraim, “across whose mind did the conception of the White City first pass?”
“I do not know.”
“We must ask Judge Bonney,” said Grandfather Marlowe. ”

“ This stay in Washington I enjoyed much. Our capital city is becoming the seat of a refined hospitality which makes it more and more attractive. Time was, and that not very long since, when it was looked upon as a place of exile by diplomatists, and as repulsive by many of our citizens; but all that is of the past: the courtesy shown by its inhabitants is rapidly changing its reputation.
Perhaps, of all the social enjoyments of that time, the most attractive to me was an excursion of the American Geographical Society to Monticello, the final residence of President Jefferson. ”

“ That the most amusing thing that he saw at the Fair was the merriment of the crowds in the Street of Cairo, over the Eastern camel riders;
That the most useful thing was the Philadelphia Working Man’s house;
That the grandest thing was the White-Bordered Flag in the Court of Honor.
The greatest lesson of the Fair?
“It was this,” said Mr. Marlowe: “the agreement among the architects and artists, that each would sacrifice his own ideals and plans to the harmony of the whole. The beauty of the White City is due to that principle, and it is a lesson for all time!” ”

“ It should follow the spirit of the White City here, where all is harmony and unity, and all races are families of the same common family. Our schools, our churches, our societies, should all enter into this new education. It will be one day the greatest teaching in the world. ”

“ Washington owes nothing to Maryland or Virginia (though born of those parents) in comparison to its debt to the nation. Through the National Government it has become the elegant and beautiful city that it is. It is the nation that has graded and paved its broad and far-reaching streets and avenues; it is the nation that has fenced and beautified its numerous parks and reservations, and made them the joy of our children, and the admiration of our visitors; it is the nation that has adorned its ample public squares and circles with choice flowers, flowing fountains, and imposing statuary ”

“ They serve as lofty pedestals or platforms from which the national patriotism and intelligence may survey the past, and, in some sense, penetrate and divine the national future.
It is also fit and proper that our young and beautiful city of Washington should be the theatre of such a grand national centennial demonstration. It is the capital of the nation, and is, in some sense, the shining sun of our national system, around which our thirty-eight States, linked and inter-linked in one unbroken national interest, revolve in union. ”

“ The air of the city is astonishingly clear, and the grave white buildings of the Public Offices, the splendid white aspiration of the skyscrapers, have a sparkling quality that shows them to full advantage. There may, of course, be more beautiful cities than Washington, but certainly Washington is beautiful enough. ”

“ There is so much within the great "White City" that single pieces are lost like flowers in a landscape or like ferns on a mountain side. But its beauties inspire every soul; its refinements chasten every heart; its achievements exalt every mind, and its lessons give strength to every life.
THE END
We are always here when wanted! Vest Pocket Webster Dictionary 25,000 WORDS. ”

“ We undoubtedly use the city of Washington for our general business office, and in the event of a foreign enemy upon our coasts we should stand bound together more stoutly than we have shown ourselves since 1776. ”

“ Potter Palmer has been accustomed to receive all worthy workers in the cause of humanity and progress. One is proud to feel, in the atmosphere of such a place, that in America queens are born, and that their social thrones are won by nobility. That woman and her friends117 gave to the Exposition a soul, or made the White City voice what is spiritual. Such women put reform into stone and called it the Temple. They will one day begin a daily journalism that shall lead all that is best in the mind and heart of mankind.
RESIDENCE OF MR. PULLMAN.
Go to Pullman, some ten miles away. ”

“ Lincoln and his wife very indulgent toward their youngest son, who thenceforth imperiously ruled at the White House.
Washington City profited by its encircling garrison of one hundred and fifty thousand men, and its population of civilians increased wonderfully. Previously the crowds of people who had flooded Washington at inauguration ceremonies, or during the sessions of Congress, had been of the quick-come, quick-go character almost exclusively. ”

“ In no city that I have yet seen have I felt so much pleasure, or such varied emotions, as during my walk into Prague.
Then we pass under the equally picturesque bridge tower of the Altstadt, and enter narrow streets lined with good shops, and full of bustle; and after many puzzling ins and outs, we emerge into the spacious area of the Ring—a lively scene, people crossing in all directions, or sauntering under the arcades; here and there sentries pacing up and down, and small parties of soldiers, in gay uniforms, marching away to beat of drum. ”

“ We should lose all faith in the instinctive prescience of the human spirit when great events are at hand, if we might not believe that a presentiment of something in the shadowy distance, connecting his future with the strange mystery of the city, did not cross, for a moment, the mind of Swedenborg, when he entered the once holy and revered metropolis of the faith. ”

“ It was a rude shock to Kenneth when he began to see these things through an entirely different pair of eyes than those with which he had viewed them before he left Central City for the North. The sordidness, the blatant vulgarity, the viciousness of it all—especially the houses on Butler and Harris Streets—appalled and sickened him. Even more was he disgusted by the complacent acceptance of the whole miserable business by white and black alike. ”

“ More than once he fell over some obstacle in his path, to rise with bruised limbs and resume his terror-hounded course. He lost his slippers in a ditch, and his turban in a thicket, into which he had strayed in the darkness. Whether he entered the city by a gate or scaled the walls he knew not, but panting, scratched, and with disordered garments, the worthy secretary did at last reach the palace, and struggle in by the astonished servants. ”

“ The imitation of Peter becomes a falling away from Christ. But a century before this time, who can doubt that all Christendom would have rushed to the rescue of the Pope if he had been seized in his own city and maltreated as Boniface had been, and that every gentleman in Europe would have drawn sword in behalf of the noble Templars?
But papacy, feudalism, and knighthood, as they had risen and flourished together, were enveloped in the same fall. The society of the Dark Ages had been perfect in its symmetry and compactness. Kings were but feudal leaders and chiefs in their own domains. ”

“ New York City is the most fatally fascinating thing in America. She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face and hiding her crooked hands and feet under the folds of her wide garments—constantly enticing thousands from far within, and tempting those who come from across the seas to go no farther. And all these become the victims of her caprice. Some she at once crushes beneath her cruel feet; others she condemns to a fate like that of galley slaves; a few she favors and fondles, riding them high on the bubbles of fortune; ”

“ Stroll to the river-side; what prodigious piles of firewood at one side of the quay, and what a busy fleet of barges moored on the other. The Main here is about as wide as the Thames at Richmond, and is spanned by a bridge quite in keeping with the city. At either end stands an arched gateway, with statues niched in the massive masonry, and saints above the rounded piers. ”

“ From a buttress which projects clear of the trees, that cover all the hill-side with a broad mass of foliage, you have a wide prospect. Greater part of the city from the Jews' quarter to the Wissehrad lies beneath the eye as a panorama. The Moldau—breaking from between low hills, with here and there a Kahn floating, or a long, narrow raft drifting to the gap in the dam—flows past in a grand curve between towers and palaces, wretched 125 hovels and stately churches, and onwards round the hills below to join the Elbe. ”

“ The islands are open as a map, and you see the puffs of smoke from the rifles on the Schützen Insel. It is a striking but disappointing view, for notwithstanding the ancient gables and various towers that shoot aloft, the city has somewhat the aspect of a collection of factories, so monotonous are the long lines of white, many-windowed wall, bearing their long slopes of bright red roof. Street after street stretching away, all of the same character, and scattering on the outskirts into a tame country, cruelly disappoint your expectations of the picturesque. ”

“ As I emerged again into the sunshine, one of the soldiers said, "Do you know what? When any one goes away into the city without stopping at the guard-house, he must always come back to the gate where he entered, and give up his passport."
I thanked him for his information, and took my way once more down the street. It was just six o'clock: all the shops were open; working people thronged the footways; heavy teams toiled slowly up the hill towards the gate; the milk-folk hurried down with noisy clatter, while men wearing glazed hats and a canvas uniform swept the streets. ”

“ So he partitioned each room into three, filched odd fragments therefrom, which were kitchen and bathroom, and gave each its own front door. And the rent of the house was the rent of each flat thereof.
Leslie took four wide strides which brought her up flush with the yellow wall.
"George," she said vehemently, "if anyone could look down—down, this city must seem like a black fly-paper, all buzzing with wretched little limed folks!"
He laughed as her voice broke in a croak.
"You've the grandfather of all the colds. Better not talk, old dear. You've got to be fit for Christmas." ”

“ In Paris they had got possession of a tract of ground equal to one-third of the whole city, and had covered it with towers and battlements, and within the unapproachable fortress lived a life of the most luxurious self-indulgence. ”

“ Then followed a recital of the work to be done by the local Klan. The Kligrapp consulted a sheet of paper in his hand.
“The eye that never sleeps has been seeking out those in our city who have acted in a manner displeasing to the Invisible Empire. There is in Central City a nigger wench named Nancy Ware who has been saying evil things against our brother, George Parker. In the name of our sacred order, and in the furtherance of our supreme duty of preservation of white supremacy, she is being watched and will be treated so as to end her dangerous utterances.” ”

“ They said that only bad Negroes were ever lynched and they alone caused all the trouble. But you just think back over the list of coloured people right here in Central City who’ve had the most trouble during the past two years. What do you find? That it is the Negro who has acquired more property than the average white man, they are always picking on. Poor whites resent seeing a Negro more prosperous than they, and they satisfy their resentment by making it hard on that Negro. ”

“ Bennett,” interjected Bob. “He can afford to talk big—he’s got the practice of this town sewed up. And, most of all, he’s a white man. Suppose some of these poor whites get it into [27] their heads to make trouble because you’re getting too prosperous—what then? Dr. Bennett and all the rest of the good white folks around here can’t help you!”
“Oh, yes, they can,” Kenneth observed with the same confident smile. “Judge Stevenson and Roy Ewing and Mr. Baird at the Bank of Central City and a lot others run this town and they aren’t going to let any decent coloured man be bothered. ”

“ What astonished me most was, that most of the gentlemen, very unlike those of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia, did not leave table in order immediately to attend to business; but merely to walk or stand on the piazza, smoke, read the papers, or talk politics.
Washington, as I observed before, is the only city of idlers in the whole Union; and, for a man that is not a manufacturer or a merchant, quite an agreeable residence. ”

“ It is the nation’s Forest Lawn, where is sunk its priceless heritage, killed by countless generations of getters and gimme-ers.
Washington is a reflection of Los Angeles—a Los Angeles without palm trees. Where it doesn’t look like a cemetery it resembles a movie set. It has a feel of unreality. This is a designed city, the only important one in America, and its streets are so straight, its architecture is so conforming, and its sidewalks are so neat and clean, it might have been set up in papier-mâché only today. ”

“ In ten years the number of inhabitants had increased fifty thousand. With the continuance of peace, and the spirit of improvement and progress remaining unchecked, it may reasonably be predicted and confidently anticipated, that the close of the Nineteenth Century will find the Capital City of this great Republic approaching in splendor and importance the realization of the proudest hope and dream of magnificence ever cherished in the hearts of its worthy founders, and in itself a monument worthy of the immortal name of Washington. ”