134 MY LIFE [Chap. 



at all interest me. There was no ceremony whatever, but, of 

 course, I had nothing special to say to him, and he had 

 nothing special to say to me, the result being that we were 

 both rather bored, and glad to get it over as soon as we 

 could. I then went to see the White House, some of the 

 reception rooms being very fine ; but there was a great 

 absence of works of art, the only painting I saw being 

 portraits of Washington and his wife. 



Washington itself is a very fine and even picturesque 

 city, owing to its designer having departed from the rigid 

 rectangularity of most American cities by the addition of a 

 number of broad diagonal avenues crossing the rectangles at 

 different angles, and varying from one to four miles long. 

 The broadest of these are one hundred and sixty feet wide, 

 planted with two double avenues of trees, and with wide 

 grassy spaces between the houses and the pavements. 

 Wherever these diagonal avenues intersect the principal 

 streets, there are quadrangular open spaces forming gardens 

 or small parks, planted with shrubs and trees, and with 

 numerous seats. Conspicuous in these parks are the many 

 specimens of the fine Paulowina imperialis, one of the hand- 

 somest flowering trees of the temperate zone, but which rarely 

 flowers with us for want of sun-heat. It has very large 

 cordate leaves and erect panicles of purple flowers, in shape 

 like those of a foxglove. It was a great regret to me that I 

 had to leave before the flowering season of these splendid 

 trees. 



It is, however, a great pity that when the city was 

 founded it was not perceived that the whole of the land 

 should be kept by the Government, not only to obtain the 

 very large revenue that would be sure to accrue from it, but, 

 what is much more important, to prevent the growth of slums 

 and of crowded insanitary dwellings as the result of land and 

 building speculation. As it is now, some of the suburbs are 

 miserable in the extreme. Any kind of huts and hovels are 

 put up on undrained and almost poisonous ground, while in 

 some of these remoter streets I saw rows of little villas 

 closely packed together, but each house only fifteen feet wide. 



