232 



AMERICAN JOURNEY. 



[Chap. V. 



The Model Republic — Sovereign people ! Bah ! Really Old 

 England, with all its aristocracy, and even its Chinese war and 

 opium trade, looks highly respectable in comparison." 



On arriving -at Washington he was struck by Dr. Henry's 

 manner. " At last he burst out about Harper's Ferry. He 

 said that we were treading on a volcano, which might explode 

 any day. What we read in the Northern papers, and it was no 

 little, gave no idea of the real state of panic in the South. He 

 himself could not offer me hospitality, as their rooms were 

 filled with a Virginian family who were leaving their home. 

 He looked on many things as more unlikely than the breaking 

 up of the Union within a year, the burden of the song being, 

 that it would bring the Smithsonian into trouble, unless I would 

 hold my tongue. I made him easy on that score : saying that 

 I had not come to Washington city ; only to the Smithsonian 

 Institution, and simply on shell business ; therefore, as he had 

 brought me, I would attend to his wishes." 



It was arranged that Philip should have a bed made up in 

 the Institution ; and he was soon at work in the midst of dirty 

 boxes, unpacking and cataloguing. He had reckoned on 

 assistance ; " but decent boys cannot be had in this vile city, 

 and Dr. H. is afraid of getting another into the building. . . . 

 There is a little orphan of ten, as lively and quick and clever 

 as can be. Miss M. (the janitor's daughter) nominally teaches 

 him at odd times, but the times are so odd, that no one has 

 found them; so that he can barely read, and cannot write or do 

 figures at all : so I have got their consent to spare him a little 

 time in the evenings to come to me for instruction. Not alto- 

 gether a disinterested act ; for I felt so terribly lonely, tongue- 

 tied in this slave city, not even the colonel to let out to, and 

 not the comforts about the place that I had at Albany, that 

 looking forward to three months of it, I was beginning to be 

 rather down in the mouth, or rather in the heart. All goes on 

 pretty well when I am at work ; but in the evenings, to sit 

 down in the cheerless office with strange people continually 

 coming in and out to take the observations, with a stove that 

 roasts, and long dreary passages to move about in, made me 



