Children of the Market Place

Excerpt: ...flesh for itself and the surrounding country. Lottery tickets were openly sold. Negroes thronged the streets. They were the domestic servants, the laborers, the hackmen. A raggedness, a poverty, a shiftlessness, characterized external Washington. Washington was not Chicago. We found that Douglas had settled himself handsomely with his young and charming wife. He entertained a great deal, and was entertained in turn. We dined back and forth with each other. And because of Mrs. Douglas' friendship Dorothy found her social pleasures assured and advanced. Washington like other cities in America was struggling out of the earth. The whole country was in a similar throe. Everywhere were great dreams partly realized. One could not help but imagine what the nation would become, just as one could not look at the unfinished Capitol at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue without completing its lines in imagination. We had come to New York City by boat, as I had gone to Chicago by boat in 1833; but in New York we had taken a train to Philadelphia, claimed our baggage at the station, transferred to another station, and taken another train through Baltimore to Washington. The cities of the East were now in telegraphic communication with each other: Washington with Baltimore and New York; Philadelphia and Newark were joined. Polk's election had been flashed by the telegraph. And news now came to Washington on every subject: markets, fires, catastrophes, elections. The public press was very active. The country was in a ferment. The great West agitated the more sensitive, the listening East. From beyond the Atlantic news of thrilling import poured upon us. In truth the whole world was trembling at the threshold of a new era. Douglas was keenly conscious of these world changes. They occupied my own thoughts. In France Louis Philippe had been dethroned, a republic had been established with Louis Napoleon as President. The ideas of the revolution had worked a democratic...