In SEEING AMERICA FIRST, we have left Washington till the last just as you have cake and ice cream to wind up a dinner.
The capitol is like a great marble palace and it would be easy to get lost in those long corridors. We saw the House of Representatives with the congressmen sitting at their desks like grown-up schoolboys in a very handsome school-room. We climbed into the huge dome, and we went into the Senate Chamber. The most impressive place was the Supreme Court with the Chief Justices in their long black silk robes. We wondered how people ever dared to break any American laws.
We walked a mile on Pennsylvania Avenue to get to the White House, where the President lives and has his business offices. It certainly is a fine place and its grounds and rooms are very grand and stately.
The American flag never looked better to us than when we saw it floating at Arlington, the National Cemetery, where 16000 soldiers are buried. Our country honors its heroes here and by many fine monuments, and buildings, in the parks and squares of Washington. Some of these, like the Lincoln Memorial, are very fine.
If a person were very old and had seen all the sights in the world, he might possibly auto over 200 miles of smooth pavement in Washington, visit the Capitol, White House, Department Buildings, and Arlington without having a thrill, but it would be a dried-up old Methuselah who could go through the Library of Congress without getting excited. We heard a man say as he stood on the great stairway, "It is so wonderful that it takes all my words away!"
Best of all was our trip to Mount Vernon, the home of Washington for forty years. It is an old-fashioned white colonial house on the banks of the Potomac river. We walked through halls where Washington had walked, saw the queer old kitchen and brick oven where his meals were cooked, the dining room and banquet hall where the Washingtons entertained, and the room where "The Father of his Country" died. He is buried out in the garden he loved so well and thousands of tourists visit the spot each year.
We Berry Wagon Boys are as proud of being Americans first as we are of SEEING AMERICA FIRST! We hope that all American boys and girls feel just the same about it.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:Inconsistencies in spelling and punctuation have been standardized.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Inconsistencies in spelling and punctuation have been standardized.