First View of the Capitol

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 96, 24 April 1941, Page 5

First View of the Capitol

ROM Toronto I struck south to Washington, and I arrived there about nine o’clock on a crisp, clear, sunny, but very cold November morning. It was early winter; the trees-those lovely trees for which Washington is famous-were bare. Every leaf had vanished. As I walked outside the railway station, the first thing I saw was the great group of marble statuary. the Columbus ocroun formine an

island, -tound which the traffic moved. And straight ahead of me, at the end of a wide avenue rose the great dome of the Capitol, the American House of Parliament. I was so entranced by the scene, on this bright winter morning, that I left my luggage at the station, and for an hour I walked around the Capitol. That morning impression is still as fresh as it was

twenty years ago; it has survived my arrival in so many other great cities. Perhaps, because it was the first great city I had seen, the first great capital I had visited. But I think it was rather that the Americans had wisely planned this entrance into their capitol with a view to making just such an impression. I know, that during my years of wandering, when I have had no fixed plan, I have found myself at a station, looking out at its dingy environment, and decided that here was a place I didn’t want to stop, and so have gone on.-(" Shoes and Ships and Sealing-Wax," by Nelle Scanlan, 2YA, March 28.)