Standing
anyhow and all wrong, upon this open space, like something meteoric
that has fallen down from the moon, is an odd, lop-sided, one-eyed
kind of wooden building, that looks like a church, with a flag-
staff as long as itself sticking out of a steeple something larger
than a tea-chest. Under the window is a small stand of coaches,
whose slave-drivers are sunning themselves on the steps of our
door, and talking idly together. The three most obtrusive houses
near at hand are the three meanest. On one - a shop, which never
has anything in the window, and never has the door open - is
painted in large characters, 'THE CITY LUNCH.' At another, which
looks like a backway to somewhere else, but is an independent
building in itself, oysters are procurable in every style. At the
third, which is a very, very little tailor's shop, pants are fixed
to order; or in other words, pantaloons are made to measure. And
that is our street in Washington.
It is sometimes called the City of Magnificent Distances, but it
might with greater propriety be termed the City of Magnificent
Intentions; for it is only on taking a bird's-eye view of it from
the top of the Capitol, that one can at all comprehend the vast
designs of its projector, an aspiring Frenchman.
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