WELL," says I to Cousin D., "what room do you call this?"

"Oh, this is the old House," says he.

The old house! Sisters, there are times when I think Dempster is beside himself. I did not deign to answer him, except with a look that would have stopped the sap running from a young maple in the brightest April day you ever saw. He didn't seem to mind it, though, but went on as if I hadn't pierced him with my eyes.

"These doors," says he, swinging back the half of a door that seemed to be made of brass and gold and powdered green-stone pounded together, and cut into the most lovely pictures that you ever set eyes on—"these doors open to the new House. They are by Rogers, and cost thirty thousand dollars."

"Thirty thousand dollars for these two doors, Cousin Dempster! I have just been a-wondering if you were crazy, and now I know you are."

"Upon my word," says he, "that is just what they cost."

"What! thirty thousand dollars?"

"Thirty thousand dollars."

I bent forward, and looked at the door—close. It was sunk deep into squares, and each square had a picture of men and women that seemed to be busy at something.

"What is it all about?" says I.

"Every picture is taken from something connected with the history of our country," says he.

"You don't say so," says I. "Who did you say made them all?"

"Mr. Rogers, a sculptor from Ohio. One of the great geniuses of the age, and one of the finest fellows that ever breathed."

"Do you know him?" says I.

"Yes," says he. "I got acquainted with him in Florence, years ago, when Elizabeth and I went to Europe on our wedding trip. He was then a rising man, hard at work on the art that he has since done much to ennoble. I am glad to see his great genius embodied here, where it will live as long as the marble on the walls. The country has honored itself in this almost as much as it has disgraced itself in placing some of the vilest attempts that ever parodied art in conspicuous places here."

Cousin Dempster's face turned red as he spoke—red with shame, I could see.

"It is enough to make an American, who understands what real art is, ashamed of his country," says he.

"But what do they do it for?" says I.

"Because two-thirds of the members sent here do not know a picture from a handsaw! but impudence can persuade, and ignorance can vote. Why, I once heard a Member of Congress speak of the statues in the Vatican as coarse and clumsy compared with the attempts of a female woman who could not, out of her own talent, have moulded an apple-dumpling into roundness."

Cousin Dempster had got into dead earnest now. He knew what he was talking about, and I couldn't help feeling for him.

"Some day, Cousin Phoemie," says he, "I will take you round and show you the abominations which have been set up in this building—a disgrace both to the taste and integrity of the nation. You will understand the impudent pretension for which our people have been taxed in order that the National Capitol may be made a laughing-stock for foreigners, and those Americans who are compelled to blush for what they cannot help."

"Cousin Dempster," says I, "why don't the press take these things up and expose them?"

"That is exactly what I want," says he. "It is for that very purpose I want you to go around among these distorted marbles and things. Your Reports may do some good."

"But I don't quite understand them myself," says I, blushing a little.

"Trust genius to discover genius," says he. "You could not fail to see faults or merits where they existed. All the arts are kindred. Poetry, painting, sculpture, go hand-in-hand. You understood the beauty that lies in these doors at a glance."

"One must be blind not to see that," says I.

"Of course; well, cousin, we will give a day to these things before we go home; but now, hurry forward, or we shall be too late to see the House open."

"Just as if there was a house in all Washington that wouldn't open for us if we chose to knock or ring," I thought to myself, but said nothing, for Dempster was walking off like a steam-engine, and I followed down one long hall, and up another—all paved with bright-colored stones—till it seemed as if I were walking over a rock carpet.