Excerpt from Bell Smith Abroad Other places are under the influence of trade, or religion, or a society that apes Paris, or a society setting up to be English; but Washington is itself. As Governor C - told me one day, while looking from the terrace, upon its scattered existence, it was the first child of our independence, and has grown to its present state upon the thinnest of all diet - political patronage. Its character is political. Deprived of the right of suffrage, it is political without power, and listens in high excitement to questions it cannot influence, and lives in a continual whirl of excitement about affairs over which it can have no control. Depending for many years upon boarding-houses and hotels, for a meagre subsistence, it has learned to regard the inhabitants of such as the source of all wealth and influence. The great majority in these hotels and boardinghouses, are persons connected with the Government, and give birth to the moving, the respected power. The millionaire of New York, the Barclays of Boston, the wealthy creole from New Orleans, find themselves thrown into the shade, unnoticed, unknown, amid a crowd that follows Jones of the House, or Smith of the Senate. A society made up in this way, and influenced in this manner, must necessarily be peculiar. Nor is it disagreeable. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.