fanned by the balmy zephyrs of an eternal "Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, fume, Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gul in her bloom: In color though varied, in beauty may vie.” Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky, pre-eminently a central place, for I am told by gentlemen who have been so reckless of their own personal safety as to venture away into those awful regions, where Duluth is supposed to be, that it is so exactly in the centre of the visible universe, that the sky comes down at precisely the same distance all around it. I find by reference to this map, that Duluth is situated somewhere near the western end of Lake Superior, but as there is no dot or other mark indicating its exact location, I am unable to say whether it is actually confined to any particular spot, or whether "it is just lying around there loose." I really cannot tell whether it is one of those ethereal creations of intellectual frost work, more intangible than the rose-tinted clouds of a summer sunset; one of those airy exhalations of the spectator's brain, which I am told are ever flitting in the form of As to the commercial resources of Dutowns and cities along those lines of rail- luth, sir, they are simply illimitable and road, built with Government subsidies, inexhaustible, as is shown by this map. I luring the unwary settlers, as the mirage see it stated here that there is a vast scope of the desert lures the famished traveller of territory, embracing an area of over on, and ever on until it fades away in the darkening horizon, or whether it is a real bona fide, substantial city, all "staked off," with the lots marked with their owner's name, like that proud commercial metropolis lately discovered on the desirable shores of San Domingo. But, however that my be, I am satisfied Duluth is there, or thereabouts; for I see it stated here on this map that it is exactly thirty-nine hundred and ninety miles from Liverpool, though I have no doubt, for the sake of convenience it will be moved back ten miles, so as to make the distance an even four thousand. Then, sir, there is the climate of Duluth, unquestionably the most salubrious and delightful to be found anywhere on the Lord's earth. Now, I have always been under the impression, as I presume other gentlemen have, that in the region around Lake Superior it was cold enough for at least nine months in the year to freeze the smokestack off a locomotive. But I see it represented, on this map, that Duluth is situated exactly half way between the latitudes of Paris and Venice, so that gentlemen who have inhaled the exhilarating airs of the one or basked in the golden sunlight of the other, must see at a glance that Duluth must be a place of untold delights, a terrestrial paradise, two million square miles, rich in every element of material wealth, and commercial prosperity, all tributary to Duluth. Look at it, sir. Here are inexhaustible mines of gold, immeasurable veins of silver, impenetrable depths of boundless forest, vast coal-measures, wide, extended plains of richest pasturage, all all embraced in the vast territory, which, must, in the very nature of things, empty the untold treasures of its commerce into the lap of Duluth. Sir, I might stand here for hours and hours and expatiate with rapture on the gorgeous prospects of Duluth, as depicted upon this map. But human-life is too short, and the time of this House far too valuable to allow me to linger longer upon the delightful theme. I think every gentleman on this floor is as well satisfied as I am that Duluth is destined to become the commercial metropolis of the universe, and that this road should be built at once. I am fully persuaded that no patriotic Representative of the American people who has a proper appreciation of the associated glories of Duluth and the St. Croix, will hesitate a moment to say that every able-bodied female in the land, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, who is in favor of "women's rights," should be drafted and set to work upon this great work without delay, Nevertheless, sir, it grieves my very soul to be compelled to say that I cannot vote for the grant of lands provided for in this bill. property of the private citizen, but simply call attention to the millions it has expended in beautifying and adorning the public reservations, which it purchased and paid for to the original proprietors of Ah. sir! you can have no conception the soil, thus rendering this one of the of the poignancy of my anguish that I am most attractive cities on the continent to deprived of that blessed privilege! There the stranger, while to the resident it has are two insuperable obstacles in the way. become one of the most delightful abodes. In the first place my constituents, for If any gentleman entertains a doubt upon whom I am acting here, have no more this point let him walk through Lafayette interest in this road, than they have in Square. Let him swing around the the great question of culinary taste, now circle south of the presidential palace, or perhaps agitating the public mind of stand on the splendid esplanade in the Dominica, as to whether the illustrious front of the Agricultural Department. commissioners who recently left this Let him snuff the fragrant air that hangs capital for that free and enlightened re- over the public gardens. Let him look public, would be better fricasseed, boiled at the broad promenades, paved with imor roasted; and in the second place these mense flags of polished sandstone, the lands, which I am asked to give away, wide and commodious drives, sweeping alas, are not mine to bestow! My relation round up an easy and graceful radius to them is simply that of trustee to an ex- with the true line of beauty. Let him press trust. And shall I ever betray that tread the sinuous foot-paths laid with an trust! Never, sir! Rather perish Du- elastic concrete of white sea-sand, borluth! Perish the paragon of cities!dered with shrubbery that would have Rather let the freezing cyclone of the lent new charms to Calypso's favorite bleak North-west bury it forever beneath bower, and winding away in all the inthe eddying sands of the raging St. Croix tricate mazes of the Cretan labyrinth. ! PROCTOR KNOTT'S SPEECH ON VANIA AVENUE. In the House of Representatives, May 20, 1870. Mr. Chairman, let us beautify and adorn "the capital of the nation." It is true, as has been stated that the Government owns about one-half of the property in the city. But, sir, if the inhabitants had done one tithe in the way of improving their half that the Government has done in adorning its share, the place would stand in no further need of embellishment. For while the Government has as I shall presently show, contributed with a most lavish munificence to the relief of the necessities and to the promotion of the comforts and conveniences of the people of this city, it has been equally prodigal in ministering to their æsthetical tastes. I will say nothing of the splendid public edifices which, although erected for its own accommodation, reflect an immensely enhanced value upon the Let him do this, and he will find that the Government has taken care so far as it is concerned that no stain shall pollute the satin slipper of the favored beauty as she glides along in sylph-like loveliness; that no speck of dust shall settle upon the costly laces of her gorgeous robe as she reclines in ecstatic languor upon the downy cushions of her splendid carriage; that even the perfumed zephyr as he steals from beds of rare exotics, shall not kiss her velvet cheek too rudely, nor the dancing sunbeam taste delicious fragrance that exhales from her honeyed lips; while the toil-browned, bare-footed daughter of the honest, hard-working taxpaying farmer or mechanic, in Indiana or Kentucky in her homespun gown, innocent of crinoline or train, must "Skelpit on through dub and mire, Despising wind and rain and fire." Understand me, sir, I am finding no fault with the people of Washington about any of these things. I entertain nothing but the kindest feelings in the world toward them, and rejoice to know that they are so fortunate as to have the privilege of enjoying the fruit of the Government's munificence in improving "the nation's capital." But I do hope that after we shall have paved and lighted all their streets for them, after we shall have supplied all their houses with water, after we shall have contributed in every possible way to their comforts, convenience and tastes, they will not insist on our making an appropriation to pay salaries to the little cast-iron niggers, which I see some gentlemen have put up in front of their houses to hitch their horses to. and supply its place with one of the new fashioned patent wooden ones, over which the splendid carriages of our Government officials, with their coats of arms and liveried outriders might glide as smoothly and noiselessly as the aerial car of the fairy queen through the rose-tinted clouds of the ether. upper which he is fully competent-signing the receipt for his monthly pay-I am so overwhelmed, with pity for his miserable condition, that I wish I were in his place. When such considerations as these, sir, have come crowding upon my mind, appealing to every generous sentiment of my better nature; when I have thought how the official nerves of our poor neglected public servants are racked by "the car rattling o'er the stony street," I have felt under the sudden impulse of But, Mr. Chairman, I have heard one the moment, that we ought to tear up the reason very frequently urged for the pas-old cobble-stone pavement on the avenue, sage of this bill which candor compels me to admit, almost convinced me that we ought not only to appropriate this sum of $180,000, but any other amount that might be necessary to repave Pennsylvania avenue at the very earliest possible period of time; and that is, that it is so much used by the horde of officeholders that throng the thoroughfares of this city in numbers almost equal to the hosts which were hurled with Lucifer from the battlement of heaven. For, sir, if there is a being on earth for whose comfort and convenience I entertain the profoundest solicitude, if there is one whose smallest want stirs my sympathetic soul to its serenest depths, it is your officeholder, your public functionary. When I see one of that "noble army of martyrs" bidding adieu to his home and all the sweets of private life, for which he is so eminently fitted by nature, to immolate himself upon the altar of his country's service for four long years, Homer's touching picture of the last sad scene between the noble Hector and his weeping family rises before my sympathetic imagination. When I see him plunging recklessly into an office of the duties of which he is profoundly and defiantly ignorant, I am reminded of the selfsacrificing heroism of Curtius, when he leaped into the yawning gulf which opened in the Roman forum. When I behold him sadly contemplating his majestic features in one of those gorgeous and costly mirrors which is furnished him at the public expense, my heart goes out to him in sympathy. When I see him seated sorrowfully at a miserable repast of sea-terrapin and champagne, my very bowels yearn for him. And when I see him performing the only duty for VOL. III-W. H. But, alas, the House is estopped, Mr. Chairman, by its own action, to entertain any such considerations as these; for when my friend from Ohio [Mr. Mungen] some time ago offered a resolution, inquiring how many carriages, horses, har ness, and other trappings of nobility the Government furnished its officials at its own expense, it was promptly rejected, on the ground, as I supposed, that it was a great State secret, and that it should not even be hinted to the plebeian taxpayers in the country that our Government officials here ever rode in carriages at all, but that they should be left to indulge the innocent illusion that their selfsacrificing servants here at "the capital of the nation," bowed down by the cares of State, or the painful burdens of their own ponderous intellects, plod slowly along, with eyes bent upon the ground, while their hearts are with the loved ones far away. Sir, I would like to meet one of your constituents (Mr. PAINE in the chair) in his suit of homespun butternut-pardon me, I believe some wear butternut in your State. I say I should like to meet one of your honest-hearted patriotic old constituents, who feels an honest pride in the fancied simplicity and purity of our republican form of Government, down here at the junction of Pennsylvania avenue and Seventh street, where the onelegged veteran with his hand-organ grinds 24 out his wailing appeal to the charity of he indicates, and there is the stranger his patriotic countrymen as they pass, when some gentleman high in authority sweeps by in his splendid phaeton behind a spanking span of thoroughbreds, driven by a flunky dressed in a drab overcoat and a stove-pipe hat, with a silver buckle in front of it almost as big as a garden gate. I would like to see him open his eyes and stare at the passing pageant. I think I can see him now watching the glittering equipage. As it fades away in the dim perspective the old man turns slowly away, muttering, "sic transit gloria mundi," and the maimed soldier strikes up "That's the way the money goes; pop goes the weasel!" Yes, sir; I would like to accommodate our office-holders with a smooth and commodious pavement; but as I honestly think we cannot, the best advice I can give them is, if they cannot stand it to resign. The whole country will approve their indignant resolution. But, Mr. Chairman, in my judgment there is more in this measure than seems to be visible on the surface. I think, sir, it contains the materials for another of those never-ending repasts for the hungry flock of small retainers who hover like vultures about this capital to prey on governmental garbage, and for which there must be paid out of the public Treasury an unlimited amount of money. Lay not, I beseech you, the flattering unction to your soul, that because the amount to be expended in this project appears to be limited to $180,000. that it will stop there. I tell you there is no power short of an omniscient Providence that can foretell what the Government will eventually have to pay for the improvement of this avenue if it undertakes it at all. It is true, that assisted by the wonderful powers of science, the astronomer can sit in his closet and tell precisely at what moment, and at what particular part of the sidereal heavens, a comet will reappear, who has been absent a thousand years on his pathless pilgrimage through the wilderness of space, and true to the very letter of the prophecy his fiery train flashes upon our vision. He tells us there hangs upon the confines of our system a nameless planet, so far away in the dim regions of the outer universe that mortal eye hath never seen it. We turn the telescope upon the point world, which has swept on in silent grandeur unseen by man since creation's morning dawn. He predicts a total eclipse of the sun a hundred years in the future, and names the exact time and place upon the earth at which the sublime phenomenon will first be seen, and whether it be upon the costly icebergs of Alaska or the blood-stained soil of suffering Cuba, punctual to the second the gigantic shadow falls upon the precise spot he indicates. But, sir, to foretell what any public improvement about this city will cost, or when itwill be finished, not only defies the highest powers of mathematics, but is beyond the utmost range of human conjecture itself. Yes, sir. 66 When the stars shall fade away, the sun himself grow dim with age, and nature sink in years," then, and not till then, may you expect to see one of these Government jobs completed, and the last deficiency bill passed to pay for it. To some gentlemen this language may sound like hyperbole, but I would ask them to show me one single Government job around this city that has yet been finished. There is the Washington aqueduct to which I alluded a while ago. That work was commenced under an appropriation made eighteen years ago, and nearly every Congress since that time has made appropriations, every one of which was considered sufficient to insure its completion, until the Government has expended upon it nearly or quite three millions and a quarter of money. Yet, notwithstanding the work has, since I have known anything about it, been under the supervision of the most skilful and faithful engineers, who, I am glad to say, I believe have performed their duty honestly and well, it is to-day unfinished. But if this will not satisfy the most incredulous that I speak within the bounds of sober reason, I would ask how much has been expended and still remains to be expended in the improvement of this building and the grounds immediately around it, and when they will likely be completed. Sir, when I look out upon these Capitol grounds, and see one half of the year occupied in wheeling back upon these terraces the dirt which has washed down during the other half, I sometimes think that when Virgil wrote his description of the punishment of Sisyphus in hell he must have had a sort of prophetic eye upon the superintendent of the Capitol extension. You had as well undertake to number the seconds on the dial of eternity. There is one way, however, and only one way by which the human intellect The fact is, when I came here three can approach a realization of the magniyears ago, and saw the sccrpion scourge tude of this sum; and that is by comof Tisiphone applied without mercy to parison. Each greenback dollar bill is every one even suspected of rebel sym- about seven inches in length. Now, place pathies; when I saw the pale images of two thousand five hundred millions of Washington, Hancock, Jefferson, Hamil- them in a line, and you will find it will ton, and other dead heroes and sages be over two hundred and fifty thousand looking out upon me with their dull cold miles long! Geographers tell us it is eyes from every niche of this Capitol, twenty-five thousand miles around this while I fancied that the ghosts of mur-earth. Our public debt would therefore dered States were flitting through every make a band of greenback dollars that corridor like "the unquiet shades who haunt the Stygian shore," with the constitution prostrate and chained like the Titan to his rock, with the vulture of faction rending and tearing at its vitals, to my unsophisticated imagination the poet's picture of the infernal regions was so vividly reproduced, that I should have been certain that he meant Sisyphus to represent the superintendent if I had not known that poor Sisyphus had to roll his own stone and never got a cent for it, while the superintendent had a large gang of well paid hands to do the work, and he was drawing a fat salary for seeing them do it. *** could encircle this globe more than ten times. It is said to be two hundred and forty thousand miles from the earth to the moon. If this is so, our debt would make a rope of greenback dollars long enough to cable the moon to the earth, and leave over ten thousand miles to sag! Now, this House has repeatedly declared that this debt, principal and interest, shall be paid, and to meet the annually accruing interest upon it, the people all over the country are taxed in every conceivable way that the ingenuity of Congress can suggest. I would be obliged if some gentleman would tell me what the city of Washington would be without the seat of Government? Suppose that this spacious and magnificent structure, the Treasury building, the Patent Office, the White House, the Agricultural Department, the War Office, the Navy Department, the Smithsonian Institute, the City Hall, the public gardens, statuary, fountains, trees, shrubbery, and a thousand other things that the Government has placed here to beautify and adorn this city, without one farthing's expense to its inhabitants, should to-night be removed by some powerful genii, how do you imagine the place would look in the morning? Mr. Chairman, I have trespassed upon the courtesy of the committee I fear too long, certainly much longer than I had any idea of when I commenced, yet there are one or two thoughts further that I would like to suggest. Suppose, sir, that we do feel like exercising a liberal generosity in this matter, are we in a conditon to do so? A wise and prudent business man who contemplates the bestowal of a large charity will be sure to examine his balance-sheet before he does it. He will examine his resources. He will consider his liabilities. He will foot up his bank-book and count over his money. Now, how does our account Sir, let this city which some seem to restand? We are informed by the Secretary gard as the pride of the Republic, if not of the Treasury that our bonded debt the glory of the entire universe, be stripamounts to about $2,500,000,000. Have ped of the advantages it derives from the you, sir, any conception of the magnitude mere fact that the seat of government is of that sum? Has any gentleman here? located here; from Congress, with the I make no imputation upon your intellect countless hosts of hungry lobbyists who when I say you do not. Try if you can crowd the corridors of this Capitol; from realize it unit by unit. Can you do it? the Departments, with their endless reSir, it is not within the power of the tinue of employes, retainers, superhuman intellect ! The brain reels be- numeraries, office-seekers, and officeneath the immensity of the conception. | brokers; let all the paraphernalia of the |