house in full view, the gray, swelling dome still patiently brooding over the stupidities and trivialities which the bickering human beings, running about like insects below, were proudly and solemnly achieving. The little flags were at their staffs on either wing. Once, at the sight he might have hurried, knowing his presence to be required beneath that flag on the house wing. No need now to hasten any more; he was not needed there, nor anywhere in the world.
The sidewalk was filled with men striding like the statesmen they felt themselves to be, and none among them now to remember him; but he walked with them under the railroad's ugly trestle, past the old white house on the little hill, still with its lightning-rod to keep alive one of the best of Lincoln stories, and up the broad walk to the state house. Inside, the cool shades of the big pile were grateful as they used to be. Through the open doors of offices he could see clerks at work, or at least at desks, somehow coming off victorious, it seemed, in their desperate business of holding on to their slippery, eel-like, political jobs; then the crowded elevator—and the inevitable old soldier to operate it. All as it
