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Soldiers' Home. This is an asylum and hospital for disabled and superannuated soldiers of the American regular army, containing usually about six hundred of them, and founded by General Winfield Scott, whose statue adorns the grounds. Its cottages have been favorite retiring-places of the Presidents in the warm weather. Amid lovely surroundings the veterans are comfortably housed, and in the adjacent cemetery thousands of them have been buried. Scott's statue stands upon the southern brow of the plateau, where a ridge is thrust out in a commanding situation; and from here the old commander of the army forty and fifty years ago gazes intently over the lower ground to the city three miles away, with the lofty Capitol dome and Washington Monument rising to his level, while beyond them the broad and placid Potomac winds between its wooded shores. This is the most elevated spot near Washington, overlooking a wide landscape. In the cemetery at the Soldiers' Home sleeps General Logan, among the thousands of other veterans. To the westward the beautiful gorge of Rock Creek is cut down, and beyond is Georgetown, with its noted University, founded by the Jesuits in 1789, and having about seven hundred students. In the Oak Hill Cemetery, at Georgetown, is the grave of John Howard Payne, the author of
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Home, Sweet Home,
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Sequoia Tree Tower,
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City of Magnificent Distances.
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Bask in our radiance! Be lulled by our breeze! A city like Athens set down in Arcadia; White temples and porticoes gleaming 'mid groves; Where nymphs glide and smile as though quite unafraid o' you, The home of the Muses, the Graces, the Loves; The centre of Politics, Letters and Sciences; Elysium of Arts, yet the Lobbyist's Dream; Where gather the clans whose only reliance is Gold and the dross that sweeps down with its stream; An isle of the lotus, where every-day business Sails on its course all unvexed by simoons; No bustle or roar, no mad-whirling dizziness O'er velvety streets like Venetian lagoons; A town where from nothing whatever they bar women, From riding a bicycle--tending a bar; Ex-cooks queen society--ladies are charwomen-- For such the plain facts as too often they are. A city where applicants, moody, disconsolate, Swoop eager for office and senseless to shame; The