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Image provided by: Oklahoma Historical Society
Newspaper Page Text
l'HE INDIAN ADVOCATE 72 are forever engraved in a man's soul after a visit to the Im perial City? How could we find in a new land the historical artistic and religious associations connected with the existence of the Mistress of the World? How, on the other hand, could we anticipate in the capital of an essentially commercial country the intellectual delights and impressive beauties of that radiant masterpiece of man's genius, the Mother city of France? This is a material age and no amount of intellectual enjoyments seems to be nowadays sufficient renumeration for man's activity. The artistic and soul-elevating traits requi red in a great center of national life are being sacrificed to the exigencies of disproportioned, distorted and monster like em poriums of commerce and industry. The refined ideals and tastes of Athens are replaced by the active but vulgar enter prises of Carthage. The old concepts of chivalrous deeds and the worship of honor and ideal beauty are considered as re trogressive feeling and puerile sentimentality. Our haro is no more Iphigenia of Euripides or Beatrix of Dante, but the successful broker of Wall Street and the Napoleon of finance. Such were my thoughts when I left the wilderness of young Oklahoma for the dignified capital of America; and such are still my thoughts after 1 have reached destination. The pre visions happened to be true and what I have ssen of the city corroborates my former impressions. True, Washington is an agreeable surprise to any native American who has not crossed the Atlantic Ocean. The line plan on which the city has been laid out, the neat and bright aspect of the boulevards the charm and comparative quiet of the central parks which seem to be ever impressed in their recollection by the pre sence of the majestic Capitol, all these traits are calculated to strike with awe the boisterous Oklahoman whose inspiring n" sceneries are the sun-burnt prairie and the wild forest and whose palaces are the inevitable back-wood post-office and the cheap cash mammoth stole. Washington is not the town of thugs, hobos and boot-leggers, and we find in its stores some thing else than plug cut tobacco or Duke's mixture. There is no danger of breaking your neck on its side-walks or being killed by tile drugs of street-corner-quack-medicine-sillers