the old major who used to take me to the Capitol when the Senate and the House of Representatives were in session had been in the commissary of the Confederate Army and had very beautiful manners so the attendants bowed to the old major except for the pages who were little boys not much older than your brother was a page in the Senate once and occasionally a Representative or a Senator would look at him with slit eyes may be somebody and bow or shake hearty or raise a hand
the old major dressed very well in a morningcoat and had muttonchop whiskers and we would walk very slowly through the flat sunlight in the Botanical Gardens and look at the little labels on the trees and shrubs and see the fat robins and the starlings hop across the grass and walk up the steps and through the flat air of the rotunda with the dead statues of different sizes and the Senate Chamber flat red and the committee room and the House flat green and the committee rooms and the Supreme Court I’ve forgotten what color the Supreme Court was and the committee rooms
and whispering behind the door of the visitors’ gallery and the dead air and a voice rattling under the glass skylights and desks slammed and the long corridors full of the dead air and our legs would get very tired and I thought of the starlings on the grass and the long streets full of dead air and my legs were tired and I had a pain between the eyes and the old men bowing with quick slit eyes
may be somebody and big slit unkind mouths and the dusty black felt and the smell of coatclosets and dead air and I wonder what the old major thought about and what I thought about maybe about that big picture at the Corcoran Art Gallery full of columns and steps and conspirators and Caesar in purple fallen flat called Caesar dead