Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 April 1886 — GEREENOUGH’S WASHINGTON. [ARTICLE]

GEREENOUGH’S WASHINGTON.

Dumb Marble That Looks as if It Would Like Nothing; Better than to a Tale Untold. ' fR. J. Burdette, in Brooklyn Eagle.] We lingered long before that speaking piece of dumb marble, Qreenougb’g Washington,/fronting the Capitol in the front. There is more than a charm about it; .there is a fascination that holds you there, a cruel fascination, for no fascination with the heart of a man would hold any human being before a spectacle so pathetic, so appealing, so eloquent in the speechless woe j of its marble lips. I wonder when the sculptor completed that uplifted arm with the awful linger that it did not smite him to the earth when he stooped to work out with mallet and chisel those marvelous bunches on the knees. But a statue is more merciful than man. At first, I will admit, I was disappointed in this work of art. I did not observe the face. My eyes rested upon the vast expanse of bosom that holds the broad shoulders apart, and I thought I was loojdbt at the sculptor’s recreation of that that suckled Romulus and Remus, and I wondered that the thun-der-stricken nurse of Rome, hav-. ing such simple accommodation, had not established a national foundling asylum and free orphanage, and then when I lifted my head and saws, aboye all this, that patient, gentle, long-suffering, uncomplaining face, with its dumb lips and appealing eyes asking for a corset, I burst into tears. I could not help it. I was not ashamed of the weakness. It was not unmanly. * * * You linger long before this eloquent *stone before you gather its story. It said to me, as it says, oh! so patiently, to the hurrying thousands who carelessly pass it by : “Please to scratch, my back. That is why I have taken my clothes off’. There is one peculiarly isolated place between my shoulder blades that I can not reach. See, I am ti’ving to get at it with this uplifted hand, but 1 can not. I have tried to rasp it with the hilt of this Roman sword, but that is unsatisfactory. Please scratch my back and keep off' the grass.” The day was raw and bleak, and as I passed near the statue I noticed that its back and shoulder blades were covered with goose flesh. I gave the porter who owns the Capitol a quarter and told him to lay soap and some towels where the statue could get them after dark, so that it might complete its bath and go to bed. And then we came away and left it —we could not take it with us—pointing that light-ning-rod finger to heaven as though it would call down the wrath of the immortal gods upon the ungrateful country that thus impiously mocked the mighty shades of him who w. s its father. Well may the man, bent upon great deeds, falter and turn back from his intention when lio stands in. the presence of this statue, and sees what marble immortality may do for men entirely great.