[Illustration: _On the Ruins of Fort Stevens_]
good, they served their time, which needed the application of a crowbar rather than a cambric needle.
True to his human type, Shepherd was an odd mixture of incongruities. He poured out public funds like water, yet profited never a cent himself. In his own fashion he was pious, yet he could swear like a trooper when aroused, and once halted in the midst of family prayers to order a servant to “drive that damned cow out of the rose-bushes!” He was overheard, after hurling imprecations at some contractor who had mishandled a job, murmuring a prayer to the Almighty to forgive and forget his momentary loss of temper. A lady who once engaged him as a plumber to hang a chandelier in her parlor noticed that it swayed under her touch, and sent for him again to make sure that it would not fall upon the heads of her guests. His answer was to mount a chair on one side of the room, pull the chandelier toward him till he could grasp it with both hands, jump off, and swing his whole weight of two hundred and twenty-five pounds across to a chair on the opposite side. This exhibition of his confidence in his work completely restored hers.
Little more need be told here. The sodden soil plowed up by Shepherd was gradually harrowed and seeded, watched and watered, till it brought forth a new city, which under later administrations, in spite of many vicissitudes, has prospered in the main. Presidents Cleveland, Harrison, and McKinley took an interest in it which, while kindly, had some of the detached quality of their interest in any of the States or Territories; under them, however, the beautiful Rock Creek National Park and its neighbor the “Zoo” were planned and largely developed, and the pleasure-ground and suburban expansion programs received a considerable impetus. President Roosevelt felt a lively sense of the importance of the city as the capital of a great nation. It was in his time that the White House underwent its restoration, and the L’Enfant plan generally was revived as a standard. He was responsible, also, for attracting to Washington, as permanent residents, many literary and scientific workers whom it had formerly welcomed only as visitors, and the foundation of the Carnegie Institution went far to make this period notable in local annals. Mr. Taft’s interest took more the neighborly bent, as if Washington were his home. He bore an active part in the popular movements for beautifying the city, not so much because it was a capital, as because he wished to have a hand in the civic enterprises of his fellow townsmen.
