Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 39, January, 1861 | Page 4

other cities, people eat at home or at a hotel or an eating-house; in
Washington they eat at bank. But they do not eat money,--at least, not
in the form of bullion, or specie, or notes. These Washington banks,
unlike those of London, Paris, and New York, are open mainly at night
and all night long, are situated invariably in the second story, guarded
as jealously as any seraglio, and admit nobody but strangers,--that is to
say, everybody in Washington. This is singular. Still more singular is
the fact, that the best food, served in the most exquisite manner, and
(with sometimes a slight variation) the choicest wines and cigars, may
be had at these banks free of cost, except to those who choose
voluntarily to remunerate the banker by purchasing a commodity as
costly and almost as worthless as the articles sold at ladies' fairs,--upon
which principle, indeed, the Washington banks are conducted. The
commodity alluded to is in the form of small discs of ivory, called
"chips" or "cheeks" or "shad" or "skad," and the price varies from
twenty-five cents to a hundred dollars per "skad."
It is expected that every person who opens an account at bank by eating
a supper there shall buy a number of "shad," but not with the view of
taking them home to show to his wife and children. Yet it is not an
uncommon thing for persons of a stingy and ungrateful disposition to
spend most of their time in these benevolent institutions without ever
spending so much as a dollar for "shad," but eating, drinking, and
smoking, and particularly drinking, to the best of their ability. This
reprehensible practice is known familiarly in Washington as "bucking

ag'inst the sideboard," and is thought by some to be the safest mode of
doing business at bank.
The presiding officer is never called President. He is called
"Dealer,"--perhaps from the circumstance of his dealing in ivory,--and
is not looked up to and worshipped as the influential man of
banking-houses is generally. On. the contrary, he is for the most part
condemned by his best customers, whose heart's desire and prayer are
to break his bank and ruin him utterly.
Seeing the multitude of boarding-houses, oyster-cellars, and
ivory-banks, you may suppose there are no hotels in Washington. You
are mistaken. There are plenty of hotels, many of them got up on the
scale of magnificent distances that prevails everywhere, and somewhat
on the maritime plan of the Departments. Outwardly, they look like
colossal docks, erected for the benefit of hacks, large fleets of which
you will always find moored under their lee, safe from the monsoon
that prevails on the open sea of the Avenue. Inwardly, they are
labyrinths, through whose gloomy mazes it is impossible to thread your
way without the assistance of an Ariadne's clue in the shape of an
Irishman panting under a trunk. So obscure and involved are the
hotel-interiors, that it would be madness for a stranger to venture in
search of his room without the guidance of some one far more familiar
with the devious course of the narrow clearings through the forest of
apartments than the landlord himself. Now and then a reckless and
adventurous proprietor undertakes to make a day's journey alone
through his establishment. He is never heard of afterwards,--or, if found,
is discovered in a remote angle or loft, in a state of insensibility from
bewilderment and starvation. If it were not for an occasional negro,
who, instigated by charitable motives or love of money, slouches about
from room to room with an empty coal-scuttle as an excuse for his
intrusions, a gentleman stopping at a Washington hotel would be
doomed to certain death. In fact, the lives of all the guests hang upon a
thread, or rather, a wire; for, if the bell should fail to answer, there
would be no earthly chance of getting into daylight again. It is but
reasonable to suppose that the wires to many rooms have been broken
in times past, and it is well known in Washington that these rooms are
now tenanted by skeletons of hapless travellers whose relatives and
friends never doubted that they had been kidnapped or had gone down

in the Arctic.
The differential calculus by which all Washington is computed obtains
at the hotels as elsewhere, with this peculiarity,--that the differences are
infinitely great, instead of infinitely small. While the fronts are very
fine, showy, and youthful as the Lecompton Constitution, the rears are
coarse, common, and old as the Missouri Compromise. The furniture in
the rooms that look upon Pennsylvania Avenue is as fresh as the dogma
of Squatter Sovereignty; that in all other rooms dates back to the
Ordinance of '87. Some of the apartments exhibit a glaring splendor;
the rest show