village-taverns

Updated: May 6, 2025

To the men who go there from small rural communities in the South and the West, the bustle and stir, the intellectual movement, such as it is, the ordinary subjects of conversation, of such vastly greater importance than anything they have previously known, the daily, even hourly combats on the floor of both houses, the intrigue and the struggle of office-hunting, which engage vast numbers besides the office-seekers, the superior piquancy and interest of the scandal which is talked at a Congressional boarding-house over that which seasons the dull days at village-taverns all this gives a savor to life in Washington the memory of which doubles the tedium of the sequestered vale to which the beaten legislator returns when his brief hour of glory is over.

John Hay - Abraham Lincoln: a History — Volume 01