Library of Congress Tour

         

             Day seven of our D.C. trip today. My mom and I spent the first few days in the capitol, rode the train up to Wilton, Connecticut to visit friends and head into N.Y.C. tomorrow.
            Wandering around the capitol on Memorial Day weekend, my mother and I walked into the Library of Congress as it was beginning to close. We peeked through closed doors, and I snapped pictures of the engraved quotes and the gilded dome. Wandering around down below the main hall, we got separated. As a searched around, a security officer with a rust colored beard walked after me calling, "Ma'am, where are you going?"
             "To grab my mom. She's somewhere down there."
             "I don't want you to get lost down here." So he came with me.
             But at the end of the long corridor revealed yet another maze of halls and no mother. I tried calling her cellphone while the guard strode back whispering into his radio. Seeing him become smaller and smaller back down the hall, I made a break for it and jogged down the next hall to look. Nothing. I felt hot and fighting mad as I turned around to walk back.
            There she came with the bearded guard at her side. I couldn't stay angry for too long because the officer escorted us down through a gold elevator and asked if we would like to see the library floor, usually off limits to tourists.
             "We'll see if any of my keys work," he said twisting into the lock.
              Click.
              We stepped onto the bright cream carpet and strained our necks towards the ceiling. The guard prattled on about being on duty during the shooting of the second National Treasure film with "Nick Cage overacting as usual."

              Libraries are amazing places. And I could write several paragraphs about why this is true, but it would be easier to convince you by simply walking you into the doors and leading you to the parallel shelves of musty old paper, glue and ink.
              Darcy gives Elizabeth an indirect complement when he exasperates Caroline Bingley by adding to her long list of qualifications for the accomplished woman saying, "And to all this she must yet add something more substantial: in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading." The following are a few quotes a took pictures of at the Library of Congress. I feel that Austen would concur.

 "The true university of these days is a collection of books."

"Reading maketh a full man [or woman]. Conference a ready man [or woman]. And writing an exact man [or woman]."

 "The chief glory of every people arises from its authors."