The Governor’s contemptuous opposition has left no hope that anything will be done through the State for the protection of Niagara and I am thinking whether it may be practicable to obtain a refusal of the properties more important to be secured for the purpose and accomplish the result by a popular subscription to a joint stock company. I am going a fishing tomorrow and {if} I get any encouragmnt may probably in a day or two afterwds try to get some men together and raise a little money for preliminary expenses.

You may remember that when I last talked of it with you, you thought you could find a man who for a compensation would make a business of writing up the matter for the newspapers. Can you do so now? If you think it likely that you can, please give me some idea of what would probably be required to secure him.

Of course it is a forlorn hope but I don’t think it would be right not to do something more out of respect for those whose aid on {it} {I} have asked and obtained.

I enclose photographs of a structure for which I was much ridiculed in the Senate last year and which is still an object of the writings of the Washington newspapers. The best things of it are not photographable. The the are from my model. They have a rough surface with marks of hand-modelling and are a dark variable red with glints of gray. It is to be completely clothed with ivy. There are cavaties over the arches of the size of bathing tubs in which yuccas, prickly pears and sempervivums are to grow. The central object is a drinking fountain.

I call the whole thing a summer-house but the d.f.s will have it “the subterranean grotto”!

[534]

View of summer house on U.S. Capitol grounds, c. 1881, Showing plantings and central fountain

View of summer house on U.S. Capitol grounds, c. 1881