Its front is
ornamented with a portico of half-a-dozen wooden pillars,
supporting a balcony, beneath which a flight of wide granite
steps descends towards the street. Over the entrance hovers an
enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a
shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of
intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With
the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this
unhappy fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her beak and eye,
and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief
to the inoffensive community; and especially to warn all
citizens careful of their safety against intruding on the
premises which she overshadows with her wings. Nevertheless,
vixenly as she looks, many people are seeking at this very
moment to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal
eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness
and snugness of an eiderdown pillow. But she has no great
tenderness even in her best of moods, and, sooner or
later--oftener soon than late--is apt to fling off her nestlings
with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling
wound from her barbed arrows.
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