Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

my decision. It was most kind of you to write, and I appreciate it deeply. With warm regards,’ etc. That isn’t too evasive, is it?”
    “No more than usual,” Mary said.
    “Well, damn it,” Bob Munson said. “You know our problem. We can’t commit ourselves too much in advance on something like this, there are too many factors involved. We’ve got to allow a little leeway, in case Seab turns up the fact that he was convicted for dope or white slavery or something. You know that.”
    “Yes,” Mary said comfortably, “I know that, Senator. It’s a good letter and about all you can say at the present moment, I should judge.”
    “Then don’t give me back talk,” Senator Munson said. “I can’t take it, in my delicate condition of being pregnant with the hottest nomination in the present presidential term. Now let’s get rid of whatever else there is. I’ve got to get on my horse and get out around the building.”
    Little warning bells rang on all the news-tickers in all the offices all over town that had them. “This is to advise,” the teletype machine said impersonally, “that Robert A. Leffingwell will not repeat not hold his previously announced press conference at 10:30 a.m. today.”
    “This building,” one of the Capitol guides was telling the day’s first batch of tourists, listening attentively in the great rotunda, “stands on Capitol Hill 88 feet above the level of the Potomac River, on a site once occupied by a subtribe of the Algonquin Indians known as the Powhatans, whose council house was located at the foot of the hill. The building covers an area of 153,112 square feet, or approximately 3½ acres. Its length from north to south is 751 feet, four inches; its width, including approaches, is 350 feet. It has a floor area of 14 acres, and 435 rooms are devoted to offices, committees, and storage. There are 679 windows and 554 doorways. The cornerstone of the Capitol was laid on September 18, 1793. The northern wing was completed in 1800, and in that small building the legislative and judicial branches of the government, as well as the courts of the District of Columbia, were housed in that year when the government moved here from Philadelphia. The southern section of the Capitol was finished in 1811, the House of Representatives then occupying what is now known as Statuary Hall. At that time a wooden passageway connected the two wings. This was the situation when the Capitol was burned by the British on August 24, 1814, entering up the narrow, winding steps known as the British Stairway which you will see later in your tour.
    “Restoration of the two wings was completed in 1817, and construction of the central portion was begun in 1818 and completed in 1829. Congress, which met in a special building erected on part of what is now the present Supreme Court grounds across Capitol Plaza, moved back into the Capitol in 1819.
    “The building of the present Senate and House wings was begun on July 4, 1851. The House moved into its present chamber on December 16, 1857, and the Senate occupied its present chamber on January 4, 1859. The original low dome, which had been constructed of wood covered with copper, was replaced by the present dome of cast iron in 1865. There are two Senate Office Buildings and three House Office Buildings included in the Capitol grounds, which now cover an area of 131.1 acres. The statue on top of the Capitol which you saw as you approached the building is the Statue of Freedom, which stands with its back on downtown Washington. This is no reflection on our government, but is so turned because the East Front is the official front of the Capitol, the original builders having thought the District of Columbia would grow toward the east instead of the west.
    “The Capitol dominates the city of Washington and is generally accepted throughout the world as the most familiar symbol of the Government of the United States, this great country of ours which is the world’s