t be maintained. And there is so much kindliness and
consideration in human nature--Margaret's gorgeous coachman and footman
never by a look revealed their knowledge that she was new to the
situation, and I dare say that their respectful demeanor contributed
to raise her in her own esteem as one of the select and favored in this
prosperous world. The most self-poised and genuine are not insensible to
the tribute of this personal consideration. My lady giving orders to
her respectful servitors, and driving down the avenue in her luxurious
turnout, is not at all the same person in feeling that she would be if
dragged about in a dissolute-looking hack whose driver has the air of
the stable. We take kindly to this transformation, and perhaps it is
only the vulgar in soul who become snobbish in it. Little by little,
under this genial consideration, Margaret advanced in the pleasant path
of worldliness; and we heard, by the newspapers and otherwise--indeed,
Mr. and Mrs. Morgan were there for a couple of weeks in the winter--that
she was never more sweet and gracious and lovely than in this first
season at the capital. I don't know that the town was raving, as they
said, about her beauty and wit--there is nothing like the wit of a
handsome woman--and amiability and unostentatious little charities,
but she was a great favorite. We used to talk about it by the fire in
Brandon, where everything reminded us of the girl we loved, and rejoice
in her good-fortune and happiness, and get rather heavy-hearted in
thinking that she had gone away from us into such splendor.

"I wish you were here," she wrote to my wife. "I am sure you would enjoy
it. There are so many distinguished people and brilliant people--though
the distinguished are not always brilliant nor the brilliant
distinguished--and everybody is so kind and hospitable, and Rodney is
such a favorite. We go everywhere, literally, and all the time. You must
not scold, but I haven't opened a book, except my prayerbook, in six
weeks--it is such a whirl. And it is so amusing. I didn't know there
were so many kinds of people and so many sorts of provincialism in the
world. The other night, at the British Minister's, a French attache, who
complimented my awful French--I told him that I inherited all but the
vocabulary and the accent--said that if specimens of the different kinds
of women evolved in all out-of-the-way places who come to Washington
could be exhibited, nobody would doubt