otel, and Margaret went about with
them in the daytime, while Henderson was occupied. It was like a breath
of home to be with them, and their presence, reviving that old life,
gave a new zest to the society spectacle, to the innocent round of
entertainments, which more and more absorbed her. Besides, it was very
interesting to have Mr. Morgan's point of view of Washington, and to see
the shifting panorama through his experience. He had been very much in
the city in former years, but he came less and less now, not because it
was less beautiful or attractive in a way, but because it had lost for
him a certain charm it once had.

"I am not sure," he said, as they were driving one day, "that it is not
now the handsomest capital in the world; at any rate, it is on its way
to be that. No other has public buildings more imposing, or streets and
avenues so attractive in their interrupted regularity, so many stately
vistas ending in objects refreshing to the eye--a bit of park, banks
of flowers, a statue or a monument that is decorative, at least in the
distance. As the years go on we shall have finer historical groups,
triumphal arches and columns that will give it more and more an air of
distinction, the sort of splendor with which the Roman Empire celebrated
itself, and, added to this, the libraries and museums and galleries
that are the chief attractions of European cities. Oh, we have only just
begun--the city is so accessible in all directions, and lends itself to
all sorts of magnificence and beauty."

"I declare," said Mrs. Morgan to Margaret, "I didn't know that he could
be so eloquent. Page, you ought to be in Congress."

"In order to snuff myself out? Congress is not so important a feature as
it used to be. Washington is getting to have a character of its own;
it seems as if it wouldn't be much without its official life, yet the
process is going on here that is so marked all over the country--the
divorce of social and political life. I used to think, fifteen years
ago, that Washington was a standing contradiction to the old aphorism
that a democracy cannot make society--there was no more agreeable
society in the world than that in Washington even ten years ago: society
selected itself somehow without any marked class distinction, and it was
delightfully simple and accessible."

"And what has changed it?" Margaret asked.

"Money, which changes everything and everybody. The whole scale has
altered. There is so much