t we call
history; he was the compeer of Webster and Clay and Crittenden and
Calhoun; and one would not marvel if he looked but contemptuously
on the fevered measures and boyish ecstasies and advocacies of
their successors. Familiar with modern languages and literatures, an
encyclopaedia of ancient and mediaeval learning, a master of the science
of government, as old as the century, and one of its conspicuous
figures, perhaps but a single thing is wanting to make Mr. Cushing a
chief: he does not believe in the people.

Thus it is easily seen that your life at the Federal Capital, if you
possess either an eye for beauty or an interest in affairs, may be
full of enjoyment and variety. Your companions are people of mark;
you learn, by returning, when summer does, to the small scandals and
personalities of common towns, how large is the outlook in Washington;
the theatre of the world opens before you there; you feel that you
assist at the making of history, if you are not yourself a part of
events.

But this is one side of life. There is another and a more purely
social side which is a very different thing. Into this affairs of
state do not enter; with the right or wrong of vital questions it does
not concern itself at all; and in fact it is doubtful if politics are
not thought there mere subsidiaries to the authority of Fashion, and
if the fair wives and daughters of our lawgivers do not regard the
great machinery of state as something ordained solely to sustain them
in their brilliant round as the wind of the juggler's fan supports his
paper butterflies upon their airy flight. In this life an etiquette
reigns that has no law of its being save that of vague tradition--an
etiquette at variance with that of other regions, and through which
the female population is resolved into what might be termed, in the
parlance of the place, a committee of the whole on "calling." This
etiquette rules the wives of important functionaries with a rod
of iron. By some occult method of reasoning they have reached the
conclusion that their husbands' popularity, and consequent lease
of power, depend upon their own faithful performance of what is
considered to be social duty, and they devote themselves to it with
a zeal worthy of a better cause. On certain days of the week their
houses are open to all who choose to come; and both residents and
passing travelers, all who wish to inspect the inside of such homes
among the other sights of the to