nators make the justices.
The Representatives shall make the first call on the Senators' wives
of course; but how about the Speaker's wife? She is the third in
succession from the presidency, says the new-comer: she is nothing
but a Representative still, says the compelling etiquette. Finally,
through some incomprehensible regulation, whose framer forgot that
though democracies may be rude they must not be inhospitable, the
wives of the foreign ambassadors, representatives of sovereign states,
have to go the whole round and knock first at every door before being
fairly accredited to Society. But once established, be it said in
passing, the foreigners have a full revenge accorded them; for in vain
the native youth aspire, the freshest belles hover round the titled
flames, not perhaps till their wings are singed, but till successive
seasons have taught them that Cleopatra's beauty is useless without
Cleopatra's pearls. Meantime, to give one last discomfort to
the "calling" system, the ubiquitous reporter presents himself,
deliberately overturns the card-basket in the hall and notes the
names there; and the lady of the house sees herself, her dress, her
deportment and her guests photographed in the morning paper with
startling distinctness.

But the calling is the brightest part of this social side of life. The
other part is the night-life--not the night-life of gambling saloons
and their kind: of that dark underground existence Society has no
knowledge, though he who left it at daybreak and will go back to it at
midnight clasps the last debutante in his arms and whirls with her to
the sweet waltz-music--but the night-life of the Season.

A Washington season is a generic thing: women come to the place for
the sake of it, as they go nowhere else. Through the system of
calling just described official society is accessible to all, and the
introductions obtained there to people of the more select circles,
when fortified by wealth and pertinacity, open the whole charmed round
of pleasure. Society in other cities is totally unlike Society
in Washington. There it is an interchange of kindliness between
households of friends: it is the festivity of happy anniversaries, the
union of families in new ties, the cherishing of long acquaintance.
But in Washington--except so far as the small number of residents
is concerned--its whole purpose and meaning are anomalous: each
Administration brings a new following, each Congress has a new