NEW BAR-ROOM,

_JUST OPEN_.

FREE LUNCH NOW READY.

This it was, my boy, which had broken up one of the most significant
meetings of the age, by artfully working upon the idea of its supposed
inn-significance.

Upon reaching Washington, on my return, I heard that a serious-minded
chap, of Republican officiousness, had just waited upon the Honest Abe
to ask if he did not intend to cause the arrest of Smith and Jones for
their treason.

Our Uncle Abe smiled feebly, and scratched his head, and says he:

"What Smith and Jones, neighbor?"

"Why," says the serious-minded chap, earnestly, "the Smith and Jones of
Accomac."

"Well, really," says the Honest Abe, pleasantly, "it's curious, now;
but I never heard of them before."

Drawing an inference from this little circumstance of Executive
conversation, my boy, it strikes me that it would add considerably to
the importance of some of our large-sized local revolutionists, if they
could overturn the present ignorant Administration, and establish in
its place a ---- Directory.

Yours, double-entendrely,

ORPHEUS C. KERR.

LETTER XCVI.

DEVOTED PRINCIPALLY TO SOCIAL MATTERS, AND THE BENIGNANT BEARING OF
V. GAMMON AT A DIPLOMATIC SOIREE.

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 3d, 1863.

Social life at our National Capital, my boy, as far as the native
element is concerned, has not been refined by the war; and even at the
White House it is scarcely possible to collect an assemblage of persons
sufficiently genteel by education to speak familiarly of European
noblemen of their acquaintance. At the last dinner given by the
Secretary of State, there were actually three Western persons of much
cheek-bones, who dissented from the very proper idea that Earl Russel's
Carlton-house sherry is superior to anything we have in this country;
and my disgust intensified to hopeless scorn, when an Eastern chap in a
nankeen vest was brazen enough to confess that he could not tell how
many pieces the Emperor of the French had in the wash on the last week
of Lent. At other social gatherings in Washington I have noticed the
same evidences of growing vulgarity; and I greatly fear, my boy,--I
greatly fear that a knowledge of Europe will yet be more prevalent
amongst Europeans than Americans. O my country, my native land! has it
indeed come to this at last? In thy loftiest social circles shall we no
more behold that beautiful flesh-colored being in lavender gloves and
dre