ature 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 more display and expense. I remember when a
private carriage in Washington was a rare object. The possession of money
didn't help one much socially. What made a person desired in any company
was the talent of being agreeable, talent of some sort, not the ability
to give a costly dinner or a big ball."

"But there are more literary and scientific people here, everybody says,"
said Margaret, who was becoming a partisan of the city.

"Yes, and they keep more to themselves--withdraw into their studies, or
hive in their clubs. They tell me that the delightful informality and
freedom of the old life is gone. Ask the old Washington residents whether
the coming in of rich people with leisure hasn't demoralized society, or
stiffened it, and made it impossible after the old sort. It is as easy
here now as anywhere else to get together a very heavy dinner party--all
very grand, but it isn't amusing. It is more and more like New York."

"But we have been to delightful dinners," Margaret insisted.

"No doubt. There are still houses of the old sort, where wit and
good-humor and free hospitality are more conspicuous than expense; but
when money selects, there is usually an incongruous lot about the board.
An oracular scientist at the club the other night put it rather neatly
when he said that a society that exists mainly to pay its debts gets
stupid."

"That's as clever," Margaret retorted, "as the remark of an
under-secretary at a cabinet reception the other night, that it is one
thing to entertain and another to be entertaining. I won't have you
slander Washington. I should like to spend all my winters here."

"Dear me!" said Morgan, "I've been praising Washington. I should like to
live here al