is because the residents have nothing to do with the government. In Washington the rich have some rights the poor are bound to respect, in New York none. There is, as you know, a plan to beautify the city on a grand scale, which I understand would go through if the people of South Dakota and the people of North Dakota would only give their consent as States, but you can readily understand how bitterly they feel when their representatives and Senators have only been able to secure a paltry appropriation of $5,000,000 for a post-office in a town of theirs of eight hundred inhabitants. Washington is called a city of magnificent distances; it is also one of unlimited expectoration. It is the most spittyful city in the world. Pardon me. I think the negro population is accountable

for this.

In this country there is but one slave left, and he is the President of the United States; also he is the only man who cannot call his home his own. President Roosevelt strikes me as a man who is all he tries to be, and when a man's ambition is to be the best exponent of what an American should be, that is saying a great deal.

Washington contains the customs of a village with the vices of a metropolis. The municipal authorities have the faith of things unseen; when at night this place is wrapped in clouds, but the moon is shining above the clouds, you walk in darkness, for there are no electric lights. The moon is shining somewhere, so have faith, for it must replace light. The man who made this rule must be like A. Ward's kangaroo, an "amoozing little cuss."

I lunched at the Congressional Library

yesterday, and my only comment is that I think that the inside will be less striking but more pleasing a thousand years hence. The colours in St. Mark's of Venice have had time to cool off, but those in the Library suggest fresh paints on a palette, or the inflamed colouring of a diphtheritic sore throat.

Ah, but the men I met at luncheon! - the head librarian and his assistants - gentlemen one and all; living in and absorbing an atmosphere of literature and art. What a sensitising effect the study of these two things has upon the mind! The most noticeable characteristic of these men was gentleness. Did you ever meet a gentle politician? I never did.

As for the social life here, it differs very little from other American cities, except where the Diplomatic Corps have intro

The

duced monarchical conventionalities. question of precedence is a burning one, and a Congressman's wife, who would have followed her cook into the kitchen to prepare the evening meal, insists upon rising and leaving a dinner party preceding another Congresswoman who has resided one year less in Washington than she. The question agitating society just now is, Can a woman be at any time a man? Can petticoats ever replace pants? That is, can the wife of an ambassador, at a Presidential function, take the place of her husband, if he happens to be ill? In most cities social life for the residents means no change for a generation in the people they meet, but in Washington it is a series of magic lantern slides in awesome rapidity; over the social door of Washington society should

be written, "Here to-day and gone to-morrow."

It is a marvellous place for visitingcards. There is a snow-storm of them all the time. The men call upon each other with the frequency of idle girls. Somebody calls on you; you get out of bed at four in the morning and return his call. You must drop a card within the etiquettical time. He jumps into an automobile, tells the driver to go like a wave of light, and gets his return card back to you. while you are in your bath. Such a toing and froing you can' imagine. I have had to order from Tiffany a Western blizzard of cards to last me out.

The girls here are the same as in any other part of this country. They say you can't paint a lily and improve it, so you can't describe an American girl and do her