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 rabble
at its heels; friendships are accidents of the day, diplomacy is
carried on by dining; every party has a political purpose, every
civility a double meaning. Nevertheless, the sparkle of wit, the
kindling of enthusiasm, are not absent from it; on the contrary, there
is more of that than elsewhere, for it is sustained by the chosen
intellect and beauty of the continent. You may meet admirals there who
have sailed round the world, generals who have fought mighty battles,
priests who may yet be popes, men and women who are figures of
the century: they will tell you the romance of their travel, the
heart-beat of their successes, and you will contrive to hear it for
all the accompanying roar and sweep in which they are the lay figures
for aspirants to measure, and the property of reporters. In such a
Society of course all asperities are softened: this man's daughter
dances with the son of his arch-enemy; deference is accorded to the
opinion of a woman on public matters as if she already possessed her
right of suffrage; there is an exhilaration in meeting and avoiding
and overlooking, in the light and skillful skating over dangerous
surfaces, while a rare freedom unites with a gentle even if politic
courtesy, which it is delightful to meet to-night and which allures
you to seek it to-morrow. Society without a conscience it is,