"I am on the verge of cutting everybody myself, so it doesn't matter.
Positively--I shall not accept an invitation of the old sort this
winter. The sooner they drop me the better."

Mrs. Madison wept bitterly. "You will become a notorious woman," she
sobbed. "People will talk terribly about you. They will say--all sorts
of things I have heard come back to me--these politicians make love to
every pretty woman they meet. They are so tired of their old frumps
from Oshkosh and Kalamazoo." "They do not all come from Oshkosh and
Kalamazoo. There are six New England States whose three centuries you
have just admitted lift them into the mists of antiquity. There are
fourteen Southern States, and I need make no defence--"

"Their gentlemen don't go into politics any more."

"You have admitted that Senator North and Senator Maxwell are
gentlemen. There is no reason why there should not be many more."

"Count de Bellairs told me that there was a spittoon at every desk in
the Senate and that he counted eight toothpicks in one hour."

"Well, I'll reform them. That will be my holy mission. As for
spittoons and toothpicks, they are conspicuous in every hotel in the
United States. They should be on our coat-of-arms, and the Great
American Novel will be called 'The Great American Toothpick.'
Statesmen have cut their teeth on it, and it has been their solace in
the great crises of the nation's history. As for spittoons, they
were invented for our own Southern aristocrats who loved tobacco then
as now. They decorate our Capitol as a mere matter of form. I don't