d I left her. Why should I disturb her innocent rest
with the knowledge that a railroad she trusted in was infested through
and through with brigandation. If she knew the truth, I was certain that
E. E. would never be coaxed or reasoned into travelling again, so I
determined to keep a still tongue, and never mention this attempt at
burglary again to any human creature.

I have made up my mind to one thing, though. Phoemie Frost will never
travel again without a pistol under her pillow. What good object can any
man have in smashing into the midnight dreams of two innocent females,
and wanting to examine their pocket-books? I tremble to think what the
feelings of the great Grand Duke would be if he had heard of the
terrible danger I have been in.

Of course I never closed my eyes again till the long train of cars crept
like a great trailing snake into the depot at Washington.

LI.

MRS. GRANT'S RECEPTION.

Sisters, Washington is splendid just now. In New York the winter seems
to have frozen up all the sap in the trees; not a bud on the limbs, not
a tinge of green even on the willows, which are the trees of all others
that give out their greenness first in the spring, and keep it latest in
the fall. The trees that grow in the Park were brown and naked when we
left the city.

Here the buds are a-swelling. The willow-trees are feathered over with
leaves as soft and pale as the down on a gosling's breast. The
beech-trees are covered over with soft, downy buds, that float on the
air like full-grown caterpillars. Even the ragged old button-balls are
shooting out leaves like sixty, and the young trees at the Smithsonian
Institution, and the old ones below the Capitol of the nation, are
bursting into greenness, while the grass seems to spring up fresh in
your path as you walk along.

I declare it is a satisfaction to breathe the air which is kissing so
many buds and flowers open; and I feel sort of guilty in doing it, when
I know that the hollows around Sprucehill are choked up with dead
leaves, if not with drifted snow, and it will be weeks yet before the
maple-sap will take to running.

Nature is an institution that I hope I shall always be fond of and
appreciate; but men and women are, after all, the noblest work of a
beneficent Creator, and, from the delicate greenness and the soft airs
of spring, I turn to them.

At two o'clock, yesterday, Mrs. President Grant had a grand reception at
the White House. The