going to call on us at the hotel,
she chirked up. After all, Cousin E. E. _is_ a good-hearted creature as
ever lived.

LII.

REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN.

Dear sisters:--My ambitious longings are satisfied. I have stood before
the Mrs. President of these United States, and in that august situation
sustained the honor and dignity of our Society in a manner that I hope
will meet with your united and individual sanction. Mrs. Grant has had a
great many ladies of one kind and another standing by her side as
honored guests of the nation, but I do think the literary strata of the
Union has never been fully represented before. I do not say this
vaingloriously--far be it from me to claim anything on my own
merits--but when the reputation of our Society is concerned, I am ready
to stand up among the best, and hold my own even in the national White
House.

That I have done according to the best of my abilities, and, I trust, to
the satisfaction of the Society, but I claim no credit for it. Any of us
young girls can bow and smile, and give out words that melt into a vain
man's heart like lumps of maple-sugar, and that is about all that is
expected from the female women who perform Society in Washington, and
real pretty, smart women most of them are; but after all, they are only
accidental females, and get there just because their husbands happen to
be elected to a place, and wouldn't even be heard of if some smart man
hadn't given them his name--more than as like as not--before he knew
himself how much it was worth.

Now you will understand, sisters, that no man, though he should happen
to be smart as a steel trap, and pleasant as a willow whistle, can give
extra brains or sweet manners to a wife who hasn't got 'em in her own
right. So there is a chance that some short comings in the female line
are not very uncommon.

The senators and judges and cabinet people are, as a general thing, the
picked men of the nation, but they choose their own wives, and some of
them haven't half so much taste in the fine arts, to which many of this
generation of women belong, as they have knowledge about politics.
Still, these ladies are what they call representative women, and,
nationally considered, are the cream on cream of American society. That
is a fact, too, as far as they represent their own husbands. By marrying
great men, or those who are merely fortunate, they are only lifted more
clearly into the public view, where their virtues