ery, and
depict the woeful tragics of our existence, we will give the facts of a
case--not uncommon, we ween, either, that came to us from a friend of
one of the parties.

In most cities--especially, perhaps, in Baltimore and Washington, are
any quantity of decayed families; widows and orphans of men--who, while
blessed with oxygen and hydrogen sufficient to keep them healthy and
active--held offices, or such positions in the business world as enabled
them and their families to carry pretty stiff necks, high heads, and go
into what is called "good society;" meaning of course where good
furniture garnishes good finished domiciles, good carpets, good rents,
good dinners, and where good clothes are exhibited--but where good
intentions, good manners and morals are mostly of no great importance.
As, in most all such cases, when, by some fortuitous accident, the head
of the family collapses, or dies,--the reckless regard for society
having led to the squandering of the income, fast or faster than it
came, the poor family is driven by the same society, so coveted, to hide
away--move off, and by a thousand dodges of which wounded pride is
capable, work their way through the world, under tissues of false
pretences; at once ludicrous and pitiable. Such a family we have in
view. Colonel Somebody held a lucrative office under government, in the
city of Washington. Colonel Somebody, one day, very unexpectedly, died.
There was nothing mysterious in that, but the Somebodies having always
cut quite a swell in the "society" of the capital--which society, let us
tell you, is of the most fluctuating, tin-foil and ephemeral character;
it was by some considered strange, that as soon as Colonel Somebody had
been decently buried in his grave, his family at once made a sale of
their most expensive furniture--the horses, carriage, and man-servant
disappeared, and the Somebodies apprized society that they were going
north, to reside upon an estate of the Colonel's in New York. And so
they vanished. Whither they went or how they fared society did not know,
and society did not care!

Mrs. Somebody had two daughters and a son, the eldest twenty-three,
_confessedly_, and the youngest, the son, seventeen. Marriages, in such
society, floating and changing as it does in Washington, are not
frequent, and less happy or prosperous when effected; every body,
inclined to become acquainted, or form matrimonial connections, are ever
on the alert for somethi