te from some of these letters.

"_February 17._ I am at the National Hotel, which is now quite crowded,
but I have an endurable room with furniture hardly endurable, for it is
hard to find, in this hotel at least, a table or a bureau that can stand
on its four proper legs, rocking and tetering like a gold-digger's
washing-pan, unless the lame leg is propped up with an old shoe, or a
stray newspaper fifty times folded, or a magazine of due thickness (I am
using 'Harper's Magazine' at this moment, which is somewhat a
desecration, as it is too good to be trampled under foot, even the foot
of a table), or a coal cinder, or a towel. Well, it is but for a moment
and so let it pass.

"Where do you think I was last evening? Read the invitation on the
enclosed card, which, although forbidden to be _transferable_, may
without breach of honor be transferred to my other and better half. I
felt no inclination to go, but, as no refusal would be accepted, I put on
my best and at nine o'clock, in company with Mr. and Mrs. Shaffner (the
latter of whom, by the by, is quite a pleasant and pretty woman, with a
boy one year older than Arthur and about as mischievous) and Mr. and Mrs.
John Kendall.

"I went to the ladies' parlor and was presented to the ladies, six in
number, who did the honors (if that is the expression) of the evening.
There was a great crowd, I think not less than three hundred people, and
from all parts of the country--Senators and their wives, members of the
House and their wives and daughters, and there was a great number of fine
looking men and women. I was constantly introduced to a great many, who
uniformly showered their compliments on your _modest_ husband."

The card of invitation has been lost, but it was, perhaps, to a
President's Reception, and the "great" crowd of three hundred would not
tax the energies of the President's aides at the present day.

The next letter is written in a more serious vein:--

"_February 26._ I am very busily engaged in the preparation of my papers
for an extension of my patents. This object is of vital importance to me;
it is, in fact, the moment to reap the harvest of so many years of labor,
and expense, and toil, and neglected would lose me the fruits of all....
F.O.J. Smith is here, the same ugly, fiendlike, dog-in-the-manger being
he has ever been, the 'thorn in the flesh' which I pray to be able to
support by the sufficient grace promised. It is difficult to know how to
f