xpressing her
opinion of the situation. It is hardly fair to expect a woman accustomed
to the life of New York or the foreign capitals, to look forward with
enthusiasm to a term of years passed in Albany, or in Washington.

In France very much the same state of affairs has been reached by quite a
different route. The aristocracy detest the present government, and it
is not considered "good form" by them to sit in the Chamber of Deputies
or to accept any but diplomatic positions. They condescend to fill the
latter because that entails living away from their own country, as they
feel more at ease in foreign courts than at the Republican receptions of
the Elysee.

There is a deplorable tendency among our self-styled aristocracy to look
upon their circle as a class apart. They separate themselves more each
year from the life of the country, and affect to smile at any of their
number who honestly wish to be of service to the nation. They, like the
French aristocracy, are perfectly willing, even anxious, to fill
agreeable diplomatic posts at first-class foreign capitals, and are
naively astonished when their offers of service are not accepted with
gratitude by the authorities in Washington. But let a husband propose to
his better half some humble position in the machinery of our government,
and see what the lady's answer will be.

The opinion prevails among a large class of our wealthy and cultivated
people, that to go into public life is to descend to duties beneath them.
They judge the men who occupy such positions with insulting severity,
classing them in their minds as corrupt and self-seeking, than which
nothing can be more childish or more imbecile. Any observer who has
lived in the different grades of society will quickly renounce the
puerile idea that sporting or intellectual pursuits are alone worthy of a
gentleman's attention. This very political life, which appears unworthy
of their attention to so many men, is, in reality, the great field where
the nations of the world fight out their differences, where the seed is
sown that will ripen later into vast crops of truth and justice. It is
(if rightly regarded and honestly followed) the battle-ground where man's
highest qualities are put to their noblest use--that of working for the
happiness of others.

No. 14--The Small Summer Hotel

We certainly are the most eccentric race on the surface of the globe and
ought to be a delight to the soul of an