held
with credit both to the administration and himself. About 1873, when I
first knew Mr. and Mrs. King, they lived in a modest home at 707 H
Street where, every Saturday evening, many _litterateurs_ and prominent
men of state were accustomed to gather and discuss the important
literary and political problems of the day. John Pierpont read a poem at
the first of these receptions and Grace Greenwood rendered some choice
selections, while George William Curtis and other men of note
contributed their share to the success of other similar occasions. These
literary reunions are said to have been the first of their kind ever
held in Washington.

I was invited one evening in 1877 by Mrs. Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren,
widow of Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, U.S.N., who was then living at
the corner of L and Fourteenth Streets, to attend a meeting of the
Washington Historical Society held in her drawing-rooms. It was
Washington's birthday and James A. Garfield, then Senator from Ohio, was
the orator of the evening. In one portion of his remarks he seemed to go
out of his way to emphasize the statement that Mary Ball, Washington's
mother, was a very plain old woman. Why he considered that her lack of
prominent lineage necessarily added greater luster to the Father of His
Country, was not apparent to quite a number of his audience, for even
the numerous votaries of the Patron Saint of Erin, "the beautiful isle
of the sea," took honest pride in according him a gentle descent:--

St. Patrick was a gintleman,
He came from dacent people.

Mrs. Dahlgren was a woman of unusual intellectual ability. She was the
daughter of Samuel Finley Vinton of Ohio, who for many years represented
his district in Congress and was chairman of the Ways and Means
Committee. In 1879 she published a small volume entitled "Etiquette of
Social Life in Washington." She followed this book with another, whose
title I do not recall, in which she dwelt at length upon society in
Washington. It was not well received as her criticisms upon the wives of
Cabinet Officers and others were such as to invoke general disfavor and
arouse bitter resentment. Mrs. Dahlgren's ablest work, however, was the
life of her husband, which was published in 1882 in a volume of over six
hundred and fifty pages. She had a fine command of the English language
and excellent literary discrimination in the use of its words, as
appears everywhere in her writings and especially in the f