That was just what I did in Mr. King's parlors, and, when we stopped talking, it struck me that the gentleman knew a great deal more of literature than your missionary has yet learned of statesmanship or law. In fact, an evening in Mr. King's parlors does teach one humility, and I begin to discover that a person may be capable of writing poetry, and making a fair report, without being able to teach science to a professor, jurisprudence—I hope I have got the word right—to a judge, or high statesmanship to a senator. In fact, in the present state of society, it seems to me that the best of us have got to live and learn—live and learn.
LIV.
DRESSING FOR A PARTY.
MY DEAR SISTERS:—You have no idea how many kinds of parties there are in Washington. Some are called receptions, because they take place in the daytime, in houses where every mite of sunshine is shut out, and the gas set to blazing as if it were midnight. That is, night isn't turned into day here one bit oftener than day is turned into night.
Then there are ladies' lunch parties, where the daylight is allowed to shine in; and picnics, where one gets a little too much of it, besides being tired to death, and nothing to show for it.
Besides these, there are political parties, where men get up entertainments that are called caucuses, which no lady is allowed to join in. Besides dinners and breakfasts, and so on, without end, which makes life in this city just one rush and tumult—to say nothing of Congress, which is just that, and a good deal more so.
Last week, Cousin E. E. and I had so many invitations that we didn't know what to do with them. We should have had to go out to three breakfasts, two dinners, and six parties a night, if we had attempted to do more than read them all. For since Mr. King's literary reunion, the popularity of your missionary has increased like a rolling snowball, and her invitations came by the peck and half bushel.
Well, out of this heap, there was one or two places that I felt like honoring with my presence. So E. E. and I sat down and wrote a little note—all ladies write little notes nowadays—and relieved the intense anxiety of the people who had invited us, by saying, in the most polite way, that we would come.
This act of kindness had its reward in the feeling that we had relieved more than one anxious host, and given certainty of a brilliant success to parties that must necessarily have been in doubt until certain of our coming. With my usual modesty, I say "our," wishing to give E. E. her little chance, you know.