"Did you wish to pass, sir?" said the beatitude in white; and we soon found ourselves beside the banquet board, where all went merry as a fire-bell.
Then did we gorge ourselves, my boy, like the very First Families under similar circumstances; revelling in such salads as were known to the ancients just before the breaking out of the Asiatic cholera, and paying general attention to a bill of fare which was heartily despised by the old aristocracy of the capital who had received no invitations.
It was past midnight when we retreated to a double-bedded room at Willard's, and as Captain Villiam Brown took his goblet of final soda, he gracefully tipped my glass, and says he:
"I propose a sentimink."
Villiam raised the Falernian nectar aloft, gazed solemnly at me, and says he:
"Human Instink!"
Let us believe, my boy, that the instincts of those who come to the higher social surface in this, our trying time of war, are, by their own purity from anything actually malignant, sure indications that the nation's heart is good to the very bottom. Let us believe that the pride of Ascent, vain-glorious as it may seem, is nobler in raising the public laugh than is the tyrannical pride of Descent, which too often forces the public tear. Let us believe that, in the course of time, when the soft white hand of Peace shall have thrown a wreath of flowers across the muzzles of our guns, these unaccustomed tradesmen-courtiers who now throng the halls of our upright First Citizen and Friend will prove the sound ancestral stock of a race of brave gentlemen and women fair, to defend and adorn our Republican Court.
Yours, blithely,
Orpheus C. Kerr.