Mrs. Creswell is handsome, as well as one of the most graceful women at the capital. Since the absence of Mrs. Senator Sprague from fashionable society, if she must have a successor, Mrs. Creswell seems the most available candidate for the vacant place. As an example of her exquisite taste she wore black velvet the evening of her reception, and no toilet is so “perfect at home.”
There seemed to be no end to the rooms in this modern mansion. In one place a soothing weed was prepared for the lords of creation, where they could steep themselves in smoke if they felt it to be desirable. In another chocolate and coffee were dispensed in dainty little cups that must have been imported from Constantinople. In the coffee-room might have been seen the genteel Montgomery Blair. He had a certain calm look of resignation on his face, sphinx-like in the extreme, as if he had the strength to bide the time of half a dozen administrations, if it was necessary, before the right one would “turn up” for the Blair family. Ex-Secretary McCulloch was also in the chocolate-room, surrounded by a bevy of pretty girls; but his associates were no better than he deserved, for a better, kinder-hearted man is hard to find. Another room was devoted to sandwiches, cakes, and ices. In a corner of this room was seen an immense punch-bowl, in which miniature icebergs were grating their sides. This punch-bowl contained lemonade colored with claret. An old lady whose veracity can be trusted, said there was just enough claret introduced in it to counteract dreadful effects of the ice and the acid in the beverage; that one could drink a dozen glasses without the least painful effect. At any rate, great quantities of this purple fluid disappeared, and no serious mischief followed.
Conspicuous among the hundreds of elegant women present was “Shirley Dare,” the Washington correspondent of the New York _World_. She was robed in blue satin, which was extremely becoming to her refined face, milky complexion, and amber-tinted hair. Her dress throughout was _comme il faut_ as one of her own fashion letters, and among all the literary women who shine at the capital she is the one whom the writer feels most like grasping by the hand. She is the true woman journalist, who accepts the situation, and is willing to fight the battle of life on the woman’s platform. She believes that in our so-called weakness lies our strength, and that if women are only a mind to wake up and go to work, the men will never put down the brakes. The New York _World_ has sent her here upon as delicate and difficult a mission as the females of olden times undertook when they were sent out by their sovereigns to distant courts to take charge of certain branches of diplomacy. The _World_ ought to have provided the wardrobe, the carriage, jewels, and other important et ceteras to match, and afterwards give her a duchy when she returns to New York covered with scars and glory. A masculine reporter can slip unnoticed through the mazes of society; not so with a woman. She must be able to bear inspection. She must be prepared for any fate. What does a man know about society after he has bathed in it? He is unable to write a respectable society article. The great New York dailies have tried man after man at the capital, and have finally concluded there are some things which men cannot do. The newspapers now, in some directions, acknowledge the supremacy of woman.