Our Uncle Abe smiled feebly, and scratched his head, and says he:
"Why," says the serious-minded chap, earnestly, "the Smith and Jones of Accomac."
"Well, really," says the Honest Abe, pleasantly, "it's curious, now; but I never heard of them before."
Drawing an inference from this little circumstance of Executive conversation, my boy, it strikes me that it would add considerably to the importance of some of our large-sized local revolutionists, if they could overturn the present ignorant Administration, and establish in its place a ---- Directory.
DEVOTED PRINCIPALLY TO SOCIAL MATTERS, AND THE BENIGNANT BEARING OF V. GAMMON AT A DIPLOMATIC SOIREE.
Social life at our National Capital, my boy, as far as the native element is concerned, has not been refined by the war; and even at the White House it is scarcely possible to collect an assemblage of persons sufficiently genteel by education to speak familiarly of European noblemen of their acquaintance. At the last dinner given by the Secretary of State, there were actually three Western persons of much cheek-bones, who dissented from the very proper idea that Earl Russel's Carlton-house sherry is superior to anything we have in this country; and my disgust intensified to hopeless scorn, when an Eastern chap in a nankeen vest was brazen enough to confess that he could not tell how many pieces the Emperor of the French had in the wash on the last week of Lent. At other social gatherings in Washington I have noticed the same evidences of growing vulgarity; and I greatly fear, my boy,--I greatly fear that a knowledge of Europe will yet be more prevalent amongst Europeans than Americans. O my country, my native land! has it indeed come to this at last? In thy loftiest social circles shall we no more behold that beautiful flesh-colored being in lavender gloves and dress-coat whose etherealized individuality broke rapturously forth in the thrilling words, "When I was in Paris last summer"? Are we no more to palpitate with ecstasy at the tones of that voice which was wont to trill forth in liquid music from a curl-crested fountain of white shoulders, saying: "Don't you remember, Mr. Thompsion, how the Guke of Leeds larfed that day, at the Reception, when I told him that we American ladies thought it was vulgar to say 'garters' out loud?" Alas! my boy, our aristocracy is fading away like an abused exotic, and it is not oftener than once in a season that the frequenter of our Republican Court witnesses one incident to make him recognize the polished people he once knew. About two months ago, at an evening party given by Mrs. Senator ----, I did witness a social incident, showing that there is still hope for the Republic. An interesting young mother, of not more than sixty-two summers, attired in a babywaist and graduated flounces, was standing near one of the doors of the music-room conversing with me upon the moral character of her dearest female friend, when her gushing daughter, a nymph not more than six pianos old, came pressing to her side, and whispered behind her fan,--