On the first occasion of my dining at the President’s table, I was struck with the spaciousness of the White House, and the air of simplicity which everywhere pervaded. Very elaborate alterations were made in the mansion for Mr. Pierce’s successor, but in the day of President and Mrs. Pierce it remained practically as unimposing as in the time of President Monroe. The most remarkable features in all the mansion, to my then unaccustomed eyes, were the gold spoons which were used invariably at all State dinners. They were said to have been brought from Paris by President Monroe, who had been roundly criticised for introducing into the White House a table accessory so undemocratic! Besides these extraordinary golden implements, there were as remarkable bouquets, made at the government greenhouses. They were stiff and formal things, as big round as a breakfast plate, and invariably composed of a half-dozen wired japonicas ornamented with a pretentious cape of marvellously wrought lace-paper. At every plate, at every State dinner, lay one of these memorable rigid bouquets. This fashion, originating at the White House, was taken up by all Washington. For an entire season the japonica was the only flower seen at the houses of the fashionable or mixing in the toilettes of the belles. But if, for that, my first winter in Washington, the White House itself was sober, the houses of the rich Senators and citizens of Washington, of the brilliant diplomatic corps, and of some of the Cabinet Ministers, made ample amends for it. In the fifties American hospitality acquired a reputation, and that of the capital was synonymous with an unceasing, an augmenting round of dinners and dances, receptions and balls. A hundred hostesses renowned for their beauty and wit and vivacity vied with each other in evolving novel social relaxations. Notable among these were Mrs. Slidell, Mrs. Jacob Thompson, Miss Belle Cass, and the daughters of Secretary Guthrie; Mrs. Senator Toombs and Mrs. Ogle Tayloe, the Riggses, the Countess de Sartiges and Mrs. Cobb, wife of that jolly Falstaff of President Buchanan’s Cabinet, Howell Cobb. Mrs. Cobb was of the celebrated Lamar family, so famous for its brilliant and brave men, and lovely women. Highly cultured, modest as a wild wood-violet, inclined, moreover, to reserve, she was nevertheless capable of engrossing the attention of the most cultivated minds in the capital, and a conversation with her was ever a thing to be remembered. No more hospitable home was known in Washington than that of the Cobbs. The Secretary was a _bon vivant_, and his home the rendezvous of the epicurean as well as the witty and the intellectual.