“Well,” he began, drawing his words out slowly and a bit quizzically, “I went out and got my ticket; did the right thing and got a seat as near Harriet Lane’s box as I could; even invested in new white gloves, so I felt all right; but I can’t say the music struck me exactly! Mr. Gottschalk played mighty pretty; hopped up on the black keys and then down on the white ones” (and the Congressman illustrated by spanning the table rapidly in a most ludicrous manner). “He played slow and then fast, and never seemed to get his hands tangled up once. But for all that I can’t say I was struck by his music! He played mighty pretty, but he didn’t play nary _tchune_!” Two interesting members of our “mess” were General and Mrs. Chestnut. The General, a member from South Carolina, who became afterward one of the staff of Jefferson Davis, was among the princes in wealth in the South in the fifties. Approximately one thousand slaves owned by him were manumitted by Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation in 1863, when, childless, property-less, our well-loved Mrs. Chestnut suffered a terrible eclipse after her brilliant youth and middle age. She was the only daughter of Governor Miller, of South Carolina, and having been educated abroad, was an accomplished linguist and ranked high among the cultured women of the capital. Moreover, Mrs. Chestnut was continually the recipient of toilette elegancies, for which the bazaars of Paris were ransacked, and in this way the curiosity of the emulative stay-at-home fashionables was constantly piqued. Her part in that brilliant world was not a small one, for, in addition to her superior personal charms, Mrs. Chestnut chaperoned the lovely Preston girls of South Carolina, belles, all, and the fashionable Miss Stevens, of Stevens Castle, who married Muscoe Garnett of Virginia. Indeed, the zest for social pleasures among our circle was often increased by the coming of guests from other cities. Among others whom I particularly recall was my cousin Miss Collier, daughter of Governor Collier of Alabama, and who married the nephew of William Rufus King, Vice-President of the United States under Mr. Pierce; and our cousins Loula Comer, Hattie Withers, and Miss Hilliard. The latter’s wedding with Mr. Hamilton Glentworth of New York was one of the social events of the winter of 1859. Nor should I forget to mention the presence, at the Ebbitt House and at Brown’s Hotel, of another much admired South Carolinian, Mrs. General McQueen, who was a Miss Pickens, of the famous family of that name. My remembrance of Mrs. McQueen is always associated with that of the sudden death of Preston Brooks, our neighbour at Brown’s Hotel. At the time of this fatality, Dr. May, the eminent surgeon, was in the building in attendance upon Mrs. McQueen’s little boy, who was suffering from some throat trouble.