The classes of Washington society in the fifties were peculiarly distinct. They were not unlike its topography, which is made up of many small circles and triangles, into each of which run tributary streets and avenues. In the social life, each division in the Congressional body was as a magnetic circle, attracting to itself by way of defined radii those whose tastes or political interests were in sympathy with it. Not less prominent than the Cabinet circle (outranking it, in fact), and fully as interesting by reason of its undisguised preference for things solid, scientific and intellectual, was the Judiciary or Supreme Court set. The several Justices that composed this august body, together with their wives and daughters, formed a charmed circle into which the merely light-minded would scarcely have ventured. Here one met the wittiest and the weightiest minds of the capital, and here, perhaps more than in any other coterie, the new-comer was impressed with what Messrs. Nicolay and Hay describe as “the singular charm of Washington life.” In the Supreme Court circle, the conditions attending Congressional life in those strenuous times forced themselves less boldly upon one. Here one discussed philosophies, inventions, history, perhaps, and the arts; seldom the fashions, and as seldom the _on dits_. The Nestor of that circle in the fifties was quaint old Roger B. Taney (pronounced Tawney), who, after various political disappointments, including a refusal by the Senate to confirm his appointment as a member of the Cabinet, had received his appointment to the Supreme Court bench in 1836. Upon the death of Chief Justice Marshall, Judge Taney became the head of the Supreme Court body; thus, for more than thirty years, he had been a prominent personage in the country’s legal circles and a conspicuous resident in Washington. He was an extremely plain-looking man, with frail body, which once rose tall and erect, but now was so bent that one always thought of him as small, and with a head which made me think of a withered nut. Swarthy of skin, but grey-haired, Judge Taney was a veritable skeleton, “all mind and no body”; yet his opinion settled questions that agitated the nation, and his contemporaries agreed he was the ablest man who had ever sat upon the Supreme Court bench. Judge Taney’s daughters, gifted and brilliant women, were seldom seen in society, but from choice or necessity chose bread-winning careers. They were great draughtswomen and made coloured maps, for which, in those days of expanding territory, there was a great and constant need.