In those days of Washington’s splendour, Mrs. Campbell and her daughter Henrietta were no less distinguished for their culture, intellectuality, and exclusiveness. Mrs. Campbell was the first Southern woman to adopt the English custom of designating her coloured servant as “my man.” At the home of the Campbells one met not only the legal lights of Washington, but scientists and travellers, as if law and the sciences were drawn near to each other by natural selection. Professor Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, was a frequent visitor at this home, as was also Professor Maury, the grand road-master of the ocean, who, by the distribution of his buoys, made a track in the billows of the Atlantic for the safe passing of ships. I remember an amusing visit paid by a party from our mess to the observatory of Professor Maury. It was an occasion of special interest. Jupiter was displaying his brilliancy in a marvellous way. For no particular reason, in so far as I could see, the Professor’s great telescope seemed to require adjusting for the benefit of each of the bevy present. I noticed Professor Maury’s eye twinkling as he went on with this necessary (?) preliminary, asking, betimes: “What do you see? Nothing clearly? Well, permit me!” And after several experiments he would secure, at last, the right focus. When all of his guests had been treated to a satisfactory view of the wonders of the sky, Professor Maury delivered himself somewhat as follows: “Now, ladies, whilst you have been studying the heavenly bodies, I have been studying you!” and the quizzical expression deepened in his eye. “Go on,” we assented. “Well,” said the Professor, “I have a bill before Congress,” (mentioning its nature) “and if you ladies don’t influence your husbands to vote for it, I intend _to publish the ages of each and every one of you to the whole of Washington_!” Remembering the mutability of political life, it was and remains a source of astonishment to me that in the Government circles of the fifties were comprised so many distinguished men who had retained their positions in the political foreground for so many years; years, moreover, in which an expanding territory was causing the envy for office to spread, infecting the ignorant as well as the wise, and causing contestants to multiply in number and their passions to increase in violence at each election.