I have spoken of our Washington dressmakers; how incomplete would be my memories of the capital did I fail to mention here Mrs. Rich, the favourite mantua-maker of those days, within whose power it lay to transform provincial new-comers, often already over-stocked with ill-made costumes and absurdly trimmed bonnets, into women of fashion! Mrs. Rich was the only Reconstructionist, I think I may safely say, on whom Southern ladies looked with unqualified approval. A Reconstructionist? She was more; she was a physician who cured many ills for the women of the Congressional circles, ills of a kind that could never be reached by our favourite physician, Dr. Johnston, though he had turned surgeon and competed in a contest of stitches; for, to the care of the wives of our statesmen each season, came pretty heiresses from far-off States, to see the gay Government City, under their experienced guardianship, and to meet its celebrities. These, often mere buds of girls, were wont to come to the capital supplied with costly brocade and heavy velvet gowns, fit in quality for the stateliest dame; with hats weighty with plumes that might only be worn appropriately in the helmet of a prince or a Gainsborough duchess, and with diamonds enough to please the heart of a matron. To strip these slim maidens of such untoward finery, often of antediluvian, not to say outlandish, cut and fashion, and to reapparel them in such soft fabrics as became their youth and station, was no small or easy task for her who had undertaken to chaperone them. Nor were these sartorial _faux pas_ confined to the girl novices and their far-off kind, and usually lavish parents. Many a charming matron came to the capital as innocent of any knowledge of the demands of fashionable life as a schoolgirl. There was the wife of a distinguished legislator who afterward presided over an American embassy abroad, a sweet little nun of a woman, who arrived in Washington with a wardrobe that doubtless had caused her country neighbours many a pang of envy. It comprised garments made of the costliest fabrics, but, alas! which had been cut up so ridiculously by the local seamstress that the innocent wearer’s first appearance in the gay world of the capital was the signal for irrepressible smiles of amusement and simpers of derision from the more heartless.