Mr. Chesnut, in high spirits, dines to-day with the Louisiana delegation. Breakfasted with “Constitution” Browne, who is appointed Assistant Secretary of State, and so does not go to Washington. There was at table the man who advertised for a wife, with the wife so obtained. She was not pretty. We dine at Mr. Pollard’s and go to a ball afterward at Judge Bibb’s. The New York Herald says Lincoln stood before Washington’s picture at his inauguration, which was taken by the country as a good sign. We are always frantic for a good sign. Let us pray that a Cæsar or a Napoleon may be sent us. That would be our best sign of success. But they still say, “No war.” Peace let it be, kind Heaven! Dr. De Leon called, fresh from Washington, and says General Scott is using all his power and influence to prevent officers from the South resigning their commissions, among other things promising that they shall never be sent against us in case of war. Captain Ingraham, in his short, curt way, said: “That will never do. If they take their government’s pay they must do its fighting.” A brilliant dinner at the Pollards’s. Mr. Barnwell[10] took me down. Came home and found the Judge and Governor Moore waiting to go with me to the Bibbs’s. And they say it is dull in Montgomery! Clayton, fresh from Washington, was at the party and told us “there was to be peace.” _February 28th._—In the drawing-room a literary lady began a violent attack upon this mischief-making South Carolina. She told me she was a successful writer in the magazines of the day, but when I found she used “incredible” for “incredulous,” I said not a word in defense of my native land. I left her “incredible.” Another person came in, while she was pouring upon me her home troubles, and asked if she did not know I was a Carolinian. Then she gracefully reversed her engine, and took the other tack, sounding our praise, but I left her incredible and I remained incredulous, too. Brewster says the war specks are growing in size. Nobody at the North, or in Virginia, believes we are in earnest. They think we are sulking and that Jeff Davis and Stephens[11] are getting up a very pretty little comedy. The Virginia delegates were insulted at the peace conference; Brewster said, “kicked out.” The Judge thought Jefferson Davis rude to him when the latter was Secretary of War. Mr. Chesnut persuaded the Judge to forego his private wrong for the public good, and so he voted for him, but now his old grudge has come back with an increased venomousness. What a pity to bring the spites of the old Union into this new one! It seems to me already men are willing to risk an injury to our cause, if they may in so doing hurt Jeff Davis.