Hope flamed up again when all seemed darkest. As is well known to all people of information, the Sunday assemblage in the Hall of Representatives at the Capitol is frequently varied by the preaching of distinguished clergymen of various sects and denominations. Being rather given to Free Thought, though not to Atheism, I had thus far refrained from attending these quasi-official services, much as I had heard about them as the social levees of the city. Chance, however, brought to Washington a noted Catholic bishop, and the announcement that he would preach the following Sabbath in place of the chaplain stirred me with the hope of a pleasant possibility. That Sunday I went early to the assemblage hall, dressed in my best attire, my chin swathed high enough by my pudding cravat to shame a London beau, my trousers cut to the most modish, baggy shape and flapping loosely about my shins. Early as I arrived, I found no small part of the crowd ahead of me, and I had to thrust and elbow my way here and there among the beaux, across the hall, before I could satisfy myself that the senorita was not present. Dashed, but by no means disheartened, I chose a post of vantage on the elevated edge of a niche, from which I could watch the entrance. Already I had had occasion to make my bows to the fashionably costumed dames and misses whose gay talk and manners lent to the Hall more the aspect of a ballroom than that of a house of worship or a legislative chamber. As the company thronged in the gallant Representatives yielded their seats to the ladies and stood beside them if acquainted, or, if the fair ones came attended, left the aisles to the escorts and withdrew into the lobbies or warmed themselves at the fireplaces. Seeing the rapidity with which the seats were being filled by the ladies, it occurred to me to pay one of the House attendants to bring me a chair. By the time the man fetched it the aisles were so crowded with extra seats and the throng of standing men that the only available space left for a chair was in the statueless niche behind me. Though the width of the Hall lay between it and the platform behind the Speaker's chair, I could do no better, and the elevation of the position would, as I had found, enable one to see, if not hear, over the heads of the noisy assembly. The nearness to the entrance was in another way a decided advantage, since it would enable me to address the senorita without abandoning my seat to capture by the nearest beau of the many chairless ladies. From the moment the chair was handed me I was subjected to the wordless attack of numerous fair ones, whose glances ranged all the way from soft appeal to scornful reproach. And still the senorita failed to appear!