Yesterday afternoon my money gave out at 3:20, and since that my mind has been clearer and society has made fewer demands on me. At first I thought I would obtain employment at the Treasury Department as exchange editor in the greenback room. Then I remembered that I would get very faint before I could go through a competitive examination, and, in the meantime, I might lose social caste by wearing my person on the outside of my clothes. So I have resolved to write you a chatty letter about Washington, assuring you that I am well, and asking you kindly to consider the enclosed tabulated bill of expenses, as I need the money to buy Christmas presents and get home with. Poker is one of the curses of national legislation. I have several times heard prominent foreigners say, in their own language--think ing, no doubt, that I could not understand them--that the members of the American Congress did not betray any emotion on their countenances. One foreigner from Liverpool, who thought I could not understand his language, said that our congressmen had a way of looking as though they did not know very much. When he afterwards played poker with those same men he saw that the look was acquired. One man told me that his vacant look had been as good as $50,000 to him, whether he stood pat or drew to an ostensible flush while really holding four bullets. So far I have not been over to the Capitol, preferring to have Congress kind of percolate into my room, two or three at a time; but unless you can honor the inclosed way-bill I shall be forced to go over to the House to-morrow and write something for the paper. Since I have been writing this I have been led to inquire whether it would be advisable for me to remain here through the entire session or not. It will be unusually long, lasting perhaps clear into July, and I find that the stenographers as a general thing get a pretty accurate and spicey account of the proceedings, much more so than I can, and as you will see by inclosed statement it is going to cost more to keep me here than I figured on. My idea was that board and lodgings would be the main items of expense, but I struck a low-priced place, where, by clubbing together with some plain gentlemen from a distance who have been waiting here three years for political recognition, and who do not feel like surrounding themselves with a hotel, we get a plain room with six beds in it. The room overlooks, the District of Columbia, and the first man in has the choice of beds, with the privilege of inviting friends to a limited number. We lunch plainly in the lower part of the building in a standing position without restraint or finger-bowls. So board is not the principal item of expense, though of course I do not wish to put up at a place where I will be a disgrace to the paper.