I have in mind a family living in Washington city, where there is, as everyone knows, a highly seasoned and heterogeneous society, a society utterly different from any that is to be met with elsewhere in this country, and one which on that account offers peculiarly excellent opportunities for study on the part of those foreign observers who enjoy being misled about us. If there is any place in the United States where the American mother has opportunity for her administrative genius, it is at the national capital. The peculiar conditions created by political, diplomatic and administrative forces in the capital of a republic, the prevalence of the open door, and the presence of both domestic and foreign transients who do not always appreciate the limitations of liberal custom, make Washington a place apart. A single instance may serve to illustrate the firmness of the women who actually control social destiny. Under circumstances which it is not necessary to detail, a certain elegant attaché of one of the legations began calling upon the young lady of the family I have named. He was a handsome and entertaining young man, easy with women and cordial with men, glib in the arts, himself a good singer, and speaking English with a fascinating inflection. One evening the mother said quietly to the daughter: “Grace, the next time the Count calls I wish that you would ask to be excused.” The daughter looked her astonishment. She was not greatly interested in the count, yet he was very agreeable, and she said so. But her mother said, “Grace, you must trust me.” And when the count came again he was made to understand. It was a simple, unsensational incident, but because I knew the liberal ethics of the mother and the apparently complete independence of the daughter (she was twenty-three) the incident the more effectively reminded me that though the American mother does not feel it incumbent upon her to closely hover over her offspring with a solicitous wing, she not the less observes and governs. It so happened that the gilded count a few months later became involved in so gross a scandal that his withdrawal from Washington became imperative. Influence in his government saved him from worse annoyance than transfer to another court. The mother’s instinct had been true. And who can doubt that a liberally reared girl, when she herself assumes the office of mother, will, without having to make sinister payment for her knowledge, be the better equipped for a judgment of the world in the interest of those who may be dependent upon her authority?