There, in the great kitchen of the first nation on the face of the earth, free-born American citizens sit down contentedly and eat French dishes, with bull-frogs in them, I dare say, and eat them, too, on the European plan. The European plan! as if the fine old fashion set by the Pilgrim Fathers was not good enough for their descendants! It's enough to curdle the blood in one's veins to see what our country is coming to, with a plan of broken-down old Europe in the very basement of our Capitol. Do our members of Congress remember the time when their fathers ate samp and milk on a table set against the wall, with one leaf spread? Sometimes the richest of them in our State got a little maple molasses with the samp, but oftener it was skim milk, and nothing else. But men were men in those days; I--that is, I have heard my mother say so--of course, I wasn't old enough to know exactly at what time samp and milk got out of fashion as a first-class domestic meal. I can't help but think, sisters, that the male sex began to degenerate while we were children, or we should never have been left in our native village to form a society, which seems destined to enlighten this generation, without increasing it. Well, sisters, Cousin Dempster found me sitting on those hard, beautiful marble steps, thinking over these things in a saddening way. He insisted on it that I should leave off my subterraneous investigations, as he called my travels in the basement, and see Congress meet. I declare, it's a Sabbath day's journey from one end of that great long marble building to the other. The marble stairs I had been resting on came up near the Senate chamber. Cousin Dempster said, "But perhaps we had better go over to the House first." "Whose house?" says I, getting out of patience; "I thought we had come to see Congress." "So we have," says he; "it will assemble in a few minutes, so we must hurry and get into the House." "Why don't Congress assemble in this building?" says I. "Of course it does, at the other end," says he. "Then what on earth do you want to take me into any other house for? I want to see Congress! As for the houses in Washington, they are no great shakes, after all. New York wouldn't take the best of 'em as a gift." "Cousin Phœmie," says Dempster, sort of impatient, "you are the most extraordinary combination of a woman I ever saw." I stopped short and made him a curtsey to the ground--slow, graceful, and infinitely sarcastic. He seemed to feel it keenly. "Judges, a little more competent than you are, have said as much before," I observed, scathing him through and through with my eyes. "I mean no offence," says he, "but really you are the brightest, and--and stupidest woman!" "Girl, if you please," says I. "Well, girl. In some things a child could teach you; in others, you fairly dazzle the brightest of us."