"Thank you," says I; "just crown me with bitter-sweet, and have done with it. If there is anything that riles me more than another, it is a double and twisted compliment." "There, there! do be reasonable, and hurry along," says Dempster, a-trying to shuffle out of the whole thing; "don't you see the members crowding into the House?" "I haven't seen the house yet," says I, not half pacified. "Of course not--how can you, till we get there?" Cousin Dempster walked on, and, of course, I had to follow. "Wait one minute," says I, "while I look at this great round picture overhead. What on earth is it all about? The women up there look mighty unsafe. Now, what room is this, with its roof in the sky, and its floor solid stone?" "It is the rotunda," says he; "the national pictures are all around you, but we haven't time to look at them now--some other day." I couldn't help looking back, for such a room I never saw in my born days. It was like a stone park roofed in so high up that the pictured women overhead seemed perched among the clouds. Over them the light came pouring like water down a cataract, filling the broad space below as if it had been all out of doors. But I had no time to see more, for Cousin Dempster led me through a hallway and into another round room, except at one end, where a gallery ran straight across and then curved around the whole room, hooping it in like a horseshoe. In front of the straight gallery ran a row of stone pillars--tall, large, and shiny as glass--spotted, too, like the leopards in a show, and towering up like the pillars in Solomon's Temple, which the Queen of Sheba travelled so far to examine. The idea that she took all that trouble to get acquainted with Solomon, is just ridiculous. Why, it would have taken the hymeneal monarch a whole lifetime to have introduced her to his family in a decorous way. Besides, if he provided for his own household out of the government, only think how busy he must have been in finding places for the relations of all his wives! No doubt he let the Queen of Sheba see his Temple, and left her to be entertained by two or three hundred of his wives. Not being a ladies' man, what more could he do? Well, as Cousin Dempster says, I do sometimes let my pen run away with me; but when it turns toward the Scriptural history of my sex, I let it run. XLV. RANDOLPH ROGERS' BRONZE DOORS. "Well," says I to Cousin D., "what room do you call this?" "Oh, this is the old House," says he. The old house! Sisters, there are times when I think Dempster is beside himself. I did not deign to answer him, except with a look that would have stopped the sap running from a young maple in the brightest April day you ever saw. He didn't seem to mind it, though, but went on as if I hadn't pierced him with my eyes.