Mrs. Grant at Home—A Reception—Feeling Good-Natured—Looking After One’s Friends—Ready to Forgive—Mr. Grant’s “Likeable Side”—The East Room on a Reception Day—“The Nation’s Parlor”—Rags and Tatters Departed—The Work of Relic-hunters—Internal Arrangements—Eight Presidents, All In a Row—“As Large as Life”—Shadows of the Departed—A Present from the Sultan of Turkey—A List of Finery—A Scene Not Easily Forgotten—How They Wept for Their Martyr—Tales which a Room Might Tell—David, Jonathan and Sir Philip Sidney Superseded—Underneath the Gold and Lace—“Into the Ear of a Foolish Girl”—“The Census of Spittoons”—“A Horror in Our Land”—An Under-bred People—“We Talk too Loud”—Preliminaries to Perfection—“More Than Shakespeare’s Women”—The Shadow of Human Nature—Two “Quizzing” Ladies—Nothing Sacred to Them—An Illogical Dame—Her “Precarious Organ”—A “Vice that Thrives Amid Christian Graces”—How some Pious People “Avenge their Defrauded Souls”—A Lady of Many Colors—“A New Woman”—A Vegetable Comparison—What “a Good Little Girl” was Allowed To Do—The Lady of the Manor—Women Who are Not Ashamed of Womanhood—Observed and Admired of All—Another “Reigning _Belle_”—Sketch of a Perfect Woman—After the Lapse of Generations—The “German”—“You Had Better Be Shut Up”—The “Withering” of Many American Women—Full Dress and No Dress—What the Princess Ghika Thinks—A Young Girl’s Dress—“That Dreadful Woman”—“_My_ Wife’s” Dress—The Resolution of a Young Man. It is Tuesday—Mrs. Grant’s day—and all the gay world is going to the White House, besides a portion of that world which is not gay. Mrs. Grant’s morning receptions are very popular, and deservedly so. This is not because the lady is in any sense a conversationalist, or has a fine tact in receiving, but rather, I think, because she is thoroughly good-natured, and for the time, at least, makes other people feel the same. At any rate, there was never so little formality or so much genuine sociability in the day-receptions at the White House as at the present time. General Babcock pronounces your name without startling you out of your boots by shouting it, as on such occasions is usually done. He passes it to the President, the President to Mrs. Grant, Mrs. Grant to ladies receiving with her. After exchanging salutations with each, you pass on to make room for others, and to find your own personal friends dispersed through the great rooms. They are in each of them; loitering in the Blue Room, where the receiving is going on; chatting in the Green Room; promenading in the East Room. You may go through the long corridor into the state dining-room, into the conservatories, full of flowers and fragrance, and back, if you choose, to your starting-point, where the President and Mrs. Grant are still receiving.