The President’s levee and the Speaker’s reception bear a strong resemblance to each other. Everybody is admitted to Speaker Blaine’s the same as the Executive Mansion. All the great men are there except the President, and all the pretty girls, in their best clothes, are cast up on this fashionable beach by the social waves of the people. If there is one sight in this wicked world, more pitiful than another, it is to see a poor widow’s daughter, or an innocent young Treasury employee in her simple robes of muslin, apparently raised for a brief time to the social platform of wealth and power. In no place on the face of the globe can the two opposite social elements come together as at a President’s levee or a Speaker’s reception. Wealth is pitted against poverty; strength against weakness, and the result sometimes is brought forth in a fruit more deceitful, bitter, and dusty than the apples of the Dead Sea. It is the night of the Speaker’s social reunion. Carriages draw up before the handsome imitation brownstone residence. These vehicles deposit the precious perfumed darlings--the aristocracy--the cream of society. Gay cavaliers dance attendance on these flounced, frizzled, bejeweled butterflies. These cavaliers generally wear hats and overcoats which look as if they had been borrowed from the old-clothes man, or purchased at a bargain at the second-hand store hard by; but as no better place on the earth can be found for losing one’s outside wrappings than these levees and receptions, the men show their good sense by going prepared. The cars are freighted to overflowing. The ambitious young mechanic takes his young sweetheart on his arm and pays his respects to the Speaker. The suite of parlors at the brown mansion are on the first floor, and through the broad open doors, all newcomers can be inspected as they march to an upper story to be divested of wrappings, and it is quite as unsafe to judge what is beneath the ugly waterproofs as to guess what is under the caterpillar’s skin. Mirrors are provided in the dressing-room, where jaded maid and faded matrons can assist nature to carry out her most pressing needs. Boxes of pearl powder, brushes, combs, pins, dressing-maid are convenient, and if the last finishing touch of the toilet is omitted, the lady of the mansion is not to blame. It must be mentioned, however, that it is only the silk that powders in public; muslin and merino are the spectators in the scene. “Belle, don’t you think one of my eyebrows is a little blacker than the other?” “Yes; I think they both need touching up.” “Too late now! Why didn’t you tell me before we left home? There, take up my handkerchief and rub it off.”