With the termination of the present week we have the last state dinner at the White House. That event probably marks the close of the fashionable season. With the New Year these dinners are inaugurated, and every Wednesday of each week the President is expected to entertain a given number of Senators and Members. Thirty-six persons only can be seated in the banqueting hall of the Executive Mansion, consequently it is impossible that all the people’s representatives, during one season, shall have the honor of crossing their feet under the national mahogany. If the President would follow the custom of other nations, and invite only men to these official banquets, it would happen that all, or nearly all, of our Congressmen would be thus honored yearly. But the fairer portion of creation is mixed ingeniously in these highly important state matters. Consequently the same number of public men are obliged to dine elsewhere. In the infancy of the Republic the President had time to bestow upon his guests, as well as plenty of room, to entertain the nation’s limited number of Congressmen. In those days women were necessary to fill up the chinks of conversation; at the same time no public man was left out in the cold for a whole year because his seat was taken. It has now become a matter of great delicacy to choose who shall be invited to the White House, and who shall not; but no President has given less offence than the present Executive. It is, however, only amongst the women, who are the social rulers at the capital, that any feeling is expressed, for the Congressmen who declare state dinners to be “bores,” and those who escape the trial, consider themselves fortunate.