The Olivia Letters: Being Some History of Washington City for Forty Years as Told by the Letters of a Newspaper CorrespondentBriggs, Emily Edson
History
The Olivia Letters: Being Some History of Washington City for Forty Years as Told by the Letters of a Newspaper Correspondent
Briggs, Emily Edson
United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1933; Washington (D.C.) -- History
What is that quality which makes the Northern and Southern women
so unlike? It cannot be tasted. It cannot be described. It is the
same kind of difference which exists between a white, mealy Northern
potato and a Southern yam; a Baldwin apple and a banana in the
Northern woods and Southern jungle--but only a man’s descriptive
powers can do this subject justice.
Mrs. Attorney-General Williams was there, most talked about,
most superb woman, in some respects, in Washington. One of your
Cleopatras. Such a creation requires a separate paper, just as some
gems must have a solitaire setting. And there was Mary S. Nealy,
so well-known in letters and art at the capital. There was Mrs.
Ames, the amiable and accomplished daughter of the Secretary of the
Interior, as well as the widow of the late Admiral Dahlgren, who by
the way, is fast earning a place in literature by her perseverance
and talent. Possessing an ample fortune, a leader in the fashionable
world whenever she chooses to reign, yet, like Lady Jane Grey, she
chooses the solitude of the scholar, and delights in the labor of her
pen. But newspaper letters must come to an end, because there is no
space to write what might be said about the gentlemen who were there.
Attorney-General Williams and Senator Stewart alone are as much as
one newspaper can carry, if all their good deeds are related. So this
will end with a little paper which Mr. King read between the “acts.”
He said it had been “picked up in the hall,” in all probability where
he dropped it.
“THE GRACES.
“By grace divine we come together here,
To pass the time in pleasure and good cheer;
To study all the graces that adorn
The maiden fair or widow ‘all forlorn,’
The grace of speech, of music, and of song,
The grace of conversation, short or long.
But name the _graces_, these and all the rest,
_Grace_ Greenwood is the grace we love the best.”
OLIVIA.
CARL SCHURZ.
A FIELD DAY IN THE SENATE AND STELLAR ATTRACTIONS.
WASHINGTON, _February 26, 1874_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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