that superb tact which only a Josephine knew how to practice, she united the contending social elements. She thawed the frozen ocean of diplomatic ceremony and bade the foreign fortress open its doors to her countrywomen as well as herself. It is true she had standing at her right hand the incomparable Harriet Lane, of the White House, who held the last royal scepter of this extinct line. History rarely records the fact that distinguished leaders are beautiful, but popular acclamation gave to both these women the fairest crown. Alike in style of type, both opaline blondes, perfect in form and feature, with Titian-tinted flesh and golden hair, such as the old masters gave their beloved Madonnas, they held their emblems of power with a firmer grasp than did Marie Antoinette, a woman of the same mould. In the days which marked the magnificence of the Bodisco and Lane regime, beauty and grace were not punished as under the Grant dynasty. George H. Williams, of Oregon, would have been Chief Justice of the Republic to-day had his wife been one of the “ugly sisters.” “They pared their heels and they pared their toes,” but the Prince did not dare defy the “Sisters.” Underneath the political drift lies the stony social strata which decides the character of the products above. With the coming of civil war a society mildew fell upon Georgetown. Neighbors and old friends looked upon each other with mutual distrust. As a general rule most of the fighting element rolled southward. In a few instances a house might be found divided against itself. Once a Georgetown mother appeared before Abraham Lincoln to beg for the life of her son, who had been caught as a guerrilla with arms in his hands. “My eldest son,” said the mother, “is a trusty officer in the Union army; my youngest, my darling, was one of Mosby’s guerrillas.” “Miserable mother!” said the great President. “God help you, for I cannot. I know who you are! This is the third time your boy has been caught; mercy is beyond me!” and the man with streaming eyes supported the faltering steps of the wretched woman beyond the threshold. At this period social life was dead, apparently beyond resurrection. Mrs. Southworth, the noted novelist, and a prominent resident of Georgetown, nailed the stars and stripes over the front gate, saying, “Whoever comes to my door will have to pass under that.” With patriotic zeal she gave her only daughter, Lotta, to be the wife of a gallant Union captain, and her only son, who was studying and not strong enough to go into the field, was attached as medicine boy to one of the hospitals. But these deprivations were not enough sacrifice. Either in camp or hospital she caught the smallpox. “I cannot prevent the soldiers from taking the smallpox,” said the great novelist, “but I can suffer with them; there is some consolation in that.”