Nailed to the stony turret of the celebrated Shepherd mansion floats the yellow flag of the Orient. Within its rocky battlements may be found that which represents in the highest sense Imperial China. The solid walls around this legation must remind the occupants of the famous one of their native country. It is very painful to those who have basked in the prodigality of the Shepherd hospitality to find them gone, and the magnificence usurped by Eastern pagans--one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of furniture, carpets and “silken hangings.” It would take the space of a column to describe this modern dwelling from cellar to turret, and leave out the terrapin, white grasses and champagne. “Boss Shepherd,” rather Alexander the Second, just now is in eclipse. We can afford to wait until “Batipolas” has been well stirred up, then the Shepherd will return to his flock, who, it is said, were once well sheared. But in the meantime our wool will grow, and if we must have a king give us one of the Shepherd kind. From one of the most elegant and superbly furnished Washington homes the “Bryans” departed, to form new associations in far-off Colorado. At the Bryan fireside used to gather the most distinguished people known in science, literature and art. The only daughter of the house is one of Healy’s most promising pupils, and it is safe to say that Miss Bryan is the finest portrait painter of either sex of her own age in this country. This compliment is not paid her by the writer, who is unable to judge upon so important a point, but it is the decision of men who have studied art, both at home and abroad. The only son, a very young man, is already a successful lawyer, and serving his adopted State in her legislature. These instances are given to show that children reared at the capital amidst the surroundings of the most luxurious wealth need not necessarily be spoiled. The closing of the “Kilbourne mansion” and the departure of the wife and two beautiful daughters to foreign lands, which happened in the interim, like the flitting of the Bryans, created a loss which has by no means been repaired. “The Kilbournes” have returned, but not to the classic home which grew stone by stone under the supervising eye of its late artistic mistress. Beneath its hospitable roof, evening after evening, were gathered the elite of the foreign legations, with members of the Army and Navy and others most distinguished in the world of literature and art. A landscape painter of no mean ability, and a writer such as would secure her a position on any of our leading newspapers, Mrs. Kilbourne made her elegant home the most attractive to journalists beyond any other at the national capital.