steel rapier, is talking to the host of the evening. Count Raasloff, the Danish minister, is exchanging compliments with Major-General Hunter. Though all the grand entertainments in Washington are graced by many of the diplomats resident here, they seem to get through the evening as if it were a part of their official duty. They cling together like any other colony surrounded by “outside barbarians.” The marble face of a petite French countess never relaxed a line from its icy frigidity until she found herself stranded in the dressing room up stairs, safely in the hands of the foreign waiting-maid. Then such chattering--the artificial singing birds in the supper room were entirely eclipsed. But let us leave at once these cold, haughty dames, who have nothing to boast of but the so-called blue blood in their veins. The world would never know they existed, unless some pen-artist sketched their portraits. We have had no dazzling foreign star in society here since the departure of Lady Napier. Oh! spirit of a fairy godmother, guide our pen while we touch our own American belles, the fairest sisterhood under the sun. “Who is the belle of the ball room to-night?” every one asks. You must not be told her name, reader, but you shall know everything else. Just imagine Madame Pompadour in the palmiest days of her regal beauty, stepping out of the old worm-eaten frame, imbued with life and clad in one of those white brocaded silks upon which has been flung the most exquisite flowers by the hand of the weaver. Hair puffed and frizzled and curled until the lady herself could not tell where the real leaves off and the false begins. The front breadth of dress is not more than half a yard in depth, but the long-pointed train at the back could not be measured by the eye; a yard-stick must be brought into requisition. There is a dainty little patch on her left cheek, and another still less charming on her temple. A necklace of rare old-fashioned mosaic is clasped around her throat, and a member of Congress from Iowa, who is said to be a judge, pronounces her to be the most beautiful woman in Washington. Oh! that newspaper letters did not have to come to an end. Room for one of Chicago’s fair brides, the only beloved daughter of Senator Harlan, Mr. Robert Lincoln’s accomplished wife. She looked every inch the lily in this sisterhood of flowers. She wore heavy, corded white silk, with any quantity of illusion and pearls. So far hath the story been told without a word about the feast. The land, the sky and the ocean were rifled, and made to pay tribute to the occasion. Artificial singing birds twittered in the flowers that adorned the tables, while a rainbow of light encircled the same. This beautiful effect was accomplished by the gas-fitter’s art, and this exquisite device came very near bringing Chicago to grief, for the Honorable N. B. Judd found himself at the end of the magic bow, but instead of finding the bag of gold he just escaped a good “scorching.”