January 9. We had a beautiful dinner here last night--very brilliant too, as we all were going to a ball at the Russian embassy afterward. All the diplomats and army men were in uniform--and one or two of the army men were really brilliant. But none of the diplomats. They say that no nation sends us its best or even its second best. It seems that diplomats don't amount to much in this day of cables. Those who have any intelligence naturally go to courts, where the atmosphere is congenial and where there are chances for decorations. So we get only the stiffs and stuffs--with a few exceptions. If it weren't for their women-- But, to return to our dinner--Mrs. Burke went in with the German ambassador, and I saw that they were getting on famously. He is a very clever man in a small way, and has almost an American sense of humor. As soon as he saw that she intended what she said to be laughed at he gave himself up to it. "Your Mrs. Burke is charming, Miss Talltowers," said he to me after dinner. "She ranks with Bret Harte and Mark Twain. It's only in America that you find old women who make you forget to wish you were with young and pretty women." Jim Lafollette took me in--the first time I've had him here. I must say he behaved very well and was the handsomest man in the room. But he never has much to say that is worth hearing. Though conversation at Washington in society isn't on any too high a plane, as a rule--how could conversation in a mixed society anywhere be very high?--still it isn't the wishy-washy chatter and gossip that Jim Lafollette delights in. Of course, army officers almost always go in for gossip--that comes from sitting round with their women at lonely posts where nothing occurs. And they, as a rule, either gossip or simply drivel when they talk to women, because all the women that ever liked them liked them for their brass buttons, and all the women they ever liked they liked for their pretty faces and empty heads. So, usually, to get an army officer at dinner is to sit with a bowl of soft taffy held to your lips and a huge spoonful of it thrust into your mouth every time you stop talking. That's true of many of the statesmen, too, especially the heavyweights. I suppose I'm wrong, but I can't help suspecting a man without a sense of humor of being a solemn fraud. You'd think American women, at the capital, at least, would be interested in politics. But they're not. They say it's the vulgarity of the intriguing and of most of the best intriguers that makes them dislike politics, even here. I suspect there's another reason. We women are so petted by the men that we don't have to know anything to make ourselves agreeable. If we're pretty and listen well that's all that's necessary. So, why get headaches learning things?