We have organized a club which we call "The National Rational International Dining Club," to which belong Mrs. Bigelow Lawrence, her sister Miss Chapman, Mr. de Schlözer, Carl Schurz, Aristarchi Bey (the Turkish Minister), Count Dönhoff (Secretary to the German Legation), and ourselves. So when we are free, and not invited elsewhere, we dine together at one another's houses. I am the president, Mrs. Lawrence the vice-president, Schurz the treasurer, Schlözer the sergeant-at-arms, and Johan has the most difficult--and (as Mr. Schurz calls it) the "onerous"--duty of recognizing and calling attention to the jokes, which in his conscientious attempts to seize he often loses entirely. The "rational" part is the menu. We are allowed a soup, one roast, one vegetable and dessert, and _two_ wines, one of which, according to the regulations, _must be good_. We do not even need so much, for there is more laughing than eating. A stuffed goose from the Smithsonian Institution serves as a _milieu de table_, and is sent, on the day of the dinner, to the person who gives it. We always have music. Schurz and Schlözer play the piano alternately, and I do the singing. I must say that a more appreciative audience than our co-diners cannot be imagined. We have laws and by-laws written on large foolscap paper, bearing a huge seal which looks very official. Mr. Schurz carries it in his inside pocket, and sometimes at large dinners he pulls it out and begins reading it with the greatest attention, and every one at the table believes that there is something very important going on in politics. But we, the initiated, know that the document is the law of the N.R.I. Dining Club. Then, when all eyes are fastened on him, he puts the paper deliberately back in his pocket, with a sly wink at the members. Mr. Schurz is now Secretary of the Interior, and a great personage. When one thinks that he hardly knew a word of our language when he came to this country (a young man of twenty), and that now he is one of our first orators, one cannot help but admire him. Because he has entirely identified himself with the politics of our country he has risen to the high position which he now holds. You said, when you heard him deliver that oration at Harvard College, that you were astonished that any foreigner could have such complete command of the language. He is integrity itself, with a great mind free from all guile, and is filled with the enthusiasm and vivacity of youth. During the revolutionary movement in Germany in 1848 he helped a political friend escape from the Schandau prison, and on account of that was himself condemned to death. However, he managed to evade pursuit and took refuge in America, where he has lived ever since.