warmest respects, you have a most able coadjutor. _Dowdies_, dowdies won't do for European courts, Paris especially. There and at London the character of the minister's wife is almost as important as his own. It is the very place for her. There she would dazzle and charm, and surely the salons of Paris must have far greater attractions for her than the yahoos of Washington." The last words show Randolph's estimate of Washington society in the mass; but never was there a more prejudiced or bitterer man than he of Roanoke, and his general verdict must not be implicitly accepted. In 1836 there occurred at the capital an event which was in itself of note, as being contrary to the theories of the day, and which is yet more noteworthy as the first instance in America of a practice which in our day has become common,--the entrance of a woman into journalism. Mrs. Anne Royall founded a paper in the capital, giving it the somewhat suggestive name of the _Huntress_, and dedicated it chiefly to the promulgation of fashionable news. Thus Mrs. Royall not only became the mother of American women journalists, but absolutely the pioneer of that long line of society reporters who were to become in later days such an accepted and welcomed feature of the social world. The office of the _Huntress_ was on Capitol Hill, and the paper was published every Saturday; it was eagerly welcomed by society, which up to that time had found its doings sadly neglected in the columns of the journals. Finding the innovation received with a warmth which left no doubt of its popularity, it was adopted by Nathaniel Parker Willis in his letters to the New York _Mirror_, and by James Gordon Bennett in his correspondence to the _Courier_; but Mrs. Royall had the honor, if honor it be, of leading the new movement in journalism. Sooth to say, Mrs. Royall was more progressive than talented in such matters; her pen pictures of the chief components of Washington society showed a distressing sameness, the women whom she favored being always described as of great beauty, having faces of the classic oval, their hair raven or golden in hue, and forms that rivalled that of Venus, while the men were "giants of intellect, with penetrating eyes and expansive brows." Nor was she more restrained in her reprobation than in her admiration, or truer to fact; and John Quincy Adams, when he described her as "the virago-errant in enchanted armor," dealt with her to the full as gently as she deserved.