“February 17. I am at the National Hotel, which is now quite crowded, but I have an endurable room with furniture hardly endurable, for it is hard to find, in this hotel at least, a table or a bureau that can stand on its four proper legs, rocking and tetering like a gold-digger’s washing-pan, unless the lame leg is propped up with an old shoe, or a stray newspaper fifty times folded, or a magazine of due thickness (I am using ‘Harper’s Magazine’ at this moment, which is somewhat a desecration, as it is too good to be trampled under foot, even the foot of a table), or a coal cinder, or a towel.  Well, it is but for a moment and so let it pass.

“Where do you think I was last evening?  Read the invitation on the enclosed card, which, although forbidden to be transferable, may without breach of honor be transferred to my other and better half.  I felt no inclination to go, but, as no refusal would be accepted, I put on my best and at nine o’clock, in company with Mr. and Mrs. Shaffner (the latter of whom, by the by, is quite a pleasant and pretty woman, with a boy one year older than Arthur and about as mischievous) and Mr. and Mrs. John Kendall.

“I went to the ladies’ parlor and was presented to the ladies, six in number, who did the honors (if that is the expression) of the evening.  There was a great crowd, I think not less than three hundred people, and from all parts of the country—­Senators and their wives, members of the House and their wives and daughters, and there was a great number of fine looking men and women.  I was constantly introduced to a great many, who uniformly showered their compliments on your modest husband.”

The card of invitation has been lost, but it was, perhaps, to a President’s Reception, and the “great” crowd of three hundred would not tax the energies of the President’s aides at the present day.

The next letter is written in a more serious vein:—­

“February 26. I am very busily engaged in the preparation of my papers for an extension of my patents.  This object is of vital importance to me; it is, in fact, the moment to reap the harvest of so many years of labor, and expense, and toil, and neglected would lose me the fruits of all....  F.O.J.  Smith is here, the same ugly, fiendlike, dog-in-the-manger being he has ever been, the ‘thorn in the flesh’ which I pray to be able to support by the sufficient grace promised.  It is difficult to know how to feel and act towards such a man, so unprincipled, so vengeful, so bent on injury, yet the command to bless those that curse, to pray for those who despitefully use us and persecute us, to love our enemies, to forgive our enemies, is in full force, and I feel more anxious to comply with this injunction of our blessed Saviour than to have the thorn removed, however strongly this latter must be desired.”