whole round and knock first at every door before being fairly accredited to Society.  But once established, be it said in passing, the foreigners have a full revenge accorded them; for in vain the native youth aspire, the freshest belles hover round the titled flames, not perhaps till their wings are singed, but till successive seasons have taught them that Cleopatra’s beauty is useless without Cleopatra’s pearls.  Meantime, to give one last discomfort to the “calling” system, the ubiquitous reporter presents himself, deliberately overturns the card-basket in the hall and notes the names there; and the lady of the house sees herself, her dress, her deportment and her guests photographed in the morning paper with startling distinctness.

But the calling is the brightest part of this social side of life.  The other part is the night-life—­not the night-life of gambling saloons and their kind:  of that dark underground existence Society has no knowledge, though he who left it at daybreak and will go back to it at midnight clasps the last debutante in his arms and whirls with her to the sweet waltz-music—­but the night-life of the Season.

A Washington season is a generic thing:  women come to the place for the sake of it, as they go nowhere else.  Through the system of calling just described official society is accessible to all, and the introductions obtained there to people of the more select circles, when fortified by wealth and pertinacity, open the whole charmed round of pleasure.  Society in other cities is totally unlike Society in Washington.  There it is an interchange of kindliness between households of friends:  it is the festivity of happy anniversaries, the union of families in new ties, the cherishing of long acquaintance.  But in Washington—­except so far as the small number of residents is concerned—­its whole purpose and meaning are anomalous:  each Administration brings a new following, each Congress has a new rabble at its heels; friendships are accidents of the day, diplomacy is carried on by dining; every party has a political purpose, every civility a double meaning.  Nevertheless, the sparkle of wit, the kindling of enthusiasm, are not absent from it; on the contrary, there is more of that than elsewhere, for it is sustained by the chosen intellect and beauty of the continent.  You may meet admirals there who have sailed round the world, generals who have fought mighty battles, priests who may yet be popes, men and women who are figures of the century:  they will tell you the romance of their travel, the heart-beat of their successes, and you will contrive to hear it for all the accompanying roar and sweep in which they are the lay figures for aspirants to measure, and the property of reporters.  In such a Society of course all asperities are softened:  this man’s daughter dances with the son of his arch-enemy; deference is accorded to the opinion of a woman on public matters as if she already possessed her right of suffrage; there is an exhilaration in meeting and avoiding and overlooking, in the light and skillful skating over dangerous surfaces, while a rare freedom unites with a gentle even if politic courtesy, which it is delightful to meet to-night and which allures you to seek it to-morrow.  Society without a conscience it is, possibly, but for all that sufficiently fascinating.