At a dinner at Senator Chandler’s Mr. Blaine took me in, and Eugene Hale, a Congressman, sat on the other side.  They call him “Blaine’s little boy.”  He was very amusing on the subject of Alexander Agassiz (the pioneer of my youthful studies, under whose ironical eye I used to read Schiller), who is just now being lionized, and is lecturing on the National History of the Peruvians.  Agassiz has become a millionaire, not from the proceeds of his brain, but from copper-mines (Calumet and Hecla).  How his dear old father would have liked to possess some of his millions.

Sam Ward is the diner-out par excellence here, and is the king of the lobby par preference.  When you want anything pushed through Congress you have only to apply to Sam Ward, and it is done.  I don’t know whether he accomplishes what he undertakes by money or persuasion; it must be the latter, for I think he is far from being a rich man.  His lobbying is mostly done at the dinner-table.  He is a most delightful talker and full of anecdotes.

Mrs. Robeson’s “Sunday evenings” are very popular.  She has given up singing and does not—­thank Heaven!—­have any music.  She thinks it prevents people from talking (sometimes it does, and sometimes it has the contrary effect).  She prefers the talking, in which she takes the most active part.  Mr. Robeson is the most amiable of hosts, beams and laughs a great deal.

The enfant terrible is quoted incessantly.  She must be overwhelmingly amusing.  She said to her mother when she saw her in evening dress; “Mama, pull up your collar.  You must not show your stomach-ache!” Everything in anatomy lower than the throat she calls “stomach-ache”—­the fountain of all her woes, I suppose.

Mr. Blaine and Mr. Robeson, supplemented by General Schenck, are great poker-players.  They are continually talking about the game, when they ought to be talking politics for the benefit of foreigners.  You hear this sort of thing, “Well, you couldn’t beat my full house,” at which the diplomats prick up their ears, thinking that there will be something wonderful in Congress the next day, and decide to go there.

Mr. Brooks, of Cambridge, made his Fourth-of-July oration at our soiree on Thursday.  This is the funniest thing I have ever heard.  Mr. Evarts almost rolled off his seat.  It is supposed to be a speech made at a Paris fete on the Fourth of July, where every speaker got more patriotic as the evening went on.  The last speech was the climax: 

“I propose the toast, ’The United States!’—­bordered on the north by the aurora borealis; on the east by the rising sun; on the west by the procession of equinoxes; and on the south by eternal chaos!”

WASHINGTON, April, 1879.