Page:Despotism and democracy; a study in Washington society and politics (IA despotismdemocra00seawiala).pdf/26

 *vinced, and I am so still, that the number and variety of people in Washington must make these Washington parlours—drawing-rooms, you call them—the most interesting of their kind in the world. Well—I've got into some of them. It's a good deal easier for a man without his wife than a man with her; and Thorndyke, I own up, I am bewitched. Oh, it's not so much to you; you've known it too long, and seen too much of it all over the world to know how it strikes a man born and brought up until he is thirty-five years old in Circleville. I swear when I get a dinner invitation I am like the girls out our way, who will drive twenty miles in a sleigh to go to a dance. The mere look of the table—the glass, the silver, the flowers—goes to my head. The terrapin intoxicates me. Those quick, soft-moving servants fascinate me. And the conversation! They let me talk all I want."

"You are a vastly entertaining fellow in your own mental bailiwick," interjected Thorndyke.

"And the women! So unaffected—so unconscious of their clothes! And such listeners! I have never been to a stupid dinner in Washington. And