List of Eligibles of the Senate and Cabinet.

Washington, December 24, 1879.

At the moment of writing the waters of social life are becalmed in Washington. Very little is doing in matrimonial business and mothers with marriageable daughters are advised to hold on to the stock in hand (unless there is danger of spoiling), as an advance is expected as soon as a batch of single Congressmen arrive, and this interesting event will probably happen soon after the holidays. General Ben Butler is already here, and though he has shed his late Congressional skin and is no longer interesting on this account, he still has the chance to be governor of Massachusetts; but aside from this honor, any respectable matrimonial agency would give him a clean bill of sale the moment the right kind of a purchaser can be found. It is said the gallant General has a “blind eye,” but even with this fact in a woman’s favor it will be necessary to approach him as carefully as though he were gunpowder or an “infernal machine,” and be well prepared for the explosion which would be sure to follow. But it must be remembered that all the valuable things of the earth are obtained at great personal sacrifice and often with loss of life. Just as the biggest pearls are fished from the deepest waters, the greatest men are brought to the right point with a corresponding loss of female vitality.

Senator Sharon! “Lo! the conquering hero comes” on the breath of the wind, at the same time hitched behind a fiery locomotive. He is already done up in broad-cloth and fine linen, and is probably at this hour sleeping in his own “special car” as he rushes over the steel roadway with which dear old Oakes Ames spanned the continent. What a picture of Oriental magnificence, with his almond-eyed, dark-haired daughter at his side! What a flutter among the dames of the grand West End! In his presence a small bore of the Army and Navy, a “swell” of an upper clerk, or even an obscure Congressman pales as the stars are wiped out by the effulgence of a full-blown sun! “But he ain’t handsome!” Shut up, you ill-bred child! Handsome is that handsome does! Didn’t Senator Sharon spend $40,000 on the Grant reception, and owns a house so large that people get lost in it? It takes as long to explore it as it does the Mammoth Cave! “What does he come here for, mamma?” “Why, to show his heathen Chinee, and see if his glass shoe will fit any Cinderella at the capital.” “They pared their heels and they pared their toes,” but the special car goes back to the Pacific slope empty and tenantless, in one sense, as it came. The ripple subsides, to rise at each approach of the “special car,” and so the play goes on.

Senator Booth, of California, is another matrimonial venture worth looking after, but he has already been toughened by several winter campaigns in Washington, until it is declared by those that ought to know that a sigh drawn fresh and pure from the deepest and most capacious female bosom and applied to the right place will have no more effect than a Holman liver pad administered for lockjaw, whilst a glance from the most brilliant eye falls like a sunbeam on an alligator’s back. Managing mammas have given up whist parties on his account, because he is far more “whist” than the count. But the Senator is in a tolerable state of preservation, considering the number of sieges he has endured, and bids fair to return to the sand lots of California no worse for the tender wear and tear to which he has been so cruelly subjected.

If there are any tears to shed, prepare to shed them now! Step softly! blind your eyes! This is Senator Ferry, of Michigan, he who has convulsed the heart of woman, lo! these many years. Mothers have plotted, widows intrigued, girls have cried for him, all to no purpose. It has taken subtle cunning to elude the snares spread for his gentle, trusting being, but Senator Ferry has been equal to the trial and has come out of the fiery flames handsome and jubilant as ever. Whilst the years come and go and at the same time snatch the hairs from his brother Senators’ heads, leaving crowsfeet all along the track, Senator Ferry defies the “Old Man of the Sickle,” and is just as capable of cracking a young girl’s heart to-day as when in the morning of his manly strength, before the stars sang together. As soon as Congress assembles a committee will be appointed to investigate the source of his mighty power, as it is not intended that one red-bearded Senator shall get more than his share. As Senator Ferry usually buys up all newspapers which print advertisements of him, this is intended as a cheap way to get rid of a solid edition of The Times, but the article will only call for the usual liberal rate which it pays to its most valued correspondents.

The next names registered on the books of the matrimonial register come under the head of “twins,” and such a pair of twins have never been seen since Gemini and Pollux took their places in the heavens in order to chase the “big bear” around the polar star. Possibly Senators Burnside and Anthony have been condensed into twins, because Rhode Island is too small a State to hold them singly and apart. At one time Senator Burnside came very near scaring off all the girls by wearing a gray night-cap in the daytime, but he immediately rallied and gave a lunch party and explained to the “wee darlin’s” there wasn’t the slightest danger in it. The girls remonstrated, but without avail, until Senator Anthony declared that he wouldn’t be twin to a night-cap, even though it was the color of the side-whiskers, unless the gender could be changed. There is always an incipient battle going on between the two, similar in object and manner as those in which the late Siamese twins indulged, but this is done simply to amuse each other and at the same time keep the thoughts of the female sirens out of their united minds; besides it takes Senator Anthony all his spare time to keep Senator Burnside out of mischief. Since the Senatorial night-cap has been laid aside all sorts of mental eggs have been hatching in his brain, and some time ago one of these eggs turned into an immense black horse and two-wheeled vehicle, adorned by a real tiger skin. This chariot was driven by a Jehu black as the wings of night, and had not Senator Burnside sat by the sable driver the people of the capital would have believed that the whole contrivance was a phantom, such as Washington Irving used to paint with his magic pen. “I told him,” said Charlie Foster, “that he must not drive so fast. That his black beast was a dray horse and not a ‘roadster.’” But the immense black animal, the two black wheels, the sable driver, with the tiger skin flying, thundered up and down the Avenue, a target for the witty Stilson Hutchins, whose paragraphs on the subject were looked for in the Post with keener relish than the most aromatic coffee. Thin-skinned Anthony could stand it no longer and the black horse disappeared from Congressional history. It has never been ascertained whether it was a real horse or one of those uncanny creations “conjured” by means of the “black art,” but as everything about it was black and all in the highest style of art, it is safe to pronounce it black art until a better word can be invented. Just as long as Senator Burnside is in the Senate Senator Anthony will have his hands full. In the meantime matrimonial schemes will be laid over as unfinished business, and this is peculiarly trying, for the loss to some fair woman in not being allowed to cling to Senator Anthony is more painful than pen can describe.

As altogether too much space of this valuable paper has been given to the irreclaimable old single-tops of the Senate, it is high time the gay and festive “House” should be reached; but, alas! if this is done, the “catchables” of the Cabinet will be overlooked, and what will Mrs. Hayes say? The writer knows very little about General Devens, but it has been ascertained that he was not imported from England, but belongs to an entirely different breed, whilst President Hayes claims all the honor of original discovery. At any rate, it is well known that he was picked up on the codfish shores of Massachusetts in a remarkable state of preservation. General Devens is blue-blooded to the last degree, and it is claimed that a large portion of the fluid that runs in his veins was imported in the Mayflower, and this accounts for the small quantity of it. Whilst there is enough for all Cabinet purposes and to occasionally amuse Mrs. Hayes, the illuminating power seems to require some such tinker as the hero of Menlo Park to bring it to the required point of perfection. Like Edison’s electric light, though it “shines,” there is very little heat, and a girl complains that in his presence she always has a cold nose, but it is declared that he shall not go out of the Cabinet on this account, and the probabilities are that he has come to stay.

Listen to the mocking-bird! Trills, quavers, semi-quavers, demi-semi-quavers, a flute, a flageolet, a dulcimer! It is only the voice of Carl Schurz, but it is a whole opera concealed in his throat. Creation has contrived a few voices whose intonation in speech is the highest and most triumphant music. Such sounds come out of the mouth of a shell. It is heard in the patter of a fairy cascade. It is the hissing ring of the rain as it kisses the bosom of the dimpled deep. Nature’s pure, sweet, unadulterated chimes—not spoiled by “foreign master” or any other training. Born in a castle, the son of a gamekeeper; half aristocrat, half peasant; haughty as a king; humble as the lowliest who seek his favor; least understood because his intellect includes both large and small gifts culled from the whole vast domain which governs the law of humanity—daughters admire him, mothers fear him, fathers hate him. Why? Because he is not only a man, but somewhat more! During office hours he attends to business precisely like other Cabinet officers, with even more accuracy and attention, but, his work done, the uncanny orgie begins. He has the power to draw the most weird and unearthly music out of his piano. The yells of the cats before they were made into “strings” are revived with added ferocity. All the sounds of nature are imitated. He is never weary and never lies down, but he has been seen to uncoil, throw his head back, open his lips and show his white, glistening fangs. Then somebody is sure to get hurt. When Mother Nature begins to pull the string to let down the curtain of night, a dark, slender horse, bearing upon its back a tall, sinuous form, may be seen flying in a northeasterly direction. Nothing more solemn and ghoul-like can be imagined. To the awful northeast lies “Edgewood,” most sentimental of earthly pilgrimages. Cemeteries here and there blot the highway. The lonely road stretches on, unlit by flash except a “Jack o’ lantern,” which leads the way for the dark horse of the smoking flank. Once Senator Conkling was taking an airing in this direction for his poor health’s sake and met the “horseman.” It was more than his nerves could bear. Edgewood is now deserted, the cemeteries are all quiet, and the “vision” is left to its own mad career. Any woman who meditates “designs” on Carl Schurz should first cultivate a love for sulphur and practice with an electric battery every day.

The House may safely be called an ocean of matrimonial possibilities. When mothers say “there are as good fish in the sea as ever were caught,” they have direct reference to the House, the lurking-place of so much that is sweet, shy and forbidding. Here, at almost any hour of the Congressional day, may be seen “sporting” a whole shoal of bachelor Greenbackers; but their backs are no more green than their fellow members, unless the verdant tint may be noticed with which all Congressmen are more or less afflicted. Here bachelor Le Fevre spouts like a great sperm whale; and one speculates on the quantity of oil he would “turn out,” and feels sad to think he was not discovered before the coal oil regions, for in that case he would have proved of vast service to the world. At present he is ostensibly engaged in storming the departments to find places for his constituents, but the real truth shows that he is only exhibiting his handsome person to the Treasury girls as a target, and each one is allowed a given number of shots at the mark. As the space allotted by The Times to its most valued correspondents has been filled to the brim and just a little slopped over, it is announced that the next article will take up dear, precious Charley O’Neill. It will treat of the sentimental damage wrought at the capital by this “broth of a boy,” for if all his “doin’s” could be made visible to mortal eye, the old Keystone State would blot out the memory of its late Centennial glory and at the same time give General Grant a rest.

Olivia.