DEAR SISTERS:—The train started, and there I sat in my glory till we got to Annapolis, just the sleepiest town, crowded full of the oldest houses and the slowest people that I ever saw in my born days. Some colored persons were dawdling around the depot, and a few lazy white folks passing down the street, stopped to look at us as we got out of the cars. Especially my white hat and double-breasted jacket seemed to take them.

Once I heard something that sounded like the beginning of a cheer, but the voices were so lazy that they couldn't carry it out, so it muttered itself to death, and that was the end of it.

Twenty of the Japanees were with me when I alighted from the car and spread my white parasol, which hovered like a dove over us, for I made it flutter beautifully as we passed along.

The cabinet people followed after, and just as we were forming to go down street, like a military training, my white hat and feather leading them on, a gentleman came up to us and began to shake hands all round. He was a tall, genteel sort of a person, with light hair and a beard soft and silky as corn tassels; but all under his eyes, blue powder marks were scattered, as if he'd spent half his life firing off Fourth of July powder salutes, and had burst up on some of them.

While I was wondering who it could be, Mr. Robeson, who has some dealings with navy yards and shipping, come up to where I stood, and says he:

"Miss Frost, allow me to present Commodore Worden, the gentleman who distinguished himself on the first Monitor."

Sisters, that minute the powder marks on Worden's handsome face were glorified in my eyes. I reached out my hands. I pressed his, my beaming eyes covered him with particular admiration. Feeling as if I were the colonel of that company, I longed to lift my white hat and give him a military salute. What I did say was significant.

"Worden," says I, "when certain events come about—I say nothing, but this hat and jacket are typical of what I mean—when these great and luminous events fill the hemisphere your glorious bravery on that iron flat-boat shall have its full record. I will myself send your picture to the great Grand Duke of all the Russias, and if there is a higher notch in the public shipping than you have, I know nothing of the friend whose colors I wear if anybody stands before you. I have seen the picture of your Monitor. To my eye it looks like a flat-iron, with the handle in the water; but it did good work, and so did you. Grant knows it. My own immortal statesman will appreciate it."

Commodore Worden bowed, and smiled, and squoze my hand so long that I began to feel anxious about my white gloves. But he dropped it at last, and we all moved on, my white feather waving in front, just like that which King Henry of Navarre wore in battles. Only mine was a peaceful emblem, dyed in the milk of human kindness, and curled up in the sunshine of prosperity.

We marched through dull streets and round deserted corners, cutting in and out every which way till we came to a large gate, which shut the Navy Yard out from the rest of mankind.

Then we filed through into a beautiful meadow, with the grass cut short, sprinkled over with trees, and cut into footpaths. Part of it was bounded by water, the rest by rows of handsome houses and great buildings that looked like factories shut up for want of work.

The minute I and Mr. Iwakura walked through the gate, bang! went a cannon; bang, bang, bang! seventeen times.

"What on earth is that?" says I, turning to Dempster, who was just behind me.

"It is a salute for us," says he.

"Us!" says I, with accents of disdain that put him in his place at once.

"For you, then," says he, smiling in a way I didn't like, for, having no envy in my own disposition, I cannot endure it in others.

Mr. Iwakura and I walked on slowly. He looked at me and smiled as the guns kept going off, till I counted seventeen; then they stopped and I was glad of it, for I remembered that our meeting-house bell tolls once for every year, when a person dies, and I felt a little anxious about the number of guns they might pile on to live folks. But they stopped short at seventeen, which is an age no girl need be ashamed to own, and which showed how young some persons can look in spite of hard literary toil.

Well, first we went into Commodore Worden's house, where Mr. Iwakura and I were introduced to Mrs. Worden and some other ladies. Then the rest came in for a little notice, and we filed off into the grounds again, where there was a general training of boys in blue jackets, with buttons and things, all armed with guns, which they handled like old militia men. Sometimes, when they poked their guns right at us, I kind of got behind Mr. Iwakura, who, being small, wasn't much of a shelter, but better than nothing. In fact, I was rather glad when this part of the fun died out.

After this, we went into one of the big houses where the blue boys live, and a whole lot of little, make-believe ships were shown to us, and two Japanee boys told Mr. I. how they were worked—which would have been interesting, only we didn't know a word of that language, nor much about the baby-house of ships, and didn't listen to what was said in English.

Then the boys in blue and buttons went into the meadow again, and got out a lot of small cannon, and banged, and ran in lines and squads down to the river, as if they were awful mad with the water and meant to dam it—dam it up, I wish you to understand, for even indirect profanity isn't in my nature.

After this, we all went down to a great, lumbering old ship, which is all the home these blue boys have the first year they come to the Annapolis school, which, being a sailor institution, gives them a taste for creeping into holes and sleeping on a yard or two of rope swung to the ship's beams—which may be pleasant fun, but doesn't look like it.

Sisters, it was getting along in the day, and, though in a certain sense spiritualized by genius, I was hungry. Mr. Iwakura, too, had a pitiful look in his black eyes; but a storm of music called us from hankering thoughts, and we all streamed, at a faster double-quick than the boys could show, into the great dining-room of one of the big houses. A splendid table was set out there, which we gathered round like a half-starved regiment on training-day. Then began such a practice in cider bottles, flying corks, and cider foaming and fizzing into glasses, as beat all the cannon and howitzer blazings of the day—for that ended in something, and the rest didn't.

It is astonishing what effect eating and drinking has on the feet; I could hardly keep from dancing all the way from that dining-hall to the other building, which is kept especially for dancing. Well, we did dance, for the music just took one right into the midst of it, want to or not. Besides, we hadn't been to a tomb, and nobody had been killed, so we just went in for it. My alpaca dress isn't over long, and I wasn't afraid of showing my feet when there was no train to tangle them up. We danced with our bonnets and hats on—we ladies, I mean—and the way my white feather rose and fell and fluttered over the rest was enough to wake up the American heart in every bosom present.