DEAR SISTERS:—In my last report I gave you a dim account of the underground department of Congress. In fact, it was so dim down there, that I couldn't see anything clearly. I hope this report will have a little more brightness in it; but of that I am not at all certain, for a downright honest look at anything here in Washington is like snatching at a handful of fog.

After wandering over all that town of cellars and basements, in search of the whitewashing department and the washing-room, I came away without seeing a sign of them. It seems to me that the cooking and eating is all that one finds done openly here. About that, too, there is something that riles the New England blood in my veins. No wonder I couldn't make out half that those waiter chaps said to me.

There, in the great kitchen of the first nation on the face of the earth, free-born American citizens sit down contentedly and eat French dishes, with bull-frogs in them, I dare say, and eat them, too, on the European plan. The European plan! as if the fine old fashion set by the Pilgrim Fathers was not good enough for their descendants! It's enough to curdle the blood in one's veins to see what our country is coming to, with a plan of broken-down old Europe in the very basement of our Capitol. Do our members of Congress remember the time when their fathers ate samp and milk on a table set against the wall, with one leaf spread? Sometimes the richest of them in our State got a little maple molasses with the samp, but oftener it was skim milk, and nothing else. But men were men in those days; I—that is, I have heard my mother say so—of course, I wasn't old enough to know exactly at what time samp and milk got out of fashion as a first-class domestic meal. I can't help but think, sisters, that the male sex began to degenerate while we were children, or we should never have been left in our native village to form a society, which seems destined to enlighten this generation, without increasing it.

Well, sisters, Cousin Dempster found me sitting on those hard, beautiful marble steps, thinking over these things in a saddening way. He insisted on it that I should leave off my subterraneous investigations, as he called my travels in the basement, and see Congress meet.

I declare, it's a Sabbath day's journey from one end of that great long marble building to the other. The marble stairs I had been resting on came up near the Senate chamber. Cousin Dempster said, "But perhaps we had better go over to the House first."

"Whose house?" says I, getting out of patience; "I thought we had come to see Congress."

"So we have," says he; "it will assemble in a few minutes, so we must hurry and get into the House."

"Why don't Congress assemble in this building?" says I.

"Of course it does, at the other end," says he.

"Then what on earth do you want to take me into any other house for? I want to see Congress! As for the houses in Washington, they are no great shakes, after all. New York wouldn't take the best of 'em as a gift."

"Cousin Phoemie," says Dempster, sort of impatient, "you are the most extraordinary combination of a woman I ever saw."

I stopped short and made him a curtsey to the ground—slow, graceful, and infinitely sarcastic. He seemed to feel it keenly.

"Judges, a little more competent than you are, have said as much before," I observed, scathing him through and through with my eyes.

"I mean no offence," says he, "but really you are the brightest, and—and stupidest woman!"

"Girl, if you please," says I.

"Well, girl. In some things a child could teach you; in others, you fairly dazzle the brightest of us."

"Thank you," says I; "just crown me with bitter-sweet, and have done with it. If there is anything that riles me more than another, it is a double and twisted compliment."

"There, there! do be reasonable, and hurry along," says Dempster, a-trying to shuffle out of the whole thing; "don't you see the members crowding into the House?"

"I haven't seen the house yet," says I, not half pacified.

"Of course not—how can you, till we get there?"

Cousin Dempster walked on, and, of course, I had to follow.

"Wait one minute," says I, "while I look at this great round picture overhead. What on earth is it all about? The women up there look mighty unsafe. Now, what room is this, with its roof in the sky, and its floor solid stone?"

"It is the rotunda," says he; "the national pictures are all around you, but we haven't time to look at them now—some other day."

I couldn't help looking back, for such a room I never saw in my born days. It was like a stone park roofed in so high up that the pictured women overhead seemed perched among the clouds. Over them the light came pouring like water down a cataract, filling the broad space below as if it had been all out of doors.

But I had no time to see more, for Cousin Dempster led me through a hallway and into another round room, except at one end, where a gallery ran straight across and then curved around the whole room, hooping it in like a horseshoe. In front of the straight gallery ran a row of stone pillars—tall, large, and shiny as glass—spotted, too, like the leopards in a show, and towering up like the pillars in Solomon's Temple, which the Queen of Sheba travelled so far to examine. The idea that she took all that trouble to get acquainted with Solomon, is just ridiculous. Why, it would have taken the hymeneal monarch a whole lifetime to have introduced her to his family in a decorous way. Besides, if he provided for his own household out of the government, only think how busy he must have been in finding places for the relations of all his wives! No doubt he let the Queen of Sheba see his Temple, and left her to be entertained by two or three hundred of his wives. Not being a ladies' man, what more could he do?

Well, as Cousin Dempster says, I do sometimes let my pen run away with me; but when it turns toward the Scriptural history of my sex, I let it run.