Whilst this Chinese panorama was unfolding, a graceful woman for a moment was pictured on the canvas--Mrs. Burlingame, the only woman who accompanies the party. There was a gleam of a pair of dark, lustrous eyes; a shadow cast by the heavy coils of black, wavy hair; something blue and filmy as Oriental gauze enveloped her fine figure; a side door opened, and the vision was gone.
Striking points of similarity exist between the old monarchy and the young Republic. China is divided into provinces as our country is divided into States. Education is within reach of all. From the humblest beginning merit can rise and divide the honors with the imperial blood. An inexorable fiat envelops China as with a network of bristling steel. It is the supreme law of the land. There is no appeal from its decree. It holds the highest and the lowest in its vise-like grasp. Like death, it respects no private claim. The Emperor is as impotent before it as the Chinaman who has not the wherewith to provide a dinner. This is the one great principle, the all-powerful cohesive force which has kept this vast Empire together from time immemorial. Let America try to forget the past, and in this respect walk in the footsteps of the imperial China.
MADAME LE VERT, GAIL HAMILTON, VINNIE REAM, AND MRS. LANDER.
A reception at the governor’s mansion occupies that middle ground which may be supposed to be between a President’s levee and the private party given by a well-to-do Congressman. The governor must invite everybody because he is everybody’s servant, like the President, only he has no White House and paid retinue of lackeys, no fuel and gas found, and no fifty thousand per year. On the contrary “he must find himself,” and this he will be obliged to do whenever the enormous bills are paid. If one could have seen the crowds that for four mortal hours filled the governor’s large dining-hall they would have prayed for a repetition of the same miracle that took place some eighteen hundred years ago, when the bread and fish could not give out, and water was spoiled by being turned into wine.
But the worst comes. We have got a governor--none of your milk-and-water kind--and who looks every inch a governor, as much as the great Napoleon looked like an emperor. We have so many “figure-heads,” which are the result of the appointing power, that when the real article turns up let us thank President Grant for his act, for it makes no difference to us whether he does the right thing by design or mistake. But the governor’s ball. Everybody was there. The governor stood at the entrance of the broad door that led to the right of the hall, arrayed with the usual ministerial black-looking robe, and acting only as a governor should. By his side stood my lady, tall, elegantly dressed in charming simplicity. She is still very youthful to be called to occupy so prominent a place. Her dress was simple white muslin with an overdress of black velvet, white ruche at the throat with tiniest of rosebuds in the pleatings; no jewels, no gewgaws. She must have taken Madame Thiers, the wife of the early President of the French Republic, for her model, or, later still, Madame MacMahon, not only the first lady but one of the most sensible women in France.