The First Forty Years of Washington Society #225829

During the first forty years of its existence the city of Washington had a society, more definite and real than it has come to have in later days. The permanent resi dents, although appurtenant to the changing official ele ment, nevertheless furnished the framework which the larger and more important social life used to build upon, and the result was a structure of society tolerably com pact and pleasing and certainly interesting. It was emphatically official, but it did not include the lower class officials, who found their recreation for the most part at the street resorts, and its tone was dignified and whole some. At any rate, it was genuine and national, even if it was crude, and the day of the all-powerful rich man and his dominance in social life had not yet arrived.