Society was kind; there was no reason for its being otherwise. Mrs.
Lee and her sister had no enemies, held no offices, and did their
best to make themselves popular. Sybil had not passed summers at
Newport and winters in New York in vain; and neither her face nor
her figure, her voice nor her dancing, needed apology. Politics
were not her strong point. She was induced to go once to the
Capitol and to sit ten minutes in the gallery of the Senate. No one
ever knew what her impressions were; with feminine tact she
managed not to betray herself But, in truth, her notion of
legislative bodies was vague, floating between her experience at
church and at the opera, so that the idea of a performance of some
kind was never out of her head. To her mind the Senate was a
place where people went to recite speeches, and she naively
assumed that the speeches were useful and had a purpose, but as
they did not interest her she never went again. This is a very
common conception of Congress; many Congressmen share it.
Her sister was more patient and bolder. She went to the Capitol
nearly every day for at least two weeks. At the end of that time her
interest began to flag, and she thought it better to read the debates
every morning in the Congressional Record. Finding this a
laborious and not always an instructive task, she began to skip the
dull parts; and in the absence of any exciting question, she at last
resigned herself to skipping the whole. Nevertheless she still had
energy to visit the Senate gallery occasionally when she was told
that a splendid orator was about to speak on a question of deep
interest to his country.
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