ROUND-ROBIN TALKS.
II.
Round-Robin Club is nomad and ubiquitous. Good-fellowship is cosmopolitan; it scorns conventions; and where half a dozen men of brains are gathered together in the name of good-fellowship the Round-Robin Club is likely to be in session. The other day the club was called to order in an upper room of an historic mansion at the national capital. The presiding genius touches one and another of a chance company of statesmen, journalists, and authors on the shoulder, the principle of selection not being apparent to the naked and untutored eye; those summoned follow without question, and presently the selected few are seated before an impromptu dinner of curried oysters, planked shad, spring chicken, and so on to coffee and cigars.
The Nestor of the company is Richard Malcolm Johnston, a character strong enough in individuality to be sketched in his own "Dukes borough Tales." No need to say grace when he is at the table: his very presence is an invocation, a thanksgiving, and a benediction. His genius ripened late; but are not winter apples the best?
Opposite the tall, slim, and venerable Southern author is the contrasting figure of Colonel Thomas P. Ochiltree, rotund, florid, and crowned by a face radiant with geniality. No other man ever came out of Texas to play so brilliant a part as a man of the world. A checkered career indeed:—four years a Confederate soldier; a prisoner of war when the Confederacy fell; a bosom friend of General Grant's, and a pall-bearer at his funeral; a member of Congress who became famous in a single term; the friend of all the great men and notable women of his day; equally at home in Savannah, Washington, New York, London, Paris, and St. Petersburg, and welcome everywhere as a bon vivant and the prince of story-tellers.
Senator Watson C. Squire comes from the Pacific coast, all the way from the new State of Washington. He is a typical and fitting representative of that stalwart young commonwealth whose is perhaps the best monument to the Father of our Country. Washington was wise to choose for Senator a man who with Western push and pluck combines the culture and manner of the East.
Thomas Nelson Page renews acquaintance with Major Moses P. Handy. They are both Virginians, and knew each other when neither was so well known to the world. Page is a slender man with a strongly-marked and genial face lighted up by a blue eye which fairly dances in keeping time with his play of wit. It is far easier to recall the charm of Page's personality than to describe it. The author of " Marse Chan" and " Meh Lady," those little classics of Southern literature, is a lawyer, and his literary work is a diversion, albeit it has made him loved and honored wherever the English tongue is spoken.
Moses P. Handy, who to distinction as a special news correspondent
