Coming out of the sweet sanity of the Bolton household, this was by contrast the maddest Vanity Fair one could conceive.

It seemed to him a feverish, unhealthy atmosphere in which lunacy would be easily developed.

He fancied that everybody attached to himself an exaggerated importance, from the fact of being at the national capital, the center of political influence, the fountain of patronage, preferment, jobs and opportunities.
People were introduced to each other as from this or that state, not from cities or towns, and this gave a largeness to their representative feeling.

All the women talked politics as naturally and glibly as they talk fashion or literature elsewhere.

There was always some exciting topic at the Capitol, or some huge slander was rising up like a miasmatic exhalation from the Potomac, threatening to settle no one knew exactly where.