Madeleine Dahlgren's 1881 work aims to provide readers with a guide to the peculiar and particular manners and mores of the Nation's capital. Recognizing that official life in Washington, D.C. leads to "perplexing social questions," Dahlgren's work, which went through a number of editions in her lifetime, lays out the special code of social laws that are at work in Washington in the late nineteenth century.