THE WHITE HOUSE
The members of my family, and especially my children, are prone to
indulgence in good-natured personalities and they like to make the most
of my serious attitude toward my domestic responsibilities, saying that
I make them three times as difficult as they need be by a too positive
insistence on my own methods.
Perhaps I did make the process of adjusting the White House routine to
my own conceptions a shade too strenuous, but I could not feel that I
was mistress of any house if I did not take an active interest in all
the details of running it.
The management of the White House is, of course, a larger task than many
women are ever called upon to perform, and, incidentally, the same
“white light that beats upon a throne” sheds its sometimes uncomfortable
radiance upon the usually unprepared heads of America’s Chief Executive
and his family. Accustomed as I had been for years to publicity, yet it
came as a sort of shock to me that nearly everything I did, and
especially my slightest innovation, had what the reporters call “news
value.”
I have lived too much in other countries ever to underestimate the
importance of outward form, yet I think I may claim a wholesome regard
for and a constant acquiescence in the principles of democratic
simplicity, though not the kind of “democratic simplicity” which is
usually written in quotation marks.
I made very few changes, really. As a matter of fact no President’s wife
ever needs to unless she so desires, because the White House is a
governmental institution thoroughly equipped and always in good running
order. Each new mistress of the house has absolute authority, of course,
and can do exactly as she pleases, just as she would in any other home,
but in the beginning I confined my efforts largely to minor matters
connected with the house service itself. I wished to install certain
members of the house personnel of my own choosing, and this I did. Later
I made some changes in a few important social usages.
There are certain duties connected with the White House routine which
have been performed by the same employés throughout one Administration
after another and each new President’s wife finds these men invaluable
and wonders, I am sure, how the White House could ever be run without
them. For instance, there are Mr. Warren S. Young, who has been for
thirty years the Social Executive Officer, and Colonel W. H. Crook, who
became Chief Custodian under Lincoln in 1865 and is holding the same
office to-day. The duties of each of these men are delicate in the
extreme, but they know their work down to the minutest detail and it
would be difficult to measure their value to the woman who, in public
opinion, is wholly responsible for the White House.
As to my own innovations, I decided in the first place to have, at all
hours, footmen in livery at the White House door to receive visitors and
give instructions to sightseers. Before my time there had been only
“gentlemen ushers” who were in no way distinguishable from any other
citizen and many a time I have seen strangers wander up to the door
looking in vain for someone to whom it seemed right and proper to
address a question or to hand a visiting card. The gentlemen ushers I
retained, the head usher, Mr. Hoover, having become invaluable through
similar service under every Administration since Cleveland’s first, but
I put six coloured men in blue livery at the door, two at a time,
relieving each other at intervals, and I think many a timid visitor has
had reason to be thankful for the change. Incidentally they lend a
certain air of formal dignity to the entrance which, in my opinion, it
has always lacked.
These footmen received everybody who sought to enter the White House. If
it happened to be a party of tourists they were directed to such parts
of the building as are open to the public at stated hours; if it were a
caller, either social or official, he or she was conducted to one of the
drawing rooms. But sensible as this innovation seemed to me, it met a
varied criticism from the adherents, sincere and otherwise, of our too
widely vaunted “democratic simplicity.”
Another change I made was the substitution of a housekeeper for a
steward. I wanted a woman who could relieve me of the supervision of
such details as no man, expert steward though he might be, would ever
recognise. The White House requires such ordinary attention as is given
by a good housekeeper to any house, except, perhaps, that it has to be
more vigilantly watched. Dust accumulates in corners; mirrors and
picture glasses get dim with dampness; curtains sag or lose their
crispness; floors lose their gloss; rugs turn up at corners or fray at
the ends; chair covers get crumpled; cushions get crushed and untidy;
things get out of order generally; and it is a very large house. Kitchen
helpers grow careless and neglect their shining copper pots and pans and
kettles; pantry boys forget and send in plates or glasses not polished
to perfection; maids forget to be immaculate and linen is not properly
handled; they are just like employés in other homes and they need a
woman’s guidance and control. I engaged my housekeeper before my
husband’s Inauguration and she reported for duty on the morning of March
fifth.
If I could remember how many turkeys the President gives away every
Christmas I could tell just how many persons there are in the White
House service. I know it is something like one hundred, but they go to
employés of all kinds, to important house officials, to minor officials,
to servants of high and low degree, to gardeners, stable boys,
chauffeurs and all.
The staff of the White House proper is not so numerous, eighteen or
twenty perhaps, including cooks, kitchen maids, butlers, boys,
housemaids and laundresses. There was one coloured cook, Alice, who
prepared the meals for the servants’ dining-room and who had been in the
White House twenty years.
My head cook, whom I engaged, was Swedish. She was a miracle of a cook,
but she displayed a romantic tendency as well. She must have been about
forty, apparently quite staid, when she acquired a husband, a policeman
on duty at the White House, and, in due course, a baby. She had been
married only a little over a year when her husband contracted
tuberculosis. We had always been very much interested in her, deploring
the home-making tendency which took her away from us, so when we learned
of her misfortune Mr. Taft immediately took steps to have her husband
sent to Ft. Bayard, the Military Tuberculosis Sanatorium in New Mexico.
The cook, who earned seventy-five dollars a month, put her baby out to
nurse and returned to the White House, where we got regular reports as
to the progress of the invalid and the infant, each of whom proceeded to
do as well as could be expected.
The other servants in the White House are paid the usual wages, from
twenty-five to fifty dollars, and are no more and no less efficient than
other good houseworkers in other homes. The entire White House staff is
paid by the Government, the only private servants in our employ being a
Filipino valet who had been with Mr. Taft for a number of years, and my
personal maid.
[Illustration:
© Harris & Ewing.
TWO CORNERS OF THE WHITE HOUSE KITCHEN
]
In fact, all White House expenses are paid by the Government except
actual table supply bills, and Mr. Taft is fond of insisting upon his
conviction that the country treats its President exceedingly well. He
was the first President to receive a salary of $75,000.00 a year, and
when the subject of his nomination was uppermost in political
discussions he did not hesitate to say that he thought this increase
from $50,000.00 was an absolute necessity. He did not expect to spend
$75,000.00 a year, but he knew by careful calculation and by a knowledge
of President Roosevelt’s expenditures that he would have to spend at
least $50,000.00 a year and he thought he had a citizen’s right, even as
President, to provide a small competence for his family, a thing which
in his twenty years of poorly paid official service he had never had an
opportunity to do. He was fifty years old with two sons and a daughter
in school and college and, as Secretary of War at least, he had long
been working for a wage which was insufficient. But the country really
is good to its President. It does not make him rich by any means, but it
enables him to banish the wolf a fair distance from his door if he is
sensible enough to assist its generosity by the exercise of a mild form
of prudence.
My first inspection of the White House on the evening of my husband’s
Inauguration was casual, but the next day I assumed the management of
the establishment in earnest and proceeded upon a thorough investigation
which resulted in some rather disquieting revelations.
Mrs. Roosevelt, as the retiring Mistress of the White House, naturally
would make no changes or purchases which might not meet with the
approval of her successor, so I found the linen supply depleted, the
table service inadequate through breakages, and other refurnishing
necessary. There is a government appropriation to meet the expense of
such replenishments and repairs, and every President’s wife is supposed
to avail herself of any part of it she requires to fit the mansion for
her own occupancy.
Perhaps nothing in the house is so expressive of the various
personalities of its Mistresses as the dinner services which each has
contributed. For my part I was entirely satisfied with the quiet taste
displayed by Mrs. Roosevelt and contented myself with filling up the
different broken sets in her service to the number necessary for one
hundred covers.
I always enjoyed, however, using some of the old historic plates and
platters at small luncheons and dinners. There are enough plates left of
the Lincoln set to serve a course to a party of thirty. Though I speak
of the different designs as expressive of personalities they represent,
perhaps, various periods of popular taste rather than individual
preference. Samples of all the different services, displayed in cabinets
in the long eastern corridor, are among the most interesting exhibits in
the White House.
From the day my husband became President I never knew for certain until
I entered the dining-room just how many persons there would be at
luncheon. He always did credit me with a miraculous ability to produce
food for any number of persons at a moment’s notice and when he was
Governor of the Philippines and Secretary of War I always had to keep an
emergency supply cupboard, but I did not feel that I could carry with me
into the White House the happy-go-lucky attitude toward the formalities
which I had enjoyed in those days, so meeting his sudden demands became
a slightly more serious matter. His haphazard hospitality was of more
concern to the servants than to me, however, and I think it is only his
own gift for inspiring respectful devotion on the part of his household
staff that ever enables me to keep a cook more than a week at a time.
During our first spring in the White House Congress was in extra session
for the purpose of revising the tariff and Mr. Taft was in constant
conference with the different Senators and Representatives. We had
members of Congress at luncheon and dinner daily, and at breakfast quite
frequently.
Always, in consultation with my housekeeper and the head cook, I made
out the daily menus.
“How many for luncheon, Madame?” was the cook’s invariable question.
“I haven’t any idea,” was my invariable reply.
If no guests had, to my knowledge, been invited I would give
instructions to have luncheon prepared for the family only, emergency
provision being a thing understood. My day’s plans would then be sent
over to Mr. Young, the Executive Social Officer, who had his office in
the Executive wing of the building, and I would go on about my
accustomed duties and pleasures knowing that no surprise would find us
quite surprised.
Along about eleven o’clock the house telephone would ring, or a note
would be sent over, and announcement would be made that Mr. So and So
would lunch with the President and Mrs. Taft. The table would be laid
while the kitchen staff stood calmly by awaiting final orders. In
another half hour might come the announcement of a second guest, or
group of guests, whereupon the amiable butler would have to make a
complete change in table arrangements. Only about a half hour before the
stated luncheon hour did the cook ever consider it safe to begin final
preparations, but too often for the maintenance of entire smoothness in
domestic routine Mr. Taft would come across from the Executive offices
anywhere from a half hour to an hour late, bringing with him an extra
guest, or even a number of extra guests whose coming had not been
announced at all.
This system, or this lack of system, obtained throughout my four years
in the White House, but I and my capable and willing staff, all of whom
were devoted to the President, eventually adjusted ourselves to it and I
began to take great delight in the informal meeting of so many
interesting and distinguished men at our open luncheon table.
I tried to insist that the dinner hour should always be properly
respected, and it usually was. While we gave many informal, small
dinners,—nearly every night as a matter of fact,—there were crowded into
my first season from March until I became ill in May most of the big
official functions which are a part of White House life always, as well
as a number of entertainments which were a part of my own scheme of
innovations.
Our first official entertainment was the Diplomatic Tea on the 12th of
March, just eight days after the Inauguration, and before I had time to
settle myself in the midst of my own belongings which were to fill the
empty spaces left by the removal of Mrs. Roosevelt’s personal effects.
At this tea we received the entire Diplomatic Corps, including all heads
of Missions, and all Secretaries and Attachés, with their wives.
Nothing could be more statelily important. It was the first presentation
of the Diplomatic Corps to the new President and though, having been for
several years in Washington society, we knew many of them quite well,
the method of procedure was as formal as the State Department could make
it. Explicit directions as to the manner in which they were to present
themselves were sent in printed form to every diplomatic representative
in Washington, but while an almost oppressive dignity marked the
proceedings, our wide acquaintance made it possible for us to depart
somewhat from the rigid form decreed and to lend to the occasion an air
of general friendliness it could not otherwise have had.
It might be interesting to those not familiar with Washington life to
know just what the prescribed ceremonies are for such an event. I
confess that at first they seemed to me to be rather formidable,
accustomed as I was to the dignities of government.
The guests are not received by the President and his wife as they
arrive. They are requested to “present themselves (in uniform) at the
East entrance and to assemble in the East Room at a sufficient interval
before five o’clock to enable them by that hour to place themselves in
the order of precedence, each Chief of Mission being immediately
followed by his staff and ladies of his Embassy or Legation.” They are
met in the East Room by the Secretary of State and other State
Department officials, and by some of the aides-de-camp on duty at the
White House.
In the meantime the President and his wife take their positions in the
Blue Room and exactly at five o’clock the doors are thrown open and
announcement is made in the East Room that they are ready to receive.
The Dean of the Diplomatic Corps then steps forward, past the military
aides stationed at the door leading into the Blue Room and is presented
by the senior military aide to the President. He in turn presents each
member of his suite, all of whom pass promptly on and are presented by
another aide to the President’s wife, the head of the Mission being
presented to her at the end of these ceremonies. Each Ambassador or
Minister, in strict order of precedence, passes by with his staff, and
they all proceed through the Red Room and into the state Dining Room
where tea and other refreshments are served.
At the conclusion of the presentations the President and his wife
usually retire and leave their guests to be entertained for a few formal
moments by whomever has been invited to preside at the tea-table, but
Mr. Taft and I followed them into the dining-room to have tea with them.
I knew this was a departure from established custom, but it seemed a
perfectly natural thing for us to do. I forgot to take into
consideration the attitude of our guests, however. Our unaccustomed
presence rather bewildered the diplomats for a moment. There were no
rules to guide them in such an emergency and they didn’t know exactly
what was expected of them. I had finally to instruct one of the aides to
announce unofficially to the wives of some of the more important of them
that nothing at all was expected, and that they should retire without
making any adieus whenever they so desired. I was told afterward that
nearly everybody was pleased with the innovation, and in the official
White House Diary—kept for the purpose of establishing precedents, I
suppose—it was recommended that it be followed on all future occasions
of a similar nature.
At our first state dinner, given to the Vice-President and Mrs. Sherman,
there were thirty-two guests, all Cabinet Officers, Senators and
Representatives. To prove my claim to a natural tendency toward simple
and everyday methods I need only say that even as the President’s wife
it seemed strange to me to have our guests arrive without immediate
greetings from their host and hostess. Many a time at Malacañan Palace
and in other homes I have gone through the not unusual experience of a
hostess who spends the last possible moments in putting “finishing
touches” to preparations for a dinner, then hurries off to dress in
record time that she may be able to meet her first arriving guest with
an air of having been ready and waiting for ever so long.
But at the White House the guests assemble in whatever room may be
designated and there, grouped in order of rank, await the entrance of
the President and his wife. At this first formal dinner of ours the
guests assembled in the Blue Room, the Vice-President and Mrs. Sherman
being first, of course, and nearest the door leading into the corridor,
while beyond them were the Cabinet officers, then the Senators and
Representatives in order of seniority.
Upon our appearance the band began to play “The Star Spangled
Banner”—which, let me say parenthetically, is almost as difficult a tune
to walk by as Mendelssohn’s Wedding March—and played just enough of it
to bring us to the door of the Blue Room. After we had shaken hands with
everybody the senior aide approached Mr. Taft with Mrs. Sherman on his
arm and announced that dinner was served, whereupon Mr. Taft offered his
arm to Mrs. Sherman and started for the dining-room.
[Illustration:
© Harris & Ewing.
THE EAST ROOM
]
For my first dinner I chose pink Killarney roses for table decorations
and it would be difficult to express the pleasure I felt in having just
as many of them as I needed by merely issuing instructions to have them
delivered. The White House greenhouses and nurseries were a source of
constant joy to me. I had lived so long where plants are luxuriant and
plentiful that a house without them seemed to me to be empty of a very
special charm and the head horticulturist remarked at once that during
my régime his gems of palms and ferns and pots of brilliant foliage were
to be given their due importance among White House perquisites. I filled
the windows of the great East Room with them, banked the fireplaces with
them and used them on every possible occasion.
The state Dining Room is one of the many splendid results of the McKim
restoration and, next to the East Room, is the handsomest room in the
White House. It is not so tremendously large, its utmost capacity being
less than one hundred, but it is magnificently proportioned and
beautifully finished in walnut panelling with a fireplace and carved
mantel on one side which would do honour to an ancient baronial hall. A
few fine moose and elk heads are its only wall decorations.
We had table-tops of all sizes and shapes, but the one we had to use for
very large dinners was in the form of a crescent which stretched around
three sides of the room. For any dinner under sixty I was able to use a
large oval top which could be extended by the carpenters to almost any
size. Indeed, I have seen it so large that it quite filled the room
leaving only enough space behind the chairs for the waiters to squeeze
their way around with considerable discomfort. On this table I used the
massive silver-gilt ornaments which President Monroe imported from
France along with his interesting collection of French porcelains,
clocks and statuettes which still occupy many cabinets and mantels here
and there in the house.
These table ornaments remind one of the Cellini period when silversmiths
vied with each other in elaborations. Based on oblong plate glass
mirrors, each about three feet in length, they stretch down the middle
of the table, end to end, a perfect riot of festooned railing and
graceful figures upholding crystal vases. Then there are large gilded
candelabra, centre vases and fruit dishes to match. In their way they
are exceedingly handsome, and they certainly are appropriate to the
ceremony with which a state dinner at the White House is usually
conducted.
The White House silver is all very fine and there are quantities of it.
It is all marked, in accordance with the simple form introduced at the
beginning of our history, “The President’s House,” and some of it is old
enough to be guarded among our historic treasures.
When I went to live at the White House I found, much to my surprise,
that this silver had always been kept in a rather haphazard fashion in
chests, or boxes, in the storeroom. I decided to remedy this even though
in doing so I was compelled to encroach somewhat upon the White House
custodian’s already limited quarters. These quarters are a good-sized
office with the house supply rooms opening off it, and a smaller room
adjoining. They are on the ground floor just across the wide corridor
from the kitchen. At one end of the smaller room I had built a closet
with regular vault doors and combination locks. I had the space divided
into compartments, with a special receptacle for each important article,
and velvet-lined trays in drawers for flat silver, each one of which
could be slipped out separately. This silver closet became the joy of
Arthur Brooks’ life, he being the War Department Messenger who was my
right hand man all the time my husband was Secretary of War and who was
appointed White House Custodian at our request a short time before Mr.
Taft was inaugurated.
I was “at home” informally at the White House about three afternoons a
week when my friends came to see me and when I received many ladies who
wrote and asked for an opportunity to call. I always received in the Red
Room which, with fire and candles lighted, is pleasant enough to be
almost cosy, large and imposing though it be. I usually had twenty or
more callers and I found this a delightful way of meeting and getting
close to people as I could not hope to do at the great formal
receptions.
As an example of one of these, I might cite my first afternoon reception
to the Congressional ladies for which something like four hundred
invitations were issued. I intended to carry this off without
assistance, other than that rendered by the ladies I had asked to
preside over the refreshment tables, but in the end I asked Mr. Taft to
receive with me, a task never very difficult for him. There were no men
invited, so he had the pleasure of shaking hands and exchanging
pleasantries with several hundred women, and he did it without a single
protest. I made the mistake on this occasion of receiving in the East
Room as the guests arrived, thinking that by so doing I could make the
party somewhat less formal. But I only succeeded in having the stairway
leading up from the east entrance overcrowded and in making the affair
much more formal than it would have been had I followed the usual course
of permitting the people to assemble in the East Room and to be received
in the Blue Room on their way through to the Dining Room. It amuses me
to find that Captain Butt in the Official Diary has carefully recorded
all my mistakes as well as my successes for the supposed benefit of
other Mistresses of the White House.
I do not wish to convey an impression that life in the White House is
all a public entertainment, but there are a certain number of set
functions during every season which are as much a part of Washington
life as is a Congressional session. But even with teas, luncheons,
musicals, small dinners, garden parties and dances coming at short
intervals between the more official entertainments, we still had many
evenings when there were so few guests as to make us feel quite like a
family party. Indeed, once in a while we dined alone.
We began immediately, as our first spring advanced, to make almost
constant use of the porches and terraces which are among the most
attractive features of the White House. The long terrace extending from
the East Room I found to be a most delightful promenade for guests on
warm spring evenings, while the corresponding terrace leading out from
the Dining Room proved most useful for large dinner parties at times
when dining indoors would have been rather unpleasant.
With Congress in session nearly all summer Mr. Taft gave a series of
Congressional dinners and the last one he had served on this terrace. A
curious incident marked the occasion for special remembrance. It was
known that one of the Senators invited had never crossed the White House
threshold because of his unfriendly feeling toward the administration.
He paid no attention whatever to his invitation—a formal one, of course,
requiring a formal answer—until the day before the dinner. He then
called the White House on the telephone and asked if he would be
expected to wear a dress suit. Mr. Hoover, who received the inquiry,
replied that evening dress was customary at White House dinners,
whereupon the Senator mumbled something at the other end of the line.
Mr. Hoover asked him whether or not he intended to come. He replied that
he guessed he would, and abruptly rang off.
The next evening the party waited for him for a full half hour before
they decided to sit down without him, and even then his vacant place was
kept open for him. He did not come nor did he ever offer any kind of
apology or excuse for his extraordinary conduct. There are certain
manifestations of so-called Jeffersonian simplicity in this country of
ours that I am sure Jefferson would deplore if he lived in this day and
generation.
[Illustration:
MRS. TAFT ON THE POTOMAC DRIVE
]
The north verandah of the White House is pleasant enough, but it lacks
the charm of seclusion peculiar to the south portico which runs around
the oval Blue Room and looks out upon the broad south garden with its
great fountain, and with Potomac Park, the River and Washington’s
Monument in the background. This soon became our favourite retreat and
we used to sit there in the ever lengthening spring evenings, breathing
the perfume of magnolia blossoms, watching the play of lights on the
tree-dotted lawns and on the Monument—which is never so majestic as in
the night—and realising to the full the pleasant privilege of living in
this beautiful home of Presidents.
Mr. Taft had a Victrola in the Blue Room and he never failed, when
opportunity offered, to lay out a few favourite records for his
evening’s entertainment. Melba and Caruso, the Lucia Sextette, some old
English melodies, a few lively ragtime tunes; in those delightful
surroundings we found a Victrola concert as pleasant a diversion as one
could desire. With no applause, no fixed attention, no conversation, no
effort of any kind required, my husband found on such quiet evenings a
relaxation he was fully able to appreciate during that first trying
summer.
That Manila could lend anything to Washington may be an idea that would
surprise some persons, but the Luneta is an institution whose usefulness
to society in the Philippine capital is not to be overestimated. At
least it was so in my day; and for a long time before Mr. Taft became
President I had looked with ambitious designs upon the similar
possibilities presented in the drives, the river-cooled air and the
green swards of Potomac Park. I determined, if possible, to convert
Potomac Park into a glorified Luneta where all Washington could meet,
either on foot or in vehicles, at five o’clock on certain evenings,
listen to band concerts and enjoy such recreation as no other spot in
Washington could possibly afford.
The Army officer in charge of Public Buildings and Grounds had a
bandstand erected in an admirable location at the end of an ellipse, and
we decided that the long drive theretofore known as “The Speedway”
should be renamed Potomac Drive. Arrangements were made to have band
concerts every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon from five to seven
o’clock.
Saturday, the 17th of April, the concert began, and at five o’clock Mr.
Taft and I, in a small landaulette motor-car, went down to the driveway
and took our places in the throng. The Park was full of people. As many
as ten thousand crowded the lawns and footways, while the drive was
completely packed with automobiles and vehicles of every description.
Everybody saw everybody that he or she knew and there was the same
exchange of friendly greetings that had always made the Luneta such a
pleasant meeting place. I felt quite sure that the venture was going to
succeed and that Potomac Drive was going to acquire the special
character I so much wished it to have.
I also thought we might have a Japanese Cherry Blossom season in Potomac
Park. Both the soil and climate encouraged such an ambition, so I
suggested that all the blooming cherry trees obtainable in the nurseries
of this country be secured and planted. They were able to find about one
hundred only. Then the Mayor of Tokyo, having learned of our attempt to
bestow the high flattery of imitation upon his country, offered to send
us two thousand young trees. We accepted them with grateful pleasure,
but one consignment was found to be afflicted with some contagious
disease and had to be destroyed. I watched those that were planted later
with great interest and they seem to be doing very well. I wonder if any
of them will ever attain the magnificent growth of the ancient and
dearly loved cherry trees of Japan.
One of the delights of living in the White House is in being able to
entertain one’s friends from a distance with a confidence that they are
being given a real pleasure and an experience of an unusual kind. More
often than not we had house guests, old friends from Cincinnati, from
New Haven, from the Philippines, from here, there and everywhere;
friends with whom we had been closely associated through the years and
who felt whole-hearted satisfaction in my husband’s attainment of the
Presidency.
To be stared at is not pleasant because it keeps one selfconscious all
the time, but one gets more or less used to it. And anyhow, I enjoyed a
sort of freedom which Mr. Taft did not share in any way. While he would
probably have been recognised instantly in any crowd anywhere, I found
that in most places I could wander about unobserved like any
inconspicuous citizen. It was a valued privilege.
My daughter Helen likes to tell about an experience she had one day in
Philadelphia. She was a student at Bryn Mawr College and she went in to
Philadelphia to do some shopping. Among other things she had to get
herself some shoes. At the shoe store she was waited on by a girl who
was anything but intelligently attentive. She had tried Helen’s patience
considerably by suggesting in a certain nagging way that her superior
knowledge of what was “being worn” deserved respect, and that Helen
didn’t know what she wanted anyhow.
Helen selected some shoes and decided to have them charged to me, and
she thought what a satisfaction it was going to be to reveal her
identity to the patronising and offensive young person. The young person
produced pad and pencil to make out the check.
“Please have them charged to Mrs. William Howard Taft,” said Helen with
what I am sure was her loftiest air.
“Address?”
“Washington.”
The salesgirl held her pencil poised over the pad and with the familiar
expression of satisfaction over a sale accomplished said pleasantly:
“D. C.?”
[Illustration:
THE SOUTH PORTICO FROM THE END OF THE GARDEN
]