RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
My first necessity in my generally considered enviable position was to find a house in Washington large enough to contain my family, to permit such participation in social life as would be expected of us, and the rent for which would not wholly exhaust the stipend then allowed to a Cabinet officer.
Eight thousand dollars a year, sufficient income though it may be when it is expected to accommodate itself to an ordinary eight-thousand-dollars-a-year standard of living, shrinks alarmingly when its recipient is expected to maintain on it the dignity of a Cabinet position. If we had not had some private resources I don't quite see how we could have managed. Fortunately for my husband, and more so for his successors in office, this figure was raised to twelve thousand before he left the War Department, and still there are complaints which I am amply able to appreciate.
We finally settled, on the first of October after my arrival at Washington, in a pleasant, old-fashioned house on K Street near 16th. It was not the most elegantly equipped house available, but we preferred a little extra space to the more elaborate modern conveniences, so we took it.
We were spared one item of expense by having the use of the War Department carriage and its big Irish coachman, Quade. Quade was quite a character. He had been at one time in the artillery service and had occupied the position in which we found him through several administrations. He was never able to lose the habits and manners of an artillery man, and Mr. Roosevelt used to say he never drove behind him without feeling as if he were on the caisson of a gun wagon going into action. He kept his horses in fine condition, though a trifle too fat perhaps, and he took great pride in the speed he could get out of them. He would swing around corners and dash past street cars and other vehicles in a way that was anything but soothing to sensitive
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