RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
White House was really our Home. The great walnut-panelled room, with its silvered chandeliers and big moose heads, seemed very empty with only the Taft family in it, after all the clatter and chatter that had been sounding there all day. We gazed at each other for a moment, with slightly lost expressions on our faces, and then nature asserted herself in the new President.
"Let's go up stairs, my dears, and sit down!" said he. Poor man, he had not experienced the blissful sensation of sitting down since early that morning; so we proceeded out to the elevator, which Charlie, true to his boy nature, had, of course, already learned to operate. For once, I am glad to say, it did not stick between floors. This was a habit to which it became addicted in later days, a habit it was sure to indulge on occasions when the President proudly used it for taking a large party of men upstairs after dinner. But this time he was able, without delay, to reach the best easy-chair in the sitting-room where he remained until I prodded him once more into activity by reminding him that he must get into evening clothes else the Inaugural Ball could not take place.
Not having been taxed so greatly, I was not yet ready to succumb to fatigue; besides I was now eager to roam around the house, to familiarise myself with the mysteries of my new home and to plan the assignment of rooms among various members of the family who were to come to us that very night.
The second story of the White House, where all the family living rooms are, corresponds in spaciousness with the floor below, which, with its broad hall, its great East Room, its large reception rooms and state dining room, is familiar to the public. Upstairs there is a very wide hall running the entire length of the building. The rooms occupied by the President and his wife are in the south-west corner and at that end of the house the hall is partially partitioned and
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