RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
screened off and pleasantly furnished with desks, sofas and easy-chairs to make a fairly large and very private family sitting-room. It was here that I left my tired husband while I went on my first tour of exploration.
At each of the four corners of the house there is a suite; all arranged on the same plan, exactly alike, except as to decoration. Each consists of an exceedingly large bedroom with a spacious bath, and a smaller room adjoining which may be used as a bedroom or dressing-room. I went first into the large bedroom which my husband and I expected to occupy. The windows of this room look out on the White House gardens where the large fountain plays, and, beyond, on the Washington Monument, the Potomac River and the distant Virginia hills. This, I think, is the most glorious vista in Washington, which is a city of splendid vistas, and seeing it that March night by the long line of lights which stretch across the Potomac bridge and meet the lights of Arlington, it was, indeed, inspiring.
The room was the room where Lincoln slept, indeed, where every President since Jackson has slept. A tablet under the mantel states this fact. It is the room which must necessarily have more intimate and personal association with the men who have occupied the White House than any other. Other parts of the house have been the scenes of great historic events and of magnificent hospitality, but here, one after another, the Presidents of the United States have really lived and been at home.
Its furnishings have, undoubtedly, been changed many times and yet I found it to contain many old and interesting pieces. The most striking object in the room was an enormous four-poster bed with a great curved canopy of wood, decorated with carved and gilded eagles and upholding heavy draperies of blue and white brocade. In this bed, we had been told, the Prince of Wales slept when he visited this country in 1860, but on the first night I dis-
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