RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
furniture had not been upholstered for many years and it was a little shabby. Later on I had it all recovered and the walls of the room retinted, and when I had put in some of the Oriental tapestries and handsome pieces of furniture which I had brought with me from the Far East it made a very beautiful and livable room. We used it a great deal, especially when there were guests, but for the family the sitting-room at the end of the hall was always the favourite gathering place.
Opposite the Library a short corridor extends to the window under the roof of the front portico and on each side of this doors open into smaller bedrooms; smaller, that is, in comparison with the four large ones. Even these would be considered large in an ordinary house. One of them I assigned to the housekeeper and the other to my two sons. The boys' room was rather dark, with its windows directly under the roof of the portico; and it was furnished, moreover, in dark red, a colour which does not add light to gloominess, but the boys got it because they were the members of the family who would care the least and who would be the most away.
The great staircase descends from the central hall just beyond these rooms and facing the staircase is the President's Study. The eastern end of the building was all used as offices until the new offices were built and the house restored in accordance with the original plan. The Presidents with large families must, indeed, have been in an uncomfortable situation when they had to confine themselves to the rooms in the west end, the only rooms then available for living purposes. The facts are that such families found the house to be less commodious than a "five-room flat," as the wife of one President expressed it. I believe the Roosevelts, until the house was remodelled, were unable to accommodate one guest.
There is a story that when Prince Henry of Prussia was in
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