RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
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 meting his sudden demands became a slightly more serious manner. 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 revisiting 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.
352
