RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
I joined him and we took a small house on Dupont Circle where for two years we lived a life, sometimes amusing, sometimes quite exciting, but, on the whole, of quiet routine.
Washington society was much simpler then than it is now. Since that time a great many people of very large means have gone to Washington to live because of its unusual attractions and its innumerable advantages as a residential city. They have changed Washington, by their generous hospitality, into one of the most brilliant social centres in the world, where large dinner parties, balls, receptions, musicals and other entertainments are of daily and nightly occurrence throughout the season. The very character of the streets has changed. The small, red brick houses, closely grouped together and neighbouring, even in fashionable quarters, on negro shacks and cheap tenements, are being everywhere replaced by marble and granite residences of great beauty and luxury.
In 1890 Society in Washington still consisted, chiefly, of the “best families” of the old city, the Diplomatic Corps and the highest among the government officials. A dinner party of twelve was still considered large, and only a few people had weekly evenings At Home. There were occasional big receptions, but for nobody was society the mad rush that it is to-day. We ourselves lived very simply even for those simple days.
My daughter Helen was born in 1891, so for the last year in Washington I had two small babies to care for. In order that he might get a little much needed exercise Mr. Taft bought a horse and, fortunately, for us, he secured a most adaptable creature. He was supposed to be a riding horse, but he didn’t mind making himself generally useful. The Attorney General lent us a carriage which he was not then using—a surrey, I think it was called—and we hitched him to that; and the whole Taft family drove out of a Sunday afternoon to the Old Soldiers’ Home, which was the fashion-
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