GOVERNOR, 1903
that it represented the state. Two adjoining plain houses had been thrown together and by that method space had been secured. The ground floor front was taken up with a huge reception room in a brilliant red color looking like the saloon of an ocean steamer and supplied with slight French chairs upon which you sat down only at the peril of going through them. A flight of stairs at each end ran to the fourth story, but there was no means of communication aloft except through the chambers. When, therefore, these were occupied and the traveler wanted to go twenty feet across, the only course was to go down one flight of stairs through the reception room and up the other flight, suggesting a journey of a quarter of a mile. In the second story was another huge room called “the guests' chamber.” It had been furnished with an expensive and profuse suit of mahogany, which, with a grand piano, the judgment of some prior lady occupant of the mansion had decreed should be painted white. There were twenty-three mirrors in the room, all at such elevations that in no one of them could a man see to shave himself. The light was at the head of the bed. It was turned off at the other end of the room. On the way stood two or three narrow upright pedestals surmounted with heavy and costly vases. After putting out the light the stranger threaded his way to bed in terror. One of the vases was knocked over while we were there, and I thanked the Lord. The mansion was supplied by the state; there the official entertainments were given, and there it was expected that the governor should live. A statute provided that the board of public grounds and buildings should pay the expenses, but what was to be included in these expenses was nowhere defined. The state employed a butler and other servants and put them in the house to take care of its property and render service, but it was left to the governor to feed them from his own resources. This was an imposition, for the reason that if left to himself he could secure a house and appointments to accord with his
