CHAPTER XXVI. MRS. GRANT'S RECEPTION-GLIMPSES OF LIFE. Mrs. Grant at Home-A Reception-Feeling Good-Natured-Looking After IT gay T is Tuesday-Mrs. Grant's day—and all the world is going to the White House, besides a portion of that world which is not gay. House, a portion of that Mrs. Grant's morning receptions are very popular, and deservedly so. This is not because the lady is in any A RECEPTION AT THE WHITE HOUSE. 257 sense a conversationalist, or has a fine tact in receiving, but rather, I think, because she is thoroughly goodnatured, and for the time, at least, makes other people feel the same. At any rate, there was never so little formality or so much genuine sociability in the day-receptions at the White House as at the present time. General Babcock pronounces your name without startling you out of your boots by shouting it, as on such occasions is usually done. He passes it to the President, the President to Mrs. Grant, Mrs. Grant to ladies receiving with her. After exchanging salutations with each, you pass on to make room for others, and to find your own personal friends dispersed through the great rooms. They are in each of them; loitering in the Blue Room, where the receiving is going on; chatting in the Green Room; promenading in the Red Room. You may go through the long corridor into the state dining-room, into the conservatories, full of flowers and fragrance, and back, if you choose, to your starting-point, where the President and Mrs. Grant are still receiving. This is one of the pleasantest facts of these morning receptions-the informal coming down of the President to receive with Mrs. Grant. I have never been accused of over enthusiasm for him, but find myself ready to forgive in him the traits which I cannot like, when I see him, with his daughter, beside Mrs. Grant. Then, it is so perfectly evident that, whatever the President may or may not be, “Mr. Grant" has a very true and likeable side, with which nobody is so well acquainted as Mrs. Grant. Here is the East Room, that you have read about so long. It never looked so well before. There are flaws in the harmony of its decorations which we might pick at; but we won't, as we are not here to-day to find fault. Besides, it is too pleasant to see that the nation's parlor, erst so forlorn, has absolutely taken on a look of home comfort. In proportions it is a noble room, long and lofty. It has seven windows-three in front, facing Pennsylvania avenue and Lafayette square; three looking out upon the presidential grounds and the Potomac; and a stately bay window overlooking the Treasury.. It has four white marble mantel-pieces, two on each side. It has eight mirrors, filling the spaces over the mantels and between the windows. Richly wrought lace curtains have taken the place of the tatters left there a few years ago, when the curtains of the White House windows were scattered over the country in tags, taken home by relic-hunters. Over these hang draperies of crimson brocatelle, surmounted by gilt cornices, bearing the arms of the United States. The walls and ceilings are frescoed, and from the latter depend three immense chandeliers of cut glass, which, when lighted, blaze like mimic suns. On the walls hang the oil portraits, in heavy gilt frames, of eight Presidents of the United States. Opposite the door, as you enter, is the portrait of Filmore. On the other side of the mantel, that of Lincoln. Next beyond the bay window, that of Washington; all of life size. Beyond the further mantel is that of Franklin Pierce. Above the door opposite, one of John Adams. Above the next door, of Martin Van Buren; the next, of Polk ; the last above the entrance door, of John Tyler. The carpet on the East Room, last year, was presented to the United States by the Sultan of Turkey. It seemed like one immense rug, covering the entire floor, and filled the room with an atmosphere of comfort, grand, soft, and warm. THE MEMORY OF A CERTAIN DAY. 259 The chairs and sofas are of carved wood, crimson cushioned. A handsome bronze clock ticks above one of the mantels, the others are adorned with handsome bronzes. The air is summer warm. On the whole, isn't the people's parlor a pleasant place? I never enter it, but comes back to me that tearful April morning when, in the centre of this floor, under the white catafalque, lay the body of Abraham Lincoln, dead. The crowd pressing in then, how different from this one! Rugged soldiers bent down and kissed his face and wept, women scattered flowers upon his breast, with their tears. Rich and poor, old and young, black and white, all crowded round his coffin, and wept for him,-one, only one, of the most august, of the martyrs of liberty. Think what tales the room could tell, since the day when Abigail Adams dried her clothes from the weekly wash, in it, if it but had a tongue. Stand here, and see the stately procession move by. Believe in your own day, my dears. You need not go back to Sir Philip Sidney, to find a perfect gentleman, nor to David and Jonathan, to find faith and love between man and man, passing the love of woman, nor to the days of chivalry, to find true knights who would die for you. Here are men bearing, under all this glitter of gold and lace, bodies battered and maimed in their country's cause. There, is a man, pouring foolish nothings into the ear of a foolish girl, who would die for the truth. We are far from being a thorough-bred people. The census of spittoons is a horror in our land. We talk too loud, and too long; we gesticulate too much; we can not keep quiet. We need, at least, more capacity for repose, more unselfish consideration for the sensibilities of others, more of the golden rule, before we can flower into the perfection of fine breeding. Yet, no less here, are men at once strong and gentle, brave and tender, gallant and yet true. Here are all and more than Shakespeare's women: Juliet, searching for her Romeo; Miranda, looking through her starry eyes for a "thing divine" even in the Red Room; tender Imogen; fair Titania; Portia, with hair of golden brown; and Desdemona, imprudent, fond, yet truth itself. Here is not only the beauty and the belle, but the sibyl, whose divining eyes beyond volition, strike below every sham and every falsehood. Yet here, too, falls the shadow of human nature. There stand two ladies, whose supreme enjoyment here is "quizzing." Among their thousand "dear friends" here, not one is too sacred to be ridiculed. One of these ladies, at least, would feel as if she had forfeited "her soul's salvation," if she were to go to the theatre, or to give countenance to a dance; but it does not occur to her, that she puts that precarious organ in the slightest peril, when she stands in a public assembly, and ridicules her friends. These ladies are merely yielding to a vice which has grown with their years, strengthened with their strength, the vice that thrives amid Christian graces, the vice paramount of the Christian church. The most unkind people whom I have ever known, have been distinguished for an ostentatious sort of piety. The most uncharitable conclusions, the most pitiless judgments, the most merciless ridicule, that I have ever listened to, of poor human beings, I have heard from people high in the church, not from people of the so-called "world." This, not because the normal human nature in either differs, but because the people of the world have a thousand outlets and activities |