LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE

The President's faithful shadows from the Secret Service. Saving the White House and making it a decent habitation. — Mrs. Roosevelt as a housekeeper. - Her two kitchens and two dining rooms. - How guests are entertained. - The White House under the Roosevelts no petty palace, but a true American home.—Mr. Roosevelt refuses to take precedence of ladies. — Washington shocked by his freedom from ancient customs. The simple life at Pine Knob, down in old Virginia. — The President at church.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT had the courage, at the outset of his administration, to take measures to defend himself from assassins and to make the White House a decent habitation.

Three Presidents had been shot down because they had refused to protect themselves. More than a third of the chief magistrates of the republic in thirty-five years had been assassinated. The chosen chief of a free people for a brief term was in more peril of his life than any hereditary monarch of the Old World.

It was a frightful record, and a shameful one, for America. Our land did not really deserve to out

rank Russia and Turkey as the breeding place of assassins. Our Presidents were murdered because they were the only chiefs of state in the world who were never guarded against the murderous lunatic seeking a shining mark. One protecting hand could have saved Lincoln, Garfield, or McKinley. It was a tradition of the Presidency, however, to have no guard, -to "trust the people."

President Roosevelt was not afraid that his countrymen would think him a coward if he took a few simple precautions to prevent a recurrence of the tragedy at Buffalo, which had shocked the world and stained again the history of the Presidency. 'He stopped the foolish and exhausting custom of wholesale handshaking, which, after all, was only a vulgar affectation of democracy. He took a detail of men from the Bureau of the Secret Service, and two of them have been beside him on all public occasions. They wear no uniforms, and their presence is not noticed by the people. One sits with the driver of any carriage in which the President rides, and when he addresses a meeting, the secret service men are between him and the crowd. If he goes for a horseback ride in Washington, a cavalry ser

geant, who is an expert horseman, tries to keep within fifteen paces of him. The people no more resent this simple escort than a man's honest neighbors would take offence because he locked his door against the thief in the night.

Mr. Roosevelt not only had the courage thus to protect himself, but he also believed that the people did not wish to condemn their President to live in shabby quarters. The White House in its pure, classic outlines is a noble dwelling. Sometimes through indifference, sometimes through fear of popular censure, Presidents had suffered it to fall into a neglected condition. There were threadbare carpets, and it was infested with rats and mice. Its space was so poorly arranged that there was little privacy for the family of the President. The servants had to sleep in the cellar. The butcher's and the grocer's carts were driven to the front door, and the provisions were delivered at the same entrance at which ambassadors were received. The kitchen was in full view of the loungers and the passers-by.

"Well, Mr. President," a senator is said to have remarked to President McKinley one morning, "I