This was not all of Washington I was seeing. As in Paris I set aside time for learning the city. How thin and young and awkward Washington seemed compared with the exhaustless life and treasures of Paris! Here was none of that wisdom of experience, that subtile cynicism, that pity and patience with men which made Paris like a great human being to me. Nor was there here the ripe charm of old palaces, quaint streets, hidden corners. Everything was new, sprawling in the open. But if Washington had little to offer but promise it had that in abundance, and it did not know its own lacks. It was too full of pride in what it had done since John Adams moved into the White House and Congress into the Capitol. And then I had a problem to think about—the Washington Lincoln knew—and I went about with him from White House to War Department, up to the Congress, down to the Arsenal, into this and that hospital, up to the Soldiers’ Home, over to Arlington. The pain and tragedy behind almost every step he took in the town dignified its unfinished streets, gave a meaning and a sanctity to its rawness. By such steps I told myself did Paris come through the centuries to be what she is. But I did more than follow Lincoln about. I wanted to know the Washington of thirty years after Lincoln, and so I went to the Capitol when debates promised excitement, and I missed no great official show. When McKinley’s inauguration came in 1896 I arranged to see it all. Once, I told myself, will do forever for an inauguration—as it has done. I began after breakfast and did not stop until the Inaugural Ball was far on its way. A fine colorful sightseeing experience, leaving a series of pictures which have never quite faded. Years later one of these pictures brought me a curious bit of minor political history. I was trying to persuade Richard Olney to write the story of the Venezuela message for _McClure’s_ and remarked that the first time I met him was at the McKinley Inaugural Ball. To my surprise he flushed. “Outgoing Cabinet members are not expected to attend the Inaugural Ball of a new President,” he said. (I hadn’t known that, or of course I should not have spoken.) “But there was a reason for my presence. General Miles, then head of the Army, had come to me to say that there were rumors of an attempt on McKinley’s life. ‘Suppose that both he and Hobart should be assassinated before a new Cabinet is appointed,’ he said. ‘You would be Acting President. You must go to the Ball, walk with Mrs. McKinley, and stay until the end.’ I didn’t like the idea, but General Miles insisted; so I went. But the new President walked with his wife, and I had to hang around, conscious that more than one Republican was saying, ‘What’s Olney doing here?’”