Though President Jackson had not for years used any intoxicants, a bowl of foaming egg-nog graced the side-board, and on tables near were presents for each member of the household. Mrs. Donelson occupied, while mistress of the White House, the second-story corner room facing Pennsylvania Avenue, using the one back of it as a nursery. In the former three of her children, Mary (myself), John and Rachel, credited at the time with being the first births in the Executive Mansion, were born, her eldest child, Jackson, having been born in Tennessee. The President’s adopted son and daughter occupied the two adjoining rooms, and he the central one, now known as the Prince of Wales’ room because used by his Royal Highness when President Buchanan’s guest in 1860. The play-room, belonging to-day to the official suite, was near the President’s. His bed, a high, four-post carved mahogany, with tester and heavy damask curtains, was reached by carpeted steps which we children dearly loved to scamper up and down. When ill we often carried him his meals, he reciprocating the attention when we were confined in bed. Suffering from painful respiration, he slept propped up by high pillows. Opposite his bed hung his wife’s portrait with pictures of the two Rachels on either side, a standing breakfast question being, “Which Rachel did you look at first this morning, uncle?” the lucky one being the morning belle. The author and sharer of most of our pleasures, he often shielded us from punishment when naughty, and my mother once bewailing his over-indulgence, quoted the Bible: “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” but he replied: “I think, Emily, with all due deference to the Good Book, that love and patience are better disciplinarians than rods.” Traveling, he generally took along a box of silver half-dollars for his namesakes, then both numerous and ubiquitous, saying to their mothers: “Baby can cut teeth on my gift now, later show him his country’s eagle thereon, and teach him to love and honor it.”