Because we were the sisters of the Vice-President, Mrs. McKinley sent for my sister, Mrs. Cowles, and me just after the inauguration, and I remember very well the touching quality of that dainty personality, in whose faded face was the remains of exquisite beauty. She received us up-stairs in her bedroom, and by her side was a table on which was a little Austrian vase in which bloomed one superb red rose. As we sat down she pointed to the rose with her delicate little hand, and said softly: “My dearest love brought me that rose. He always brings me a rose every day, Mrs. Robinson.” And then, a faint smile flitting over her face, she said: “My dearest love is very good to me. Every evening he plays eight or ten games of cribbage with me, and I think he sometimes _lets_ me win.” I remember the feeling in my heart when she spoke those words, as I thought of the man in the White House, oppressed with many cares; even, perhaps, at the time when the shadow of the war with Spain hung over his troubled head, sitting down with gentle affection and quiet self-control to play “eight or ten games of cribbage,” “one for his nob, and two for his heels,” with the pathetic little creature from whom the tender love of his early youth had never swerved. The scenes outside of the White House connected with the young Vice-President were very different. In the home of my sister, Mrs. Cowles, where we all stayed for the inauguration, quaint happenings occurred. A certain Captain ----, a great admirer of my brother, telegraphed that he was sending from Thorley’s florist shop in New York a “floral tribute” to be erected wherever the Vice-President was staying. My sister’s house was moderate in size, but that made no difference to Captain ----. That “floral tribute” had to be erected. It cost, if I remember rightly, in the neighborhood of three thousand dollars. (My brother laughingly but pathetically said it was about half of his income at the time, and he wished the tribute could have been added to the income.) It had to be erected, and erected it was. It arrived in long boxes, painfully suggestive of coffins, much to the delight of the young members of the family, who were also staying with my always hospitable sister. There, for a whole day, three men worked haggardly building the “tribute,” until the whole front room of my sister’s house (which was much in demand for large numbers of delegations who wished to pay their respects to my brother) was filled in every nook and cranny by this enormous and marvellous structure, which reached from wall to wall and up to the ceiling. The overworked and tired men who created it were so exhausted by the questions of the small members of the Roosevelt and Robinson family that toward the end of the afternoon they sent word to Mrs. Cowles that unless those children were sent out of the house, that “tribute” would never be finished. Finished it was, however, and we were almost suffocated by