I went back to the hotel and got a little sleep. It was dinner time, and near candle-light when I woke up; and when we got through dinner, Cousin D. told me to hurry up, and we would take a look at the White House. "Shall I get out my pink silk?" says I. "Does the President expect me?" "Oh, no," says he; "no one is aware that we are here. We will drive to the White House, see all that is to be seen, and start home bright and early to-morrow morning." "Then the alpaca will do," says I. "Of course," says he; "anything." I wasn't sorry. This travelling all night is apt to take the ambition out of the most energetic character. The difference between pink silk and alpaca was nothing to me now. Well, in an hour after, the carriage we rode in stopped under a great square roof, set on marble pillars, which spreads out from the steps of the White House to keep people sheltered from the storm and sun when they get out of the carriages. It was dark now, and two great street-lamps were in brilliant combustion each side of the steps. Between us, sisters, that White House that we hear so much about is no great shakes of a building. Compared to the Capitol, it is just nowhere. Cousin D. rang the knob, which was silver, and a man opened the door. "We should like to see the House," says Cousin D. "Certainly," says the man. "Walk in." We did walk into a large room, with a few chairs and two or three pictures in it; nothing particular, I can tell you. "This way," says the man. We went that way, into a great room, long and wide as a meeting-house, choke full of long windows, and with three awful large glass balloons, blazing with lights, a-hanging from the roof. The carpet was thick and soft as a sandy shore, and had its colors all trampled in together, as if some one had stamped down the leaves of a maple camp into the grass as they fell last year. "The chairs and sofas and looking-glasses were bought when General Washington was President," says the man. "Mercy on me! you don't say so," says I. "They look rather skimpy for these times, don't they?" says I; but then his way of buying things and spending money was a little skimpy compared to the way Presidents spend money now; but, of course, we grow more deserving as we grow older. "Now, those red silk curtains that almost hide the lace ones, did they belong to Washington?" "Them? Oh, no; we change them every four years." "Then they go out with the President," says I. "We don't think that he will go out yet awhile," says the man, looking a little wrathy.