The family of the new President arrived in June. Here was a new field entirely for the diffident woman who was compelled to do the honors, in lieu of her mother—a confirmed invalid. The house looked anything but inviting. Soldiers had wandered unchallenged through the entire _suites_ of parlors. The East Room, dirty and soiled, was filled with vermin. Guards had slept upon the sofas and carpets till they were ruined, and the immense crowds who, during the preceding years of war, filled the President’s house continually had worn out the already ancient furniture. No sign of neatness or comfort greeted their appearance, but evidences of neglect and decay everywhere met their eyes. To put aside all ceremony and work incessantly, was the portion of Mrs. Patterson from the beginning. It was her practice to rise very early, don a calico dress and spotless apron, and then descend to skim the milk and attend to the dairy before breakfast. Remembering this fact, of a President’s daughter, in the President’s house, in the nineteenth century, for a brief moment, let us cease to bemoan the homely virtues of our grandmothers as forever dead and buried. At the first reception of President Johnson, held January 1, 1866, the White House had not been renovated. Dingy and destitute of ornament Martha Patterson had by dint of covering its old carpets with pure linen, and hiding its wounds with fresh flowers, and letting her beautiful children loose in its rooms, given it an aspect of purity, beauty and cheer, to which it had long been a stranger. [Illustration: THE BLUE ROOM. INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE.—WASHINGTON. ] In the spring, Congress appropriated thirty thousand dollars to the renovation of the White House. After consulting various firms, Mrs. Patterson found that it would take the whole amount to furnish simply the parlors. Feeling a personal responsibility to the government for the expenditure of the money, unlike her predecessor, she determined not to surpass it. She made herself its agent, and superintended the purchases for the dismantled house herself. Instead of seeking pleasure by the sea, or ease in her own mountain home, the hot summer waxed and waned only to leave the brave woman where it found her, wrestling with rags and ruins that were to be reset, repolished, “made over as good as new.” For herself? No, for her country; and all this in addition to caring for husband, children and invalid mother.