The East Room is used for all public receptions. It is of noble proportions, eighty feet in length by forty in width, and twenty-two in height. It was originally intended as a banqueting hall, but the first authentic account of its use was that Dolly Madison found it an excellent place for drying clothes. Under its present aspect it would scarcely appear to be well adapted to that purpose. A rich carpet of those soft tints that seem to melt into each other covers the floor. The walls and ceiling are all white and gold; glancing into the immense mirror you find it reproduces an endless vista of panels and columns lost in space. The windows are draped with lace curtains, and in warm weather the breeze comes up fresh and sweet direct from the river, blowing them about at will—just as it does the curtains of other people! But something else happens to these curtains, too, that is not so pleasant, and from which other people’s, as a rule, are exempt. But a short time since an employe of the White House called my attention to the fact that here and there a figure had been entirely cut out by a souvenir-thief. This apartment, as well as several others in the mansion, has been recently done over by Tiffany, and greatly improved; it has now very much the appearance in general effect of the “Gold Salon” of the Grand Opera House in Paris. It contains only two pictures; one of Washington, purchased as the original, by Gilbert Stuart, but of doubtful authenticity, and the Martha Washington painted in 1878 by Andrews, an Ohio artist. This latter shows the same refined, high-bred features that even the crudest representation of her portrays, and the flowing train and satin petticoat are quite regal. The dress was copied from a Parisian costume made for a New York lady to wear at the Centennial tea party in Philadelphia in 1876, and purports to be an exact reproduction, but with a not unusual nineteenth century skepticism, I confess that I boldly decline the sleeve as an anachronism, and leaving the queenly robe out of the question, do not hesitate to say that in my opinion the hand was borrowed—perhaps from a Greek statue. Certainly it is not the strong right hand which accomplished the prodigious amounts of spinning, weaving, and the like, usually ascribed to this wonderful matron; but it is a tiny, symmetrical, extremely pretty hand, in the delineation of which the artist was probably true to his instincts rather than history, and in consideration of the happy result, the departure from fact to fancy deserves to be condoned.