The Olivia Letters: Being Some History of Washington City for Forty Years as Told by the Letters of a Newspaper CorrespondentBriggs, Emily Edson
History
The Olivia Letters: Being Some History of Washington City for Forty Years as Told by the Letters of a Newspaper Correspondent
Briggs, Emily Edson
United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1933; Washington (D.C.) -- History
Who are the people who file past the President? Titled men and women
of foreign countries; a large part of the community which romance
would call the “republican court;” and the mighty power sometimes
called the sovereign people. Now it happens, as the stream flows
onward through the Executive rooms, that particles of humanity are
lodged in the same apartments that are honored with the presence of
the President and his wife.
The most distinguished guests remain permanently in the room of
power. The picture is made up of the Presidential party in the
foreground, and back of them stand the Army, Navy, and Cabinet, as
well as the Vice-President of the United States. Of all the public
men in the nation few or none stand so near the national heart as
Schuyler Colfax, and the reason assigned is because he has got a mind
like an elephant’s trunk. It picks up anything, from the largest man
to the smallest woman, and his heart is big enough to give them all
standing room. If he is introduced to a manufacturer he knows what
kind of articles the man sends to market. If a literary woman is
presented to him she finds that she has been registered in exactly
the right place in his mind. He knows whether she writes about
fashion, or, alas! alas! reports women conventions. Schuyler Colfax
knows everything that is published in the newspapers. There is no
room in his mind for lumber. It is full of working material, and he
is the fairest specimen of progressive Young America to be found on
the continent.
Miss Nellie Grant is a prominent feature of the levees and receptions
at the White House. She is just exactly at the age when the feathers
of her wings are not quite well enough grown to admit of her flying
as a woman, and yet they are far enough advanced to spoil her
attractions as a child. Her costume is of the rarest and costliest
kind, and she conducts herself as becomes the only daughter of a
President.
An elegant woman is seen standing in the background, slender almost
to fragility, arrayed in a trailing robe of black velvet. Her
powdered head and Greek profile take you back to the days of Louis
XIV, and you feel that Madame Pompadour or some other beauty of that
period has stepped out of her picture frame and stands flesh and
blood before you. This woman is Mrs. Cresswell, the accomplished wife
of the Postmaster-General.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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