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
President Grant has a grand vizier. It is General Dent, late of the
Union Army. It is the business of General Dent to receive all who
seek the presence of the President. When Andrew Johnson was Chief
Executive, all those waiting for an audience with power were left
by themselves to pass the long hours in waiting. It is somewhat
different now. The large reception room over the front of the East
Room is fitted up with tables, as well as sofas and chairs, and all,
from the humblest to the highest, are admitted to General Dent’s
presence. In the coziest corner of the reception room, beneath the
window which commands the uninterrupted view of the delightful
park which fronts the mansion, may be found the broad, long table
at which General Dent sits, with his accomplished assistants by his
side. General Dent is in the meridian of life, rather below the
medium size, though the rich, dark-blue military garb in which he
is encased diverts the mind from size altogether. Now add a face,
neither handsome nor plain, but a benign, good countenance, through
which the soul shines like flame through an astral shade, and you
have the picture of the man through whose hands you are to pass
before you are consigned to the august presence of majesty. At the
same table, directly opposite General Dent, may be seen the assistant
private secretary, Mr. Robert M. Douglas, eldest son of the late Hon.
Stephen A. Douglas. Those who can recall the form and features of
the departed Senator will see them reproduced, but, like the second
edition of the same book, a little revised and somewhat corrected.
Mr. Douglas inherits the broad shoulders, crowned by the same massive
head, so well remembered by the nation. His North Carolina speech has
made him famous as a youth, and it seems certain at present that he
was created to prove the exception to the rule that a great man never
bequeaths his talent to posterity. The social manners of Mr. Douglas
are such as would endear him to a sovereign as haughty as Queen
Elizabeth, and just as soon as he culminates as private secretary it
will be for the honor of the foreign service to send him abroad. But
at the present he can not be spared from a certain ante-room in the
White House.
At the left of General Dent may be seen Mr. Crook, one of the few men
left who were bequeathed as servants to the people by our beloved
Lincoln. He has seen the inauguration of four Presidents and the
installation of three different families in the White House. His mind
is a storehouse of legend and story. He is still a young man, more
than comely in personal appearance, and distinguished by social
manners which admirably befit court life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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