Hence the elaborate, the complex, the awe-inspiring system of precedence. Every one from the President and his family and their remotest connection visiting Washington, down through all the branches of official life to grand-niece of the scrubwoman who sees to the basement steps of the smallest public building, has his or her exactly defined and jealously guarded station in the social hierarchy. Naturally, the most interesting part of the imposing structure that descends tier on tier from the august and exalted Chief Magistrate, is the court--the President, his Cabinet (Cabinet “ministers,” to give them the fanciful title they love best), the ambassadors and ministers and staffs of the various embassies and legations, the families of all these, and this means the White House and the Lord Great Chamberlain--the White House, the stage; the Lord Great Chamberlain, the stage manager. The White House was always inadequate--it would have been inadequate only for carrying out the purely democratic idea of the Presidential office, the idea set forth in the written laws. For the splendid, imperial, democratic concept of the plutocracy, the White House was ridiculous. Many a previous President and his wife, conscious of the social possibilities of the Presidential office, and yearning to develop them, have sighed over and moaned over and hinted about the petty proportions of the “Executive Mansion.” But political timidity restrained them from insisting upon expansion and elaboration. Mr. Roosevelt, confident that the people understood and approved him, and full of enthusiasm for his exalted concept of a new Presidency to suit a new era of the republic, boldly ventured where other Presidents had shrunk back. He demanded adequate quarters for the imperial-democratic court. The result is a new White House, a fit theatre for plutocratic social activities, a fit field for the operations of an energetic and sympathetic Lord Great Chamberlain. The present President entertains, not occasionally but constantly, not exclusively but as democratically as an emperor, not meagrely but lavishly, not a score of guests, but hundreds and thousands. He has a multitude of guests to lunch, a multitude to dine, a multitude to hear music or to take part in various kinds of “drawing-rooms” and levees, a multitude to stay the night under his roof--not a multitude all at one time, but a multitude in the aggregate. Rich and poor, snob and democrat, plutocrat and proletarian, black and white, American and foreigner, Maine woods guide, Western scout, fashionable and frowzy--all equally welcome, all equal at his court. Morgan and Jacob Riis, Countess de Castellane and Booker Washington, Wild Bill and Bishop Potter, Duse and Rough Rider Rob, Alfred Henry Lewis and a New York cotillon leader.