The Lincolns received several social courtesies from members of Congress and others before the fourth of March, and on the evening of that day the usual inaugural ball was given in their honor. It was plain from the start that they had not made a favorable impression in their new setting, for the ball was a failure in point of attendance; few ladies wore fine costumes, and of the men the majority came in their business clothes. As neither Mr. nor Mrs. Lincoln knew how to dance, or felt enough confidence even to walk through a quadrille, the early part of the evening was devoted to a handshaking performance which threw a chill upon the rest. Mrs. Lincoln’s feminine instinct had led her to exchange the stuffy frock and shawl of her first reception for a blue silk gown. Mr. Buchanan had been expected but sent belated regrets; and Stephen A. Douglas, the “Little Giant” who always became a big one in an emergency, stepped into the breach as representative of the abdicating party, and established himself as the personal escort and knight-in-waiting of Mrs. Lincoln. In the White House, Lincoln took for his office the large square room in the second story next the southeast corner, from the windows of which he could look over at the Virginia hills. The room adjoining on the west was assigned to his clerks and to visitors waiting for an interview. To secure him a little privacy in passing between his office and the oval library, a wooden screen was run across the south end of the waiting room, and behind this he used to make the transit in fancied invisibility, to the delight of the people sitting on the other side, to whom, owing to his extraordinary height, the top locks of his hair and a bit of his forehead were exposed above the partition. He was persistently hounded by candidates for appointment to office; and it is recalled that in one instance, where two competitors for a single place had worn him out with their importunities, he sent for a pair of scales, weighing all the petitions in favor of one candidate and then those of the other, and giving the appointment to the man whose budget weighed three-quarters of a pound more than his rival’s. Visitors admitted to his office usually found him very kind in manner, though now and then a satirical impulse would give an edge to his humor. When an irate citizen with a grievance called and poured it out upon him, accompanied by a variegated assortment of profanity, Lincoln waited patiently till the speaker halted to take breath, and then inquired: “You’re an Episcopalian, aren’t you?” “Why do you ask that?” demanded the visitor, momentarily forgetting his anger in his surprise. “Because,” answered Lincoln, “Seward’s an Episcopalian, and you swear just like him.”