At the inauguration of Grant, the relations between him and the retiring President were so strained, owing to the recent struggle at the War Department, that Johnson refused to attend the ceremonies unless it could be arranged that he and Grant should ride in separate carriages. General Rawlins therefore acted as escort to Grant and Vice-president Colfax. Grant was not much of a speaker, but the delivery of his inaugural address is remembered for a pretty incident. His little daughter Nellie, confused by the continuous bustle all about her, obeyed on the platform the same childish impulse which moved her in any exigency at home, and, running to his side, nestled against him, clasping one of his hands in both of hers and holding it all the time he was speaking. At the ball that evening, access to the supper-room and to the cloak-room was by the same door, which caused a blockade in the passage. The servants in charge of the wraps became hopelessly demoralized, with the result that Horace Greeley had to wait two hours to recover his white overcoat and lost his hat entirely. The torrent of lurid expletives he let loose during his ordeal shared space and importance, in the next day’s newspapers, with the thirty-five thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds worn by Mrs. John Morrissey, wife of the prize-fighter. Grant’s second inauguration began inauspiciously, his aged father falling down a flight of stairs at the Capitol and suffering injuries which finally caused his death. The day was stormy, and the evening the coldest known in Washington for years. Unfortunately, the only place where the ball could be held was an improvised wooden building, through the crevices of which the icy wind blew a gale; and, to complete everybody’s misery, the heating apparatus broke down, so that many of the ladies who had come in conventional toilets had to protect their shoulders with fur mantillas, while their escorts put on overcoats. The President was so cold that he forgot the figures in the state quadrille which he was to lead, and was obliged to depend on General Sherman to push him through them. The supper was ruined, the meats and salads competing in temperature with the ices; all that could be saved was the coffee, which was kept hot over alcohol lamps. The breath of the members of the band congealed in their instruments, and several hundred canaries which were to sing in the intervals between band pieces shriveled into little downy balls on the bottoms of their cages and uttered not a trill.