As the fourth of March was to fall on Sunday, President Grant had Hayes meet Chief Justice Waite in the red parlor of the White House on the evening of the third and take the oath privately. The inaugural ball was omitted because the Electoral Commission had finished its work too late to enable preparations to be made. President Hayes was not nearly so conspicuous a figure during the following four years as his wife, who was a woman of very positive convictions, especially on the subject of alcoholic stimulants. At her instance, wines were banished from the White House table, the only exception occurring when the Grand Dukes Alexis and Constantin of Russia visited Washington. It is said to have been some incident at the entertainment given in their honor which fixed Mr. and Mrs. Hayes definitely in the determination not to depart again from the rule of teetotalism. The newspapers poked a good deal of innocent fun at the Hayes parties on the score that, though the ban was never lifted from the ordinary intoxicants drunk from glasses, there was always plenty of strong Roman punch served in orange-skins. The nickname which presently fastened itself to this deceptive course was the “life-saving station.” In his diary, however, Mr. Hayes has left us the statement: “The joke of the Roman punch oranges was not on us, but on the drinking people. My orders were to flavor them rather strongly with the same flavor that is found in Jamaica rum. This took! It was refreshing to hear the drinkers say, with a smack of their lips, ‘Would they were hot!’” I am bound to add that, in spite of the good man’s enjoyment of his ruse, the suspicion still survives that his steward used to put a private and particular interpretation on his orders. Although Mr. Hayes was not a member of any church, his wife was an ardent Methodist, and one marked feature of their life in Washington was the Sunday evening sociables at the White House, when Cabinet officers and other dignitaries would come in and pass a couple of hours singing hymns, with light conversation between. Among the most interested attendants at these gatherings was General Sherman, who used to join vigorously in the singing--or try to. Another, who was destined to play an independent part in history a few years afterward, was a clever young Congressman from Ohio named William McKinley, Junior. He had been a volunteer soldier in Hayes’s regiment early in the war, and they had grown to be fast friends. At one of the first of the secular receptions during the Hayes régime, the guest of honor was a budding celebrity, Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii. She labored under the handicap of knowing no English, and had to carry on most of her conversation through an interpreter.