Inside of the main house, the old lines were kept intact as far as the comfort of its occupants would permit, though the restoration did work some changes. The noble east room, which for many years was decorated in the style of the saloon of a river steamboat, wears now the air of simple elegance designed for it before steamboats were invented; and the state dining-room has been so enlarged that future Presidents will not be forced, on especially great occasions, to spread their tables in the east room in order to spare the diners the annoyance of bumping elbows. Upstairs the changes have been rather of function than of form. The room which, from Grant’s day to McKinley’s, was used for Cabinet meetings, and where our peace protocol with Spain was signed, is now a library; that in which Lincoln read to his official family the first draft of his Emancipation Proclamation is now a bedroom, and a like fate has befallen the former library, where Cleveland penned his Venezuela message. The old lines of partition, however, are all there. Logs still blaze and crackle in the fireplace beside which Jackson puffed his corncob pipe. The windows through which Lincoln looked over at the Virginia hills have not changed even the shape or size of their old-fashioned panes. The places where our first royal guest slept, and where Garfield passed his long ordeal of suffering, remain bedchambers. Mrs. Roosevelt, who loved the White House and had made a study of its architectural history, personally supervised every stage of its restoration. When the alterations were finished, she took the same interest in the process of refurnishing, so that the final product was, as nearly as modern conditions would permit, the White House of a century ago. The removal of needless obstructions was one of the most successful elements in the renovation, as it made possible the handling of a crowd of fifteen hundred or two thousand people without confusion. Socially, the Roosevelt administration was in every way the most brilliant Washington has ever known. Mrs. Roosevelt was a perfect hostess, and the many-sided President drew about him the leaders in every line of thought and action. In his democracy of companionship and his forceful way of doing whatever he laid his hand to, he was another Jackson; in his attraction for men of letters, students of statecraft, artists, and scientific workers, he revived the best traditions of Jefferson.