President Wilson has revived the custom of visiting Congress in its own home and there delivering his addresses directly to the lawmakers in a body, assembled for the occasion in the Hall of Representatives. This is a much more effective mode of approaching Congress than sending a written document by messenger, to be drawled through in a singsong voice by tired clerks, simultaneously in both halls, to a gathering of only half-interested auditors. It is also a more certain means of concentrating public attention upon the work of the session. There is a subtle something in the very personality of a President which appeals to the popular imagination. As the one high officer of state elected by the votes of all the people, he stands in their minds as a conservator and champion of their broadest ideals, as contrasted with the narrower sectional interests represented by the members of Congress. When, therefore, he takes his position face to face with the men who are to frame whatever legislation grows out of his recommendations, the whole country instinctively draws near and listens. It is hard to guess what might happen should it fall to the lot of President Wilson to appear before Congress in person with such a trumpet-call as was sounded in President Harrison’s message on the maltreatment of our sailors in Chile, or President Cleveland’s on the encroachments of England in Venezuela, or President McKinley’s on the failure of his peaceful efforts for freeing Cuba. If the mere reading of these formal messages was so impressive as to paint a vivid picture of the attendant scenes on the memory of all who witnessed them, what an extra touch of the dramatic would have been added had the chief executive of the nation appeared at the Capitol to tell his story himself! CHAPTER V “THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE” Although Pennsylvania Avenue is several miles long, the mile that lies between the hill on which Congress sits and the slope where the President lives is called in local parlance “the Avenue.” Outside of their formal speeches and documentary literature, members of Congress are wont to refer to the White House and its surroundings as “the other end of the Avenue.” This familiar phrase is, like the popular designation of Congress as “the gentlemen on the hill,” a survival from the period when only one hill in town was officially occupied, and the strip of highway connecting it with the group of buildings used by the executive branch of the Government was about the only thoroughfare making any serious pretensions to street improvement. It was along this line that President Jefferson planted the first shade trees; and L’Enfant’s plan made the south side of it the northern boundary of the Mall.