Mrs. Roosevelt shared her husband’s tastes and was a writer herself, even when her children were small, but she so planned her time as to be able to devote a part of it both to her husband and her children, and to her step-daughter during the time Alice spent with her father. Until the death of her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Lee, Alice spent the greater part of her time in the Boston home of her grandparents or in travelling with them. The President’s wife always found great delight in horseback riding, and she and the President would drive to the outskirts of the city, where their riding horses would be awaiting them, and enjoy frequent rides through the country roads leading from the city. Thus they escaped the gaze of the curious. She was accomplished in many ways, even having trained herself as a nurse, a qualification of utmost value to the mother of such an active family. Early in their establishment at the White House, luncheon became the important political function. Like the Hanna breakfasts in the “little White House” across Lafayette Square, where the chosen were invited to partake of country sausage and hot buckwheat cakes, maple syrup or honey, coffee, and a flow of political reason, for luncheons the White House pantry was always prepared to serve from one to a dozen or more additional guests. No one, least of all the President himself, knew how many he would invite to join him at lunch. Whoever the man might be that happened to engage his deep interest in a morning call, he was likely to be asked to stay. When a subject pressed its claims upon the President’s mind, a telephone call was sent to the best-informed individual to request him to come to supply the desired data. It was in this manner that the President invited Booker Washington, the well-known Negro educator, to eat luncheon in the White House--an act that was severely criticized at the time. In speaking of the incident at a later period, Mr. Roosevelt said he was in the midst of an interesting discussion with Washington when the luncheon hour arrived, and without thinking of the man’s colour, asked him to the meal in order that they might continue the conversation. Both the President and his wife sought to bring people together at this meal who would enjoy meeting, and they both did their best to draw their guests into informal frank discussion of the subjects uppermost in their interest. Delightful, natural, wholesome, with a spontaneous hospitality entirely devoid of ostentation, a luncheon at the White House in the Roosevelt régime was an education and an adventure. Helen Nicolay, in her recent book, has this to say of one of these luncheons: