No gifts were received. The President emphatically decreed against that, but one came from his old regiment so expressive of the regard of the men for their commander and his wife that it could not but be accepted and appreciated. It was a silver plate in an ebony frame inscribed: “To the Mother of the Regiment.” Upon the plate was a sketch of the log hut which had been Colonel Hayes’s headquarters in the valley of the Kanawha, surrounded by tattered battle flags. Soon the President led the way to the state dining room, where a sumptuous table presented all of the delicacies of the day and the best of the confectioner’s art. The ringing in of the New Year disbanded the party. Many gay parties were given for the eleventh White House bride, Miss Emily Platt, niece of President Hayes, who married General Russell Hastings in the Blue Room on the evening of July 19, 1878. This gay little wedding was attended by the Cabinet and the many friends of Miss Platt, who had assisted Mrs. Hayes in her social duties. Bishop Jagger of Ohio, a Methodist minister, performed the ceremony beneath a marriage bell composed of fifteen thousand buds and blossoms. The Marine Band played the wedding march, and President Hayes gave the bride away. A very elaborate supper was served to the party in the private dining room. Although Mrs. Hayes kept aloof from all political matters and attended wholly to her end of the presidential partnership, she did confess to one piece of lobbying for which posterity is indebted to her. Eliphalet Andrews, the noted portrait painter of Ohio, came to Washington in 1877 to found the Corcoran School of Art under the patronage of W. W. Corcoran. He made a charming life-size portrait of Martha Washington as the first of a series of presidential portraits, which includes those of Jefferson, Jackson, Taylor, Buchanan, Johnson, and Garfield. When Mrs. Washington’s portrait was finished, Mrs. Hayes had it placed on exhibition in the East Room. It was hung opposite the one of General Washington. Mrs. Hayes felt that that portrait belonged right there, so she concluded to make an effort to have it purchased. Accordingly, following the next state dinner, she conducted Speaker Randall to view the portrait. She dilated upon its merits and expressed her own wish to have it bought for the mansion. The Speaker coincided and suggested that she direct Senator Edmunds’s attention to the portrait, as he was chairman of the committee on the purchases of portraits for the government. Mrs. Hayes’s appeal brought the matter to a point where it received official attention and was the needed impetus to bring about the purchase of the portrait. It is the only one of the few portraits of the various First Ladies of the Land belonging to the White House that is displayed in the state apartments. The others, that of Mrs. Hayes among them, are relegated to the basement corridor which opens from the cloak rooms and which is used by all of the delegations