A presidential inauguration is a picturesque affair even when the weather is stormy, as it frequently is on the fourth of March in Washington. It is a brilliant affair when the sun shines bright and the air is balmy, as happened on March 4, 1913, when Woodrow Wilson took the oath of office at noon, delivered his inaugural address a few minutes later, reviewed the parade immediately after luncheon, and before nightfall was at his desk in the White House transacting the business of the Government. To the popular imagination Inauguration Day represents crowds and hurrahs, brass bands and processions. The hotels, restaurants, and boarding houses of Washington overflow with people from all parts of the country who have come to "see the show." The pavements, windows, and housetops along Pennsylvania Avenue from the east front of the Capitol to the western gate of the White House are crowded with folk eager to see the procession with its military column and marching clubs. From an improvised stand in front of the White House, surrounded by his friends, the new President reviews the parade. Every four years the newspaper boys describe Inauguration Day, but I am not aware of any novelist who has put it in a book. Why not? It offers material of a high order for literary description. "Human interest" material also in abundance, not merely in the aspects of the retiring and incoming Presidents with their respective retinues of important officials, but in the comedies and tragedies of the lesser figures of the motley political world. Familiar faces vanish, new faces appear—especially when a change of administration brings a change of party control. An evacuating column of ousted and dejected office-holders, prophesying national disaster at the hands of parvenus, meets an advancing column of would-be office-holders rejoicing in general over their party's success and palpitantly eager for individual advantage. As in life, so in Washington on Inauguration Day, humour and pathos mingle. Inauguration Day is the beginning of a period of uprooting and transplanting.