RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
members of the Cabinet and their wives and a few especially distinguished outsiders are invited.
The hostess doesn't have to worry about seating the Cabinet officers because it is all a matter of precedence and is attended to by the Social Executive Secretary. The rank of a Cabinet officer is determined by the date on which his office was created and not, as one might think, by the relative importance of his official status.
The only time when a friendly democracy presents itself to the President en masse is on New Year's Day. At the New Year's Reception he receives just as many persons as he can shake hands with between the hours of eleven in the morning and half past two or three in the afternoon. His wife, the wife of the Vice-President and the ladies of the Cabinet receive with him as long as it is physically possible for them to do so. While writing in the third person I am thinking in the first, of course. These were our customs.
Yet if anybody unfamiliar with Washington life imagines that a New Year's Reception means throwing open the White House doors and admitting the public without consideration of rank or the rules of precedence he is mistaken. The Reception, up to a stated hour, is as carefully regulated as any other function, and I consider the list of the especially favoured most interesting as a revelation of the complexity of Washington's social life.
Announcement is made that the President will receive at 11:00 a.m.—the Vice-President, the members of the Cabinet and the Diplomatic Corps; at 11:20 a.m.—the Supreme Court, members of the Judiciary of the District of Columbia, former Cabinet officers and former diplomatic representatives of the United States; at 11:30—Senators, Representatives and Delegates in Congress; at 11:45—Officers of the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps and the Militia of the District of Columbia; at 12:15 p.m.—Regents and Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, all the various Com-
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