RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
holidays, especially Easter and Christmas, I was simply besieged. They did not want money ever; they wanted something that could be sold as a souvenir of myself. I never, to my knowledge, refused a request of this kind. Mrs. Roosevelt had used a photograph of the White House, and I decided, finally, to do the same. I chose a view of the South Portico eight by ten inches in size which I thought very nice, and asked to have it reserved for me. With my signature across one corner it became a most satisfactory souvenir. I hesitate to hazard a guess as to the number I signed and sent away, but, ordered by the hundreds, they didn't cost very much, so contributing them to good can became a pleasure unmarred by a sense of unjustifiable extravagance. Handkerchiefs, too, were in great demand and I always kept a supply of them on hand.
I see I have wandered away from the receptions and dinners and my attempt to tell in some sort of consecutive fashion what a social season at the White House consists of, but remembering the crowds I lived in for four years it seems to me that everybody must know just as much about these things as I do. I have to keep reminding myself that I am not writing altogether for people who live in Washington, but for the people in the far places who have never been to Washington, but who have just as much of a personal property right in the nation's capital and just as much interest in the proper conduct of its affairs whether they be be legislative, administrative, diplomatic, or merely social, as any President ever had.
381
