White House

“ The White House is haunted by a vague, helpless abstraction, a kind of ghost of a nation, called the people.
The only way the Nation, in the White House, gets in, is as a spirit. The man who lives there, if he wants to be chummy (as any man we want there would) , has to commune with a Generalization. ”

“ A large lobby is engaged to get Congress to build a new White House, because the present one is not large enough “to entertain.” Could we build a house large enough for this purpose, for why should the few be invited and the great mass of voters left out in the cold? Each State is asked to build houses and furnish them for their Senators in order that these gentlemen may “entertain.” Who will pay for the oyster patties, the porcelain and champagne when the great new White House dots Meridian Hill, and the States enter into competition for the grandeur of the Senatorial castle? ”

“ But the White House Historical Association does much more than that. You bring their stories to life, and you make the White House accessible to visitors from near and far.
As my husband often says, this is the People's House. Each of you, through your time, talents, and treasure, make it so. Our family's appreciation for this home grows each and every day, and we could not be more grateful for your dedication to the White House. ”

“ The present White House is considered much too old-fashioned and shabby to be the suitable abode of the President of the United States. A love of ornate display has taken the place of early Republican simplicity. When George Washington saw the dimensions of the house which the Pennsylvanians were building for the President’s Mansion, he informed them at once that he would never occupy it, much less incur the expense of buying suitable furniture for it. ”

“ In my judgment, at no period in our history have we seen the hospitalities and ceremonies of the White House more handsomely dispensed, or displayed with greater republican simplicity than at the present time. If my observation be correct, no invidious or improper distinction seems to be made in the circle of visitors. There is no imposing movement or extra formality exhibited when a Secretary or some other high officer of Government presents himself. The quiet and unheralded citizen receives a polite and cordial salutation, as well as the haughty millionnaire, or some proud minister of state. ”

“ What we really do with a President is to pick him deliberately up out of his warm human living with the rest of us, with people who, whatever else is the matter with them, are at least somebody in particular, lift him over in the White House, shut him up there for four years to live in wedlock with An Average, to be the consort day and night of Her Who Never Was, and Who Never Is—a kind of vague, cold, intellectual, unsubstantial, lonely, Terrible Angel called the People. ”

“ Then with a technique for having a body and for not being fooled by ourselves and having some substance in what we say and what we do, we would have the spectacle of a hundred million people making themselves felt in political conventions, making themselves felt in The White House and even being noticed perhaps in time at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue by the great I AM, or I CAN'T, or I WON'T tucked under the come of all of us—called The United States Senate. ”

“ It is as different as possible in external appearance from the habitations of royalty in European cities; no iron-barred windows, better fitted for a fortress than ordinary outlook, no gloomy, gray walls, chilly and forbidding, frowning down upon you, no squalid tenements thronged with degraded specimens of humanity press upon its outskirts to accentuate the beauties of the one and the miseries of the other. Instead of this, the White House rises fair and inviting from an elevation which seems just sufficient to bring it into relief as a conspicuous feature of the landscape. ”

“ During the administration of President Johnson, the White House was brightened by the glad, happy faces of children, and for the first time since its occupation they became a part of the society of the House, and exerted a powerful social influence outside. ”

“ No family ever left Washington more respected by the powerful, more bewept by the poor. From the Nation’s House, which they had redeemed and honored, they went back empty-handed to their own dismantled home, followed by the esteem and affection of all who knew them. The White House holds the record of their spotless fame. Generations will pass before, from its grand old rooms, will fade out the healing and saving touches of one President’s daughter.
253The life of the White House under the administration of President Grant is a purely domestic one. ”

“ When the White House, just visible from those tree-tops, shall have ceased, as it soon must do, to be the home of the chief magistrate, what future magician shall summon down those cheerless stairways the ghostly procession of dead Presidents, as our first literary necromancer marshaled the shades of royal governors across the threshold of the Province House? ”

“ The first thing to be arranged for America to make the people quit being a ghost in The White House, is to form into three bodies or organizations, these three, groups of men—make these three groups of men class-conscious, self-conscious, conscious of their own power and purpose in America—and have everybody in America conscious of them. ”

“ When we consider the laxity and licentiousness of some of the so-called nobility, and the freedom of royal personages in their accepted code of morals, we realize that the life at the White House at Washington, makes for all that is pure in social life, having had no breath of scandal attaching to it in all the years since its establishment, and having set an example of moral righteousness for all the homes in the country at whose head it stands. ”

“ And as the people's house, we believe the White House should be a place for learning and for sharing new and different ideas, sharing new forms of art and culture, and history and different perspectives. We want you to visit and we want you to take advantage of these opportunities and maybe see something for yourselves that maybe you never thought you could do or be. ”

“ Those who visited the White House—and the White House appeared to be open to whosoever wished to enter—saw there a man of unconventional manners, who, without the slightest effort to put on dignity, treated all men alike, much like old neighbors ”

“ The leading symptom of the mood of the people, the magnificent blanket political secret that covers all the other secrets of the coming conventions and elections, the dominating fact of the next man's next four years in The White House, is the thing that is going to be done by the people from to-day on, to politicians who are fooled about themselves. ”

“ The White House was not so large or complete then as now; the East Room, which had served Mrs. Adams for a drying room, was unfurnished and unoccupied, and the front vestibule not then added, which so greatly enhances the interior of the present mansion. The House was plain, unfinished, and totally destitute of ornament, the grounds uninclosed, and materials for building purposes lying scattered about the woods which have since become the ornament of this portion of the city. Nothing but the lateness of the hour, and the storm coming on, saved the War Department. ”

“ The upholsterers make timid noises of driving nails and spreading tapestry; but save ourselves and these few watchers and workers, only the dead is here. The White House, so ill-appreciated in common times, is seen to be capacious and elegant—no disgrace to the nation even in the eyes of those foreign folk of rank who shall gather here directly.
As we sit brooding, with the pall straight before us, the funeral guns are heard indistinctly booming from the far forts, with the tap of drums in the serried street without, where troops and citizens are forming for the grand procession. ”

“ The splendors and gayeties of a life in the White House could offer her no attractions. Her domestic and simple tastes found more pleasure in her own home and family circle at the beloved Hermitage. “For Mr. Jackson’s sake,” said she, “I am glad; for my own part, I never wished it.” She seemed to regret the necessity of a residence in Washington, and remarked to a friend with an expression of the utmost sincerity, “I assure you that I would rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God, than to live in that Palace in Washington.” ”

“ When gleaming in the westering sun, like a slender, tapering, sky-pointing finger of gold, no finer index can be imagined to direct the gazer to the record of a glorious history. Near the monument is the White House, a building which, in its modest yet adequate dimensions, embodies the democratic ideal more fitly, it may be feared, than certain other phases of the Great Republic. ”

“ My responsibilities had not yet begun to worry me, and I was able to enjoy, almost to the full, the realisation that my husband was actually President of the United States and that it was this fact which the cheering crowds were acclaiming.
There was nobody at the White House to bid us welcome except the official staff and some of our own guests. But it didn’t matter. There is never any ceremony about moving into the White House. You just drive up and walk in,—and there you are. ”

“ The General adopts these brilliant examples with the White House. The pretty Peg finds herself in control of such society high ground as the English and Russian legations, two Cabinet houses besides her own, and last and most important the White House itself. It is a merry even if a savage war, and the pretty Peg is everywhere victorious. ”

“ Men from the South who but lately had borne arms against the government, and who had not yet taken the oath of allegiance, were found plentiful about the White House, and apparently basking in the sunshine of presidential favor, as in the rays of a southern sun. ”

“ Lincoln the White House habitués saw promise of more pleasure than had been enjoyed there. The New Year reception of 1865 was the most brilliant entertainment given by the administration. Thousands of people paid their respects to the President and Mrs. Lincoln, and congratulated them on the confidence reposed in him by the people. The war was drawing to a close, and the North was inclined to look upon the Union as well-nigh restored. The inauguration was anxiously looked forward to, and when it was safely over the people breathed freer, and gave up the fear that had oppressed them. ”

“ This building, like the Capitol, was burnt in the British invasion of 1814 and afterwards restored. Unlike the nation, or the enormous public buildings that surround and dwarf it, the White House has in no sense grown, but remains as it was designed in the lifetime of Washington. It is nevertheless a comfortable mansion, though rigid in simplicity. The parlor of the house, the "East Room," is the finest apartment, occupying the whole of that side, and is kept open for visitors during most of the day. ”

“ The White House is the property of the Nation, and so far as is compatible with living therein it should be kept as it originally was, for the same reasons that we keep Mount Vernon as it originally was. ”

“ There are certain duties connected with the White House routine which have been performed by the same employés throughout one Administration after another and each new President’s wife finds these men invaluable and wonders, I am sure, how the White House could ever be run without them. ”

“ All official duties will in time be attended to in the offices which are situated just west of the White House, so that the latter will be used only as the private residence of the President’s family.
Longfellow says:
All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. How true this must be of the home of our Presidents! George Washington watched its building, and with his stately wife walked through it when it was finished, and was satisfied. ”

“ Seeing every day the most distinguished public men of the country, and with many of them brought into direct acquaintance by the easy intercourse of hotel life, destroyed any reverence I might have acquired for official station. Familiarity may not always breed contempt, but it is a veritable eye opener. To me no divinity hedged the brow of a senator. I knew the White House too well to be impressed by its architectural grandeur without and rather bizarre furnishments within. ”

“ While Ross and Cockburn were hastily burning the White House and the Department buildings, anxious only to escape, and never sending more than two hundred soldiers beyond Capitol Square, the President, his Cabinet, his generals, and his army were performing movements at which even the American people, though outraged and exasperated beyond endurance, could not but laugh. ”

“ During my mother’s life, and up to this date, always contemning pretension and worldly vanity, we lived in the ‘White House’ as we lived at home, save that we were obliged to have rather more company, less select as to true worth than was altogether agreeable. ”

“ The President’s house was the seat of hospitality, where Mrs. Madison always presided (in the absence of Mr. Jefferson’s daughters) when there were female guests. Mrs. Madison and her husband spent three weeks at the White House after their arrival in the city, until they could make arrangements to obtain a suitable house. President Jefferson abolished the custom of holding levees which Mrs. Washington had introduced, and the fashionable people of the city did not like the innovation. ”

“ On the evening of the 11th, a great crowd, exultant and happy, went to the White House to congratulate him, and with him rejoice over the triumph. Again his tall form stood at the window of the Executive Mansion, and looked out on the happy multitude. ”