Turns about Town Part 18

While waiting we were given an audience, so to say, by Laddie, the White House Airedale. Curly haired breed. "How old is he?" we asked the small colored boy whose office includes charge of him. "A year," he said. The dog stands well, and holds his stump of a tail straight aloft, correctly enough. But there is altogether too much black on him, we observed; covers his breast and flanks, instead of being merely a "saddle" on his back. "Yes, everybody says it," answered the boy.

Secretary Hughes was seen coming down the corridor on his way out. The newspaper men pressed forward forming a narrow line through which he walked, very erect, smiling broadly, bowing to right and left, and continually moving his black derby hat up and down before him. "Gets a great reception, don't he?" said one reporter, glowing with a sort of jovial pride at Mr. Hughes.

"You'll have to see the boss," Mr. Hughes repeated a number of times as he came along, and turning slightly made one last very good-natured bow as he moved out through the door.

"Are they all here?" called out Mr. Christian, then marshalled us through his office and into the large, circular and very handsome office of the President.

While we awaited him he could be seen, through a doorway, talking, on a porch-like structure opening out along the back of the building. He was very leisurely in manner. I think my first outstanding impression of my glimpse of him was that he was a very handsome man, most beautifully dressed in a dark blue serge sack suit, very sharply pressed.

He came in, moving slowly, stood close behind his desk, and said, "Well, gentlemen, what is there that I can tell you?" He spoke very quietly and deliberately. The Cabinet he said had discussed problems relating to the "hang-over" (as he put it) of the War, in particular the trade situation of the world. He mentioned that he did not desire to be quoted directly. He had not been "annoyed" but he had been "distressed,"

he said, by having been so quoted not long ago. The top b.u.t.ton of his coat was b.u.t.toned. His cuffs were stiffly starched. He inclined his head a good part of the time to one side. Sometimes half closed his eyelids.

Then would open them very wide, and make an outward gesture with his hands, accompanied by something like a shrug of the shoulders. Close up I was struck by the bushiness of his eyebrows. He wore a single ring, mounting a rather large light stone. No pin to his tie. He swung backward and forward on his feet. Put on sh.e.l.l-rimmed nose gla.s.ses to read. Sometimes pursed his lips slowly. As he talked absently rolled a small piece of paper he had picked up from his desk into the shape of a cigarette. His talk had a slightly oratorical roll. He was exceedingly patient and exceedingly courteous. His general atmosphere was one of deep kindness. In conclusion he said, "Glad to see you again."

"That's pretty nice," was the comment of one of the newspaper men as we emerged from his presence.

As we moved away through the grounds my friend dilated on a somewhat whimsical idea of his. This was to this effect. In motion picture plays (my friend insisted) kings were always much more kingly in appearance and manner than any modern king would be likely to be. But (he declared) it would be very difficult for a motion picture concern to get hold of any actor to play the part who would look so much like an American President as President Harding.

We stopped in to look at the east room, now again open. A character who had evidently not been born in any of the capitols of Europe was admiring the place vastly. He looked with especial approval at the enormous chandeliers, those great showers, or regular storms, of gla.s.s.

"Pretty hard to beat," was his patriotic comment.

III

It's a big old building, dark inside, the Washington Post Office. He looked like some sort of a guard about the premises who was too tired to stand up and so did his guarding sitting in a chair. My friend had got so accustomed to inquiring our way to the office of Secretary Hughes, and of Secretary Weeks, and so on, that he asked where we would find Secretary Hays.

The man looked at us very contemptuously. "The Postmaster General?" at length he boomed. Well, he was on the fifth floor. As we stepped from the car my friend remarked on the practice universal in Washington of men removing their hats when in the presence of women in elevators.

Our appointment was for ten o'clock. We had got quite used, however, to waiting an hour or so for the gentlemen we sought to see. Several other callers were ahead of us here, and we sat down in the outer office when we had presented our cards to a very kind and attentive young man who appeared to be in charge.

Within a very few minutes, however, we were ushered round into a secluded inner office. "The General," the young man said, "will be in in a moment. He sees them in two different rooms at the same time." This large room was entirely bare of painting or other decorations.

Speaking of decorations reminds me of the striking handsomeness of the Cabinet officers we had so far been seeing. Beginning with the President himself (prize winner of the lot in this respect) the spectacle of this Administration had up to this moment been a regular beauty show.

The physiognomy of Mr. Hays, of course, strikes a somewhat different note in the picture. Though he is not, I should say, as funny looking as some of his pictures suggest.

He fairly leaped into the room. Spidery figure. Calls you by your last name without the prefix of Mister. Very, very earnest in effect. No questions necessary to get him started. He began at once to talk. Poured forth a steady stream of rapid utterance. Denounced the idea of labor as a "commodity." Said: "We have a big job here. Three hundred thousand employees. Millions of customers. I think we can do it all right, though. But our people in the department all over the country everywhere must be made to feel that a human spirit is behind them. It's in the heart that the battle's won. It's because of the spirit behind them whether our men throw a letter on the floor before a door or put it through the door." Made a gesture with his hands ill.u.s.trating putting a letter through a door. Looked very hard at the very clean top of his desk much of the time as he talked. Now and then looked very straight indeed at us. Gave us a generous amount of his time. At length arose very briskly.

Routed us out around through some side way. Had a private elevator concealed somewhere in a dark corner. Turned us over to the colored man in charge of it with the request, "Won't you please take my friends down?"

As we were crossing the street we ran into our old friend from New York who edits a very flourishing women's magazine. Down here, he said, to get an article from Mrs. Harding. Had found her altogether willing to supply him with an article, but in so much of a flutter with her new activities that she didn't see her way to finding time soon to write it.

What, we asked, was the article to be about? Well, Mrs. Harding's idea was to revive all the old traditions of the White House. And what were those traditions? Mrs. Harding hadn't said beyond the custom of Easter egg-rolling.

We were on our way over to see a.s.sistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt. He is not in the State, Army and Navy building where Mr.

Denby is, but some ten minutes' walk away, in the long, rather fragile looking Navy Department building constructed during the War.

Here numerous gold-braided officers continually come and go. The building is filled with very beautiful models of fighting ships. At one side of Roosevelt's door is a model of the _San Diego_, at the other side a "sample U. S. Navy Patrol Boat."

As we gave him our cards a young man asked us if we knew "the Colonel."

An old Washington newspaper man had told us that morning, "He will go far under his own hat." Several very large men, also waiting, were smoking very large cigars while we waited. While all male visitors to public offices in Washington appear to smoke continually, those in government positions apparently do not smoke during office hours. And government business hours there seem to be queer. The Senate goes into session at just about lunch time. The President seems to be around in his business office throughout the whole of the middle of the day. And the office of the Secretary of State telephones you at six o'clock Sat.u.r.day night.

The young man showed us in. Mr. Roosevelt arose from his desk, shook hands very cordially, said "How do you do?" sat down again and at the moment said nothing further. It was up to us to swing the conversation.

So my friend launched out: We had nothing to do with affairs of state, had no design to interview him as to naval matters, simply were curious to see if we should find him eating an apple and wearing white sox, or what. With hearty good nature, Mr. Roosevelt replied that he was not eating an apple because he did not have one to eat, and that he had only once worn white sox, woolen ones, when a boy at school.

He was very neatly dressed in a suit of quiet dark material, wore rich dark red tie, with a stick pin to it. Curiously weather beaten looking complexion. As he has just published a book we asked him if he intended to carry on more or less of a literary career together with his public life. He said, well, perhaps more or less. But he wouldn't have time for much such work. He "practised" writing on Sat.u.r.days and Sundays, but mainly for the purpose of attaining to clearness in expressing himself.

He insisted that the great bulk of his father's writing had been done _before_ the full course of his political activities and _after_ he had retired from them.

After we had arisen to go he walked up and down the room with us, with a somewhat arm-in-arm effect. Declared we should know a friend of his up in Boston, because we'd "like him." Said to look in on him again any time when in Washington. Very affable young man.

We went out on S Street to see Wilson's new house. Handsome enough structure, but, undetached from the building next door and fronting directly on the sidewalk, we decided that it looked somewhat more like a club than like a private residence. Were told later that the part of that house to look at is the back of it, as there are wonderful gardens there.

One cannot fail to note in the numerous art shops where pictures of Harding, Roosevelt, Washington, Lincoln and Cleveland are displayed in abundance the relative absence of pictures of Wilson.

Why do august statesmen in the lobby of the New Willard cross their legs so that we can see that their shoes need to be half-soled? Why do so many distinguished looking gentlemen in Washington wear their overcoats as though they were sleeveless capes? What on earth do so many Oklahoma looking characters do in Washington? Why is it that there the ma.s.ses do not, as in New York and Chicago and Los Angeles, stroll about at night?

We stopped in again at the executive office of the White House.

Remarkable number of doormen there got up somewhat like policemen, so that you repeatedly have to explain yourself all over again. Man new to us on today. Suspiciously asked our names. Then (though what just our names could have meant to him I cannot see) shook hands with immense friendliness, and told us his name.

Quite a throng waiting. Busy hum all about. Different crowd from usual.

Hardly any reporters. Old gentlemen. Stout red-faced fellows with large black slouch hats. Several youngish women with very generous bosom displays. Some sort of a delegation, apparently. We did not make out just what. But the scene somewhat suggested a meeting of the Los Angeles branch of the Ohio Society. At length the company lines up. We trail in through with the rest.

The President, looming in the centre of his office, shakes hands with each caller in turn, in a manner of paternal affection. Holds your hand very gently within his for a considerable while. Rather odd position he takes when shaking hands. Right shoulder lifted. Looks (though I felt that he was unconscious of this effect) somewhat like a pose that a painter might put his model into when about to paint him shaking hands.

He bent over us in a very fatherly fashion. Said, yes, yes, he had got our letters while in the South. Which was quite a mistake, as we hadn't written him any letters. But his kindly intention was quite unmistakable.

IV

Senator New's secretary, in his room on the second floor of the Senate Office building, was opening a wooden box that had come by mail. No; he wasn't exactly opening this box, either. He was looking at it suspiciously and cautiously tipping it from side to side. "Feels like it was a snake," he said fearsomely. "Soft, live-like weight in there. I don't believe I'll open it. You see," indicating the stamps, "it's from India, too."

"But why would anybody be sending Senator New a snake?" inquired my friend.

"Goodness gracious! We get lots of things just as queer as snakes,"

replied Mr. Winter. "I guess the Senator must be coming in pretty soon,"

he remarked, glancing about. "So many people coming in," he added, and continued: "It's a remarkable thing. Visitors seem to have some sort of psychic knowledge of when the Senator will be in. Same way out in Indianapolis, we could always tell when Tom Taggart was likely to be back soon from French Lick--so many people (who couldn't have heard from him) looking for him at the Denizen House."

"Everybody," someone observed, "always comes to Washington at least once a year." All United-Statesians, at any rate, one would say looking about the city, probably do. And among visiting United-Statesians not habitually seen in such profusion elsewhere one would certainly include, Indians, Mormons, Porto-Ricans, Civil War veterans, pedagogues, octogenarians, vegetarians, Virginians, Creoles, pastors, suffragettes, honeymooners, aunts, portly ladies of peculiar outline, people of a very simple past, and a remarkable number of gentlemen who still cling to white "lawn" ties, hard boiled shirts and "Congress shoes."

Also, of course, that vast congregation of people who "want" something in Washington. "What are you looking for around here?" a remark commonly overheard in the hotel lobbies.

But there are other American cities to which "everybody" goes, too, now or then, though the visitors are not perhaps so recognizable. Coming out of the Capitol, pa.s.sing through the grounds of the White House, what do you frequently overhear? Frequently some such remark as this: "Haven't you ever been in the subway? To the Bronx? When you go back you certainly must go in it."

And out in Los Angeles they boastfully tell you that one way in which Los Angeles "is like New York" is this: That whereas a man may or may not happen to go to Richmond or to Detroit, sooner or later you are bound to see him on the streets of Los Angeles. That, as I say, is what they tell you out there.

But what are those aspects of Washington which are peculiar to that city, and make it so unlike any other city in the United States? And which in some cases make it an influence for the bad to many of its visitors? And which in some cases it is so strange should be the aspect of such a city?

For one thing, the first thing which must strike any stranger to the city is the enormous extent of the souvenir business there. It is perhaps natural enough that this should be so, and that souvenir shops should range themselves in an almost unbroken stretch for miles. What is not altogether so easy to answer is why nearly all of the souvenirs should be the kind of souvenirs they are.

Printed portraits of the present President and of former Presidents, and plaster busts of these personages, of course. That many of the articles for "remembrance" should be touched with a patriotic design, of course, too. But why today should so many millions of the "souvenir spoons"

(with the Capitol in relief on the bowl), the "hand painted" plates (presenting a comic valentine likeness of George Washington), the paper-weights (with a delirious lithograph of the Library of Congress showing through), the "napkin rings," b.u.t.ter knives, and so on and so on--why should such millions of these things be precisely in the style of such articles proudly displayed in the home of my grandmother when I was a boy in the Middle West?