part of the broad hall reaching from end to end of the second floor that has been partitioned off. Here are polite and sagacious attendants, who take the cards of visitors to the President, usually by way of the private secretary, and in many cases they get no farther.

The Secretary to the President has grown to be an important personage with the increase of executive business, all of whose details he supervises, having for himself (at present) the southeast corner room, and for his assistants the two rooms across the hall facing Pennsylvania Avenue. He has not only the President's correspondence and ordinary records to look after, but must do much that no other office requires. Big ledgers of applications for office are posted up daily; numerous pigeon-holes are filled with letters and petitions; the newspapers are read ard scrap-books are made; one room is devoted to telegraph and telephone service; in short, here are all the paraphernalia of a busy public office. According to the present rules the President (Mr. McKinley) holds cabinet meetings each Tuesday and Friday at 11.00 a. m., and reserves these days for “public business requiring his uninterrupted attention"; will receive Senators and Representatives from 10.00 to 12.00 every day except cabinet days, and other persons from 12.00 to 1.00 o'clock; while those having no business, but who desire to pay their respects, will be received by the President in the East Room at 3.00 p. m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

a

The President's office is next to that of the private secretary large, plain, comfortably furnished room, lined with cases of books of law and reference. His great desk is at the southern end of the room, and the President sits with his back to the window, which commands a wide view down the Potomac. The massive oak table here is made from timbers of the Resolute, a ship abandoned in the Arctic ice while searching for Sir John Franklin, in 1854, but recovered by American whalers; it is a gift from Queen Victoria.

The Cabinet Room is next beyond, immediately over the Green Room another plain, handsome, rather dark apartment, with a long table down the center surrounded by arm-chairs. The President sits at the southern end of the table, with the Secretary of State on his right, the Secretary of the Treasury on his left, and the others farther down the table. The more or less valuable portraits of several past Presidents look down upon them from the walls.

'It was no part of the plan of the White House. . . that it should be a public office, but with the growth of the country and of the political patronage system, the proper use of the building as a dwelling for the chief magistrate has been more subordinated to its official use as a bureau of appointments and a rendezvous for the scheming politicians of the two houses of Congress, who claim the Government offices in their States as their personal property, to be parceled out

by the President in accordance with their wishes. It will doubtless surprise many people to learn that hospitality, save in the restricted sense of giving dinners, is almost an impossibility to the President of the United States, for the reason that he has no beds for guests. There are only seven sleeping rooms in the mansion, besides those of the servants on the basement floor. If a President has a moderately numerous household, . . he can hardly spare for guests more than the big state bedroom. A President may wish to invite an ambassador and his family, or a party of distinguished travelers from abroad, to spend a few days at the White House, but he can not do so without finding lodgings elsewhere for the members of his own household. It has been said over and over again, in the press, that Congress should either provide offices for the President, or should build for him a new dwelling, and devote the mansion exclusively to business purposes; but Congress is in no hurry to do either."-E. V. Smalley.

The Executive Mansion is well guarded. A large force of watchmen, including police officers, is on duty inside the mansion at all hours, and a continuous patrol is maintained by the local police of the grounds immediately surrounding the mansion, and it is hardly possible for any one to approach the building at any time without detection. The patrol of the grounds entails special hardships in the bitter cold nights of winter, and it was to lessen these that the sentry boxes were erected. As an additional safeguard, automatic alarm signals are fixed in different parts of the house, and there are telephones and telegraphs to the military posts, so that a strong force of police and soldiers could be obtained almost at a moment's notice. The annoyance and danger from cranks, as well as villains, has thus been as fully guarded against as it is possible to do.

VII.

THE EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS.

The Executive Departments are those over which the cabinet officers preside and in which the daily administration of the Government is carried on. There have not always been so many, nor have they always been known by their present names; and it is only recently, under the law of 1886, prescribing the order of succession to the Presidency, that any authoritative sequence could be observed in the list, which is now as follows:

The Department of State, presided over by the Honorable the Secretary of State.

The Treasury Department, the Secretary of the Treasury.
The War Department, the Secretary of War.

The Department of Justice, the Attorney-General.

The Post Office Department, the Postmaster-General.

The Navy Department, the Secretary of the Navy.

The Department of the Interior, the Secretary of the Interior. The Department of Agriculture, the Secretary of Agriculture. All these are situated in the immediate neighborhood of the Executive Mansion, except those of the Post Office, Interior, and Agriculture.

The departments are the business offices of the Government, and "politics" has much less to do with their practical conduct than the popular clamor would lead one to suppose. The occasional shirk or blatherskite makes himself noticed, but the average employe, from head to foot of the list, faithfully attends to his business and does his work. This must be so, or the business of the nation could not be carried on; and otherwise, men and women would not grow gray in its service, as they are doing, because their fidelity and skill can not be spared so long as their strength holds out. Year by year, with the growth of intelligence and the extension of the civil service idea and practice, "politics" has less and less to do with the practical