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So the procession comes, pauses, and passes. You wonder what possible impression its members can hope to make upon the wearied retina, the tired tympanum, of the man in the oval room.

The case is not what one would expect. The President's mind and nerves have much the quality of youth. They are singularly fresh and tenacious; they function like a boy's both in receiving and recording impressions. He hears and sees and does not easily forget. Let us go into the oval room.

It is a cabinet, perhaps 25 by 35 feet, done in light olive green burlap with white wainscoting and doors. At one end is a fireplace with a white marble mantel, on it a French clock under a glass dome; opposite, a deep bay window. Glazed book-cases are set into the wainscoting between the doors; the floor is covered with a plain green rug of domestic manufacture. A solitary picture still hangs or did hang, the other day-as if forgotten, on one wall: a small photograph of Theodore Roosevelt. The President sits at his desk in the bay of the window; another chair is placed at one end of the desk. At one side of this main chamber there is a smaller room in dark brown, furnished with a couch and easy chairs, and a tiny desk set into the wall; to this room on rare occasions the President may retire with a particularly favored visitor. Beyond this is the Cabinet room, a rectangular chamber none too large for its big table with ten chairs somewhat crowded around it; there is no place provided for the seat of the Secretary of Labor, and he sits doubled up with the Secretary of Commerce at the lower end. The Cabinet room is done in light brown; maps and law books line the walls, and a globe stands in the middle of the floor. The only picture is a Lincoln over the mantel. For a change of scene the President sometimes leads his visitors into the Cabinet room.

An interview with Mr. Wilson is always a delightful and satisfactory affair. Not always, of course, in its results, for the United States now has a President who can say "no" as easily as "yes," though he knows how to take the sting out of a refusal, if he wants to. But an interview

is always delightful and satisfactory in that the visitor has the fullest opportunity to tell his story and make his request. or his argument, assured of an attentive hearing. All visitors agree that Mr. Wilson has a peculiar faculty of putting them at their best; not a few timid, unready talkers have told me wonderingly that in his company they found their tongues unloosed and their ideas flowing rapidly into appropriate words. Appraised as austere by the public which does not know him, Mr. Wilson is in fact a man of ready and profound sympathy. All feel that instantly on coming into contact with him. He has no tricks of manner; he is innocent of any design to appear cordial; but the genuine simplicity of his look and of his words is inevitably winning. He is a shy man himself, if the truth were known, and perhaps it is the most timid of men who are the best understood by him.

Mr. Wilson is the best listener that has been in the White House for many a year. Mr. Roosevelt never listened to anybody in his life, of course; Mr. Taft could listen well, when interested, but people often suspected that Mr. Taft's mind was awandering, even while his face was attentive. You never have that feeling with Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson. It is apparent from the first word that he is closely following you; as a rule he is silent until you have concluded; sometimes, however, his face will light up and he will nod or let a soft "yes" pass his lips. You have the feeling that his mind is ahead of you, as in fact it is, and you pass rapidly from point to point, well satisfied with your own swift eloquence. Then, instantly, you get your reply, and it is perfectly clear that Mr. Wilson has taken you all in taken you all in all you have said, some things you have left unsaid. His mind leaps to respond.

All Washington agrees that it is a simple delight to have converse with the new President. I have seen his swiftness of apprehension and his clean-cut clearness of mind displayed on hundreds of occasions in Princeton and Trenton, and it was no surprise to me to hear visitors emerge from interviews at the White House with their faces glowing with the pleasure of having transacted their business so satis

factorily; no surprise to hear Secretaries. praise, as if it were something unheard of and impossible in political life, the directness, swiftness, accuracy, and precision of the operations of the mind under whose presidency they sit around the Cabinet table. "There was not an irrelevant word," said one visitor, coming away; "he listened like a judge, and answered instantly, speaking precisely to the subject I had raised, and not to some other subject."

More than one visitor has noticed, however, that after he has ventured warily to approach the question of patronage the President's responsiveness has suddenly flagged and, without any direct refusal to listen to a statement of the claims of the candidate, the change that has fallen over the spirit of the meeting has effectually prevented its utterance.

"I simply cannot understand," Mr. Wilson has said in my hearing, "the passion that goes into this struggle for office; I cannot understand the deep personal feeling with which the advocates of this man or that argue in season and out of season for their candidate, or the resentment with which they hear a rival mentioned.

"Of course, if I were to allow myself to listen to all this turmoil of importunate candidacies I could do nothing else. There would be nothing but the ragged shreds of a mind to give to the real business of the Nation, with which I am charged."

Yet Mr. Wilson is a man whose sympathies are so readily engaged that it is likely many a case will get past his guard, to worry and encumber him. Some of the candidates and friends of candidates who presume on that sympathy, though, will be wiser when they have made their attempt. Mr. Wilson is a gentleman and a scholar, but he is I speak whereof I do know and testify what I have seen capable of giving the thickest-skinned politician a colorful quarter of an hour.

In subtler ways, too, he is disconcerting, when he wants to be. The deliberation with which he adjusts his nose-glasses and studies a visitor is sometimes suggestive, and the long gold pencil and the neat little memorandum book with and in which, having carefully produced them, sometimes he maliciously sets about making

very precise entries are likely to become famous engines of destruction, as the country learns about the conversations that take place in the ivory and white room.

His capacity for sustained gravity, too, is a magnificent weapon.

A committee of suffragists visited him the other day, and the ladies were not unimpressed with the seriousness of their mission. When they came out, the chairman said:

"It was the most solemn meeting 1 ever attended. The President was cordial, but grave. We took in a copy of Mr. Wilson's book, 'The New Freedom,' and told him that by substituting 'women' for 'men' in some paragraphs it would make the best argument for woman's suffrage ever written. At that a fleeting smile stole over the Presidential visage. Then we all relapsed into solemnity. said our pieces and we were as solemn as owls. But an owl would seem as merry as a lark by the side of the President. Where we made a mistake was in not bringing in a coffin and turning it into a funeral."

We

President Wilson enjoyed that interview. as much as the ladies did.

The majority of the President's callers already come to discuss policies. As soon as the first stream of purely congratulatory calls had ceased, Mr. Wilson began the discussion with visitors of the great public problems of the Nation. There was a day or two when his callers seemed to think that, like his predecessors, he must be occupying himself at the beginning of his term with appointments. They found it was not so, as I have said; that already the question of patronage had been relegated to a place in the back of his mind; that he was eager to advance to serious discussions of principles. Already, before he had been in the White House a week, he was deep in the question of the attitude to be taken toward Mexico and Central America; of the proper relations of the Government to the Chinese Republic and to the policy of the "dollar diplomacy"; of the tariff, and the extremely practical problems of the preparation of a bill that would pass both Houses of Congress; of the currency, the establishment of a great

fiscal system of a new breadth and stability. Already, also, President Wilson was taking up details of the Government, and some of its specific problems. Within two weeks of his inauguration, he had announced the position of his Administration with regard to the two chief concerns of our foreign policy: our attitude toward Latin-America and toward China. The atmosphere about the White House from the start filled every visitor with the feeling that not a moment was to be lost; four years was not a day too long in which to do the great things for which the people have commissioned this Administration.

Things pass very rapidly in the oval room. A "yes," a memorandum on a pad, a touch of the bell summoning a clerk, a dozen times an hour starts the making of a bit of history. Occasionally, a secretary or a confidential stenographer comes in softly and lays before the President a paper to which a red tag is clipped an "important and urgent" signal. All through the rest of the building the air is palpitant with excitement. The newspaper men at the door scrutinize eagerly every entrance and departure, slip in and out of Mr. Tumulty's office to "get a line on" one or another of a dozen mysterious rumors always current; the official staff, long habituated to rapid and important events, is keyed to the highest pitch in its effort to regard and execute the decisions of the man at the centre of all this activity. But there is no excitement there, no haste. If ever a man was born to govern, Mr. Wilson was; to govern confidently, though graciously. Here he is, this student of thirty cloistered years who had never been inside the White House until the day of his inauguration, to whom the City of Washington was still practically unknown here he is, sitting in the very centre of the Nation's business and setting about the administration of its government with the grave but easy confidence, the poise and equanimity, of one born to the heritage of the chief chair of State, trained from his childhood in its expected duties, and experienced for years in their execution. There is no assumption of knowing everything; very often indeed there is a naive confession of ignorance and a request

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for information from the visitor. But with the utmost simplicity, there is also always an absolute and almost innocent faith in the power of a pure heart and a single eye.

The President's mornings (his mornings last until half past one) are too fully occupied by appointments to allow of his holding the public receptions in which his predecessors used to indulge at the noon hour. The custom has arisen, as I have said, of giving visitors without appointments cards admitting them to the East Room of the White House at half past two in the afternoon.

The East Room, running the depth of the mansion, with windows on three sides, with its four great fireplaces, three crystal chandeliers, its mirrors, its ornate decorations of white and gold, is very different from the rather shabby, business-like quarters in which the work of the morning is done. Under the direction of doorkeepers, visitors are lined up around the walls for several hundred callers seek to greet the President at these levees. Promptly at 2.30 the great door swings open and, preceded by a smart aide in military uniform, the President steps rapidly out and takes a position in the centre of the floor. The President has donned a black frock coat now, and the scene is more formal.

The procession past him begins. Each person, introduced by the aide, shakes the President's hand and presents his greetings or performs his errand. At the head of the line one day is Colonel Eustis, chairman of the Inauguration Committee, supported by a few of his colleagues, who have come to present Mr. Wilson with the medal cast to commemorate the inauguration. Three Commissioners of the District of Columbia present their compliments. Next in line is a character who calls himself the "King of the Newsboys." The "King" says a formal little speech and gets a word of good-will for the juvenile disseminators of diurnal literature. Mr. Samuel Untermyer is in line; as is the retiring Solicitor-General

Mr. Bullitt has a good deal of manner and makes his little speech of good-bye as happily as if it were one of gratitude.

A little further down the line is some one

bearing a large photograph which he begs the President to accept. Others have photographs which they beg to have autographed. Here is a Congressman introducing a mother of an army officer who has fallen into difficulty. Here is a Senator with two of his important constituents who have a request to prefer. Next comes a lady, an old acquaintance, who brings her little daughter for the grace of a greeting from the President.

Perhaps one third of those in line have some particular word to say or request to make; the majority, however, have come merely to wish the President luck. And it is very evident in most cases that the wish is sincere and even profound. It is a very instructive and touching thing to watch for a few days this procession at the afternoon receptions, and to observe the attitude toward their President of the representatives of the mass of the people with nothing to ask. They come from all parts of the country: "Tennessee," "Indiana," "Kansas," "Rhode Island," succeeding one another as the introductions

are made. They show no great originality in their way of expressing their feelings; commonly they utter one of the commonplace salutations of ordinary life; they wish him "luck" in one phrase or another. But whether it be that for the average citizen his presentation to the President is a rare moment, or whether it be that Woodrow Wilson has already gained an unusual place in the affections of the people, it is impossible not to see that the good wishes have an intensity of feeling behind them. I was surprised and impressed to remark how many different sorts of people prosperous looking men, benevolent looking old ladies, brisk young chaps said: "God bless you!" So spoke scores. I think the President must have been touched by this exercise of the priestly function of a people by the spontaneous lips of its representatives. I fancy he must find no little inspiration in this daily benediction. "Up from the common soil, up from the quiet heart of the people, rise the streams of hope and eulogy," he has said again and again.

MY WORK FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN

HOW, THOUGH LAME, AND WITHOUT MONEY OR FRIENDS, I BUILT UP A HOSPITAL-
SCHOOL IN DETROIT IN WHICH HELPLESS BOYS AND GIRLS ARE
TAUGHT TO BE HAPPY AND USEFUL

W

BY

BLANCHE VAN LEUVEN BROWNE

HEN I look back on that day seven years ago the day I came to Detroit with $6 in my purse and not a friend in all the big bustling city

I wonder whether it was ignorance or courage that kept me from turning back and giving up the fight. I may as well tell you from the beginning that I am a cripple; that from my childhood I have had a hopelessly twisted spine, and that only because of my knowledge gained at first hand of the impotent misery of most cripples, was I enabled to face the terrors that a city holds for one so handicapped as I am.

I was twenty-two when I left my home in Milford to go out into the gray world, and keep the vow I had made seven years before when I lay on a cot in St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago. I told the doctor then that if I lived to get well I would dedicate my frail powers to the rescue of little crippled children, who seemed to me the most neglected of all things that lived.

The strange thing now seems that, crippled as I was, grotesquely slim of purse and friendless and terror-stricken by my audacity, I was exaltedly happy.

You must know what was in my mind and heart to understand why I was spurred on by the enthusiasm of the blind devotee.

I will transcribe from an interview that a reporter a sympathetic young woman -wrote about me in her paper not long after I came to Detroit:

It's terrible when you consider how a crippled

child is treated. If he happens to be born in a prosperous family he is petted and pampered and coddled and wrapped in cotton wool to grow up unhappy, uneducated, undisciplined an affliction to himself and to those who love him. If he is born in a poor family his condition is pitiable beyond words — and naturally most of them are poor. Is it necessary that, because a man or a woman is crippled, selling pencils or gum or shoe-strings on the street corners should be the only occupation open to them?

Why shouldn't they be taught to do things? Many of them have nimble, skilful fingers, and most of them have as keen, live brains as any one. Only a place in which their bodies are treated while their hands and brains are trained can lift the tragedies from the lives of crippled children. I want a hospital-school and, with the help of God and kind human hearts, I'm going to establish one right here in Detroit.

The reporter referred to me as the crippled crusader, told of the dollar-aweek room in which she found me, and spoke in a most kindly and appreciative way of my theories and aims.

To-day my dream has been partly realized. From my room here in the hospital-school I can hear the laughter of poor little Joe, of Hazel, and Esther all crippled, but aflame with the joy of living. And as I look back on the bitter days the objections of fashionable neighborhoods, the annihilating selfassurance of fashionable boards of trustees, the deadening apathy of people generally, when confronted by so unimposing a person as myself I realize that it was all worth while.

Before I came to Detroit I had written a little book out of my experiences in the hospital, and it brought me small returns. I took subscriptions for magazines, and so kept myself from being submerged. And all the while, with but one thought in mind, I never lost a chance to tell the men and women I met the story of how little crippled children suffer, not only in their bodies but in their hearts and souls, because they are regarded as deadwood,

useless burdens. Some of these people sent me checks. I treasured every penny like a greedy Midas, living meagrely. When I had gathered a few months' rent I took a modest little house, furnished it

scantily with a few borrowed things, and with one little crippled tot started my work. A prominent business man, to whom my ideas appealed, became treasurer, and $1,000 was paid in.

He was a much harassed man of affairs, and when he saw the little ship launched he abandoned his post. Then a board of fashionable ladies was formed. They came in fine touring cars and electric broughams. They undoubtedly were the financial and social aristocrats of the city, and I really think they meant to help me.

But the children came fast and the money came slowly, and though they were children who needed the most skilful treatment, unceasing care, and special nourishment, and though very few of those brought to me were prepared to pay a cent, I thank God that I never turned a cripple away. There were awful hours of anxiety, of course, but at the critical time relief was sure to come. A little story in one of the newspapers, for example, brought in hundreds of dollars in a few days. One of the checks for nearly $200 came from the Board of Commerce. The day the story was printed they were sitting around their big mahogany conference table discussing civic problems when the secretary read the story aloud.

"Pass the hat," said some one, and they tossed the dollars into it, and the secretary wrote a letter that made me cry for joy.

But with all the encouragement and help from without I know my work must have died but for the coming of Laura O'Neill. She She was young and strong, skilful and beautiful, and full of the desire to serve. The ideas I was trying to work out in the little place where now a big family of little cripples were gathered appealed strongly to her. Indeed, she was fired with an enthusiasm no less than my own. She offered to join me in my work, although I told her of the struggle I was having and how, much as I needed just such help, I had nothing to pay her with. She insisted on coming to me,

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