William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

[187] than Mrs. Grant. She likes the White House very much, she says, and few ladies have seen more of it than she. “Before we came to live here, many of my female friends assured me it was a hole, a wretched hole,” she rattles merrily, “and I whispered in their ears that if I could not get on I would send for them-ha! ha!” Some critics, in their present state of mind, would find a taint of female Caesarism in such persiflage. Her drawing-room window looks on a garden, at the end of which stands the unfinished column of George Washington, cutting the line of the Potomac, and parting the hills of Virginia. Vanities of human pride! That column, which was meant to reach the sky, is broken short. That river, which was deemed a sure defence of the republican capital, has been profaned by hostile fleets. Those hills, which are so lovely and so fertile, have been wasted by American fire.

“ Another deputation from the Senate,” sighs the President, coming through a private door from his reception-room. He looks fatigued and worried. Dropping on a chair he puffs at his cigar, apparently