r is in the prime of
life--a tall, well-made man, with dark-brown hair and eyes, of rather
sluggish temperament, apparently. He did not say much to me, nor, I
imagine, does he say much to anybody. His plan seems to be to hear and
see as much, and say as little as he can. We met in a room upstairs,
where, from ten to eleven, he is at home to Congress men, who would see
him on public affairs before Congress meets, as eleven in the morning is
the usual hour when it commences business. There were seven or eight
waiting to speak to the President as he stood up at his table, so as to
get the light on his visitors' faces, while his own was shaded as much as
possible; and, owing to the heat in Washington, the houses are kept so
shaded that, coming out of the clear sunlight, it is not always easy at
the first glance to see where you are. The President did not seem
particularly happy to see anybody, and looked rather bored as the
Senators and Congress men buttonholed him. Of course, our conversation
was strictly private and confidential, and wild horses shall never tear
the secret from me. Posterity must remain in the dark. It is one of
those questions never to be revealed, as much so as that which so
provoked the ancients as to the song the syrens sang to Ulysses. The
President's enemies call him the New York dude, because he happens to be
a gentlemanly-looking man, and patronises Episcopalianism, which in
America, as in England, is reckoned "the genteel thing." The Americans
are hard to please. Mr. James Russell Lowell had got the gout, and the
New York writers said, when I was there, he had attained the object of a
snob's ambition. It is thus they talked of one of their country's
brightest ornaments. But to return to the President. He is a wise man,
and keeps his ears open and his mouth shut--a plan which might be adopted
by other statesmen with manifest advantage to themselves and the
community. The President wore a morning black coat, with a rose in his
buttonhole, and had the air about him of a man accustomed to say to one,
"Come," and he comes; to another, "Go," and he goes. I made some few
remarks about Canada and America, to which he politely listened, and then
we shook hands and parted, he to be seized on by eager Congress men, I to
inspect the public apartments of the White House. He has rather a hard
life of it, I fancy, as he has to work all day, and his only relaxation
seems to be a ride in the evenin