Mrs. Pierce came to the White House sorrow-stricken by the sad
death of her only child, but she bravely determined not to let her
private griefs prevent the customary entertainments. During the
sessions of Congress there was a state dinner once a week, to which
thirty-six guests were invited, and on other week-days half-a-dozen
guests partook of the family dinner, at which no wine was served.
There was also a morning and an evening reception every week in
the season, at which Mrs. Pierce, dressed in deep mourning, received
with the President.

The evening receptions, which were equivalent to the drawing-rooms
of foreign courts, were looked forward to with great interest by
strangers and the young people, taxing the busy fingers of mantua-
makers, while anxious fathers reluctantly loosened their purse-
strings. Carriages and camelias were thenceforth in demand; white
kid gloves were kept on the store counters; and hair-dressers wished
that, like the fabulous monster, they could each have a hundred
hands capable of wielding the curling-tongs. When the evening
arrived, hundreds of carriages might be seen hastening toward the
spacious portico of the White House, under which they drove and
sat down their freights. In Europe, it would have required at
least a battalion of cavalry to have preserved order, but in
Washington the coaches quietly fell into the file, and patiently
awaited their turn. At the door, the ladies turned into the private
dining-room, used as a dressing-room, from whence they soon emerged,
nearly all of them in the full glory of evening toilet and radiant
with smiles. Falling into line, the visitors passed into the
parlors, where they were received by President Pierce and his wife.
Between the President and the door stood District Marshal Hoover
and one of his deputies, who inquired the name of each unknown
person, and introduced each one successively to the President.
The names of strangers were generally misunderstood, and they were
re-baptized, to their annoyance, but President Pierce, with winning
cordiality, shook hands with each one, and put them directly at
ease, chatting pleasantly until some one else came along, when he
introduced them to his wife.

Leaving the Presidential group and traversing the beautiful Green
Drawing-room, the guests entered the famed East Room, which was
filled with the talent, beauty, and fashion of the metropolis.
Hundreds of either sex occupied the middle of the