ering dusk, and returning to the White House
after a frugal breakfast in the early morning. Ten o'clock was the hour
at which he was supposed to begin receiving visitors, but it was often
necessary to see them unpleasantly early. Occasionally they forced their
way to his bedroom before he had quite finished dressing. Throngs of
people daily filled his office, the ante-rooms, and even the corridors
of the public part of the Executive Mansion. He saw them all, those he
had summoned on important business, men of high official position who
came to demand as their right offices and favors that he had no right to
give; others who wished to offer tiresome if well-meant advice; and the
hundreds, both men and women, who pressed forward to ask all sorts of
help. His friends besought him to save himself the weariness of seeing
the people at these public receptions, but he refused. "They do not want
much, and they get very little," he answered. "Each one considers his
business of great importance, and I must gratify them. I know how I
would feel if I were in their place." And at noon on all days except
Tuesday and Friday, when the time was occupied by meetings of the
cabinet, the doors were thrown open, and all who wished might enter.
That remark of his, "I know how I would feel if I were in their place,"
explained it all. His early experience of life had drilled him well for
these ordeals. He had read deeply in the book of human nature, and could
see the hidden signs of falsehood and deceit and trickery from which the
faces of some of his visitors were not free; but he knew, too, the
hard, practical side of life, the hunger, cold, storms, sickness and
misfortune that the average man must meet in his struggle with the
world. More than all, he knew and sympathized with that hope deferred
which makes the heart sick.

Not a few men and women came, sad-faced and broken-hearted, to plead
for soldier sons or husbands in prison, or under sentence of death by
court-martial. An inmate of the White House has recorded the eagerness
with which the President caught at any fact that would justify him
in saving the life of a condemned soldier. He was only merciless when
meanness or cruelty were clearly proved. Cases of cowardice he disliked
especially to punish with death. "It would frighten the poor devils
too terribly to shoot them," he said. On the papers in the case of one
soldier who had deserted and then enlisted again, he wrote: "Let him
f