Olivia.
[AWAITING AUDIENCE AT THE WHITE HOUSE.]
General Dent and Robert Douglas as Buffers.
Washington, April 27, 1869.
Just as the monarch of a Persian story gives audience to the high and low, so does President Grant receive the people, precisely after the fashion of an Oriental tale. It is not quite certain whether the President roams about the capital in the disguise of a dervish, as did the good Caliph Haroun Alraschid in his beloved Bagdad, but of a Sunday, if the weather be fine, he dashes up Fourteenth street, drawn by steeds, as fleet as the far-famed Arabian coursers, and a cloud of dust envelops his costly barouche as potent and insinuating as the flying sand in the desert.
A day in the ante-rooms of the White House will prove to the most skeptical that the “Arabian Nights” are as authentic as Hawthorne’s “Twice-Told Tales.” The Eastern Hemisphere had her rise and decline before the sun of civilization kissed our rugged New England hills. The Orient is asleep. The Occident fills the eyes of the world to-day.
President Grant has a grand vizier. It is General Dent, late of the Union Army. It is the business of General Dent to receive all who seek the presence of the President. When Andrew Johnson was Chief Executive, all those waiting for an audience with power were left by themselves to pass the long hours in waiting. It is somewhat different now. The large reception room over the front of the East Room is fitted up with tables, as well as sofas and chairs, and all, from the humblest to the highest, are admitted to General Dent’s presence. In the coziest corner of the reception room, beneath the window which commands the uninterrupted view of the delightful park which fronts the mansion, may be found the broad, long table at which General Dent sits, with his accomplished assistants by his side. General Dent is in the meridian of life, rather below the medium size, though the rich, dark-blue military garb in which he is encased diverts the mind from size altogether. Now add a face, neither handsome nor plain, but a benign, good countenance, through which the soul shines like flame through an astral shade, and you have the picture of the man through whose hands you are to pass before you are consigned to the august presence of majesty. At the same table, directly opposite General Dent, may be seen the assistant private secretary, Mr. Robert M. Douglas, eldest son of the late Hon. Stephen A. Douglas. Those who can recall the form and features of the departed Senator will see them reproduced, but, like the second edition of the same book, a little revised and somewhat corrected. Mr. Douglas inherits the broad shoulders, crowned by the same massive head, so well remembered by the nation. His North Carolina speech has made him famous as a youth, and it seems certain at present that he was created to prove the exception to the rule that a great man never bequeaths his talent to posterity. The social manners of Mr. Douglas are such as would endear him to a sovereign as haughty as Queen Elizabeth, and just as soon as he culminates as private secretary it will be for the honor of the foreign service to send him abroad. But at the present he can not be spared from a certain ante-room in the White House.
At the left of General Dent may be seen Mr. Crook, one of the few men left who were bequeathed as servants to the people by our beloved Lincoln. He has seen the inauguration of four Presidents and the installation of three different families in the White House. His mind is a storehouse of legend and story. He is still a young man, more than comely in personal appearance, and distinguished by social manners which admirably befit court life.