The morning was fast slipping away when I bethought me it was time to be looking up my lodging and making myself ready for my call at the President's Palace. I flung Bandy Jim a piece of gold and told him I would see him again. And then as I was in the act of mounting Fatima it occurred to me he could no doubt direct me.
"Can you tell me how to find the Mansion House, Uncle?"
"Right here, sah," grinning with delight; and sure enough, what had seemed to me the home of some respectable citizen proved to be mine inn. And a very good one indeed; for when Bandy Jim had called a boy to lead Fatima around the house to the stables in the rear, and another to take me in to the landlord, I found myself in as clean and comfortable a hostelry as one could hope to find. My chamber was a large square one, on the second landing, and from its windows I could catch glimpses through the bare trees of the white building on the hill that I knew was the Capitol.
And when a boy had brought my saddle-bags, Bandy Jim himself hobbled in to help me dress. He had been body-servant to both General Clarke and his father, and, old as he was, bent nearly double and dim of sight, his fingers were skilled for lacers and laces, for buckles and ribbons.
I thought I looked quite as a gentleman should for a morning call at the "White House," for that, I understand, is what Mr. Jefferson prefers to have the President's Palace called. Indeed, I have heard he very vehemently objects to having it called a palace at all. I was wearing a plain cloth habit of dark green with no lace at wrist or knee and only a small lace tie at the neck. My shoe-buckles were of the plainest silver, but Bandy Jim had polished them till they shone like new. I had some thoughts of deferring my visit until later in the day, when I might with a good grace have worn satin and velvet and fine lace ruffles, for I am afraid I was something of a beau in those days in my liking for dress. But bethinking me that the plainness of my costume would only be an additional recommendation in the eyes of the President, should I have the good fortune to meet him, I set off on Fatima's back, following the straight road, as Bandy Jim had directed.
A more forlorn village it has rarely been my lot to see: stretches of mud road with neither houses nor fields to outline it, and then for a block or more bare and ugly houses, hideous in their newness, not having even the grace of age to soften their ill proportions. I was glad mademoiselle was not there to gaze upon the capital of America with eyes that knew so well how to be scornful, and that would so soon find her own gay French capital so beautiful.
I was in the very act of saying to myself for the twentieth time, "Idiots and dolts, not to have selected beautiful Philadelphia for a nation's capital!" when there rode up beside me a farmer in plain, almost rough, clothes, but riding a magnificent horse. He was about to pass me (for I was riding slowly, out of respect to the mud, which might easily have bespattered me so that I would be in no condition for a call), but I hailed him:
"Are you going my way, my friend?"
"If you are going mine."
"I am going straight ahead to the President's Palace."