"Why did you not come up and see the President with me?" I asked when I rejoined him.
"Why?" he said; "simply because I pay the President to work and not to talk. Is it likely I should go and disturb him? It is quite enough for him to have to spend time over the visitors to Washington."
In truth, the President is paid to work.
His pay is 50,000 dollars, about £10,000 a year, and all the expenses of the White House come out of his pocket. Mr. Cleveland works from twelve to fourteen hours a day. He is the most active and hard-working man of a hard-working nation. For the enormous amount of work he undertakes, the President of the United States costs Jonathan half the sum of money John Bull pays the Viceroy of Ireland to open a few bazaars, and imprison a few Irish patriots. No king, no queen, no princes, no dukes, no chamberlains, no palace watch-dogs of any kind.
Happy country whose executive power costs her but a few thousand pounds, and whose rulers are recruited from the intelligent plodders of the nation!
Mr. Cleveland, already respected and looked up to, three years ago, for his talents, his zeal, and his integrity, has seen his popularity grow greater every day since he united his destiny with that of the most charming of America's daughters.
Mrs. Cleveland is a lady of scarcely five-and-twenty summers, whose beauty has been so often described that it would be tedious to dwell longer on the subject. She is lovely, simply lovely. Whether Republicans or Democrats, all the Americans look upon Mrs. Cleveland with the eyes of the President.
I remember having one day seen, in a comic paper, a caricature representing Mrs Cleveland bringing back her husband on her shoulders to the White House. A caricature has no value, except when founded upon reality. At this time, everyone was unanimous in saying that, if Mr. Cleveland were re-elected President, he would in a large measure owe the honour to his wife.
Send a President home to his own fireside, is a thing the Americans do, with few exceptions, every four years; but send away from the White House a pretty woman who, for three years, has done the honours of it with as much tact as grace,—the Americans are gallant, and had to think twice about doing that. Many an American threw a "Cleveland" into the electoral urn for the sake of the bright eyes of the pretty Présidente.