"Honey, I hate to worry you, but I'm afraid the time has come when you must choose between me and the free nigger. I think too much of myself to mind his impudence, but everything smells and tastes of his strong scents—which I know will never suit you nor the master. I, for one, can't stand 'em."
"Then James must leave at once," said I, firmly. "He knows the perfume is forbidden, and I have myself heard his disrespectful language to you."
But James had no idea of leaving Washington and returning to the position of knife-cleaner in the Petersburg hotel, whence I had taken him. He experienced a total change of heart. He surrendered in magnificent style. I was too skilful a general not to press my advantage. Then and there I confiscated his entire stock of spurious attar of rose. It could not be buried, because the court was paved; it could not be emptied in the waste-water pipes, lest we remember it forever; but I opened the doors of Susan's kitchen range, and laid it, a burnt-offering to her offended dignity, upon the glowing coals. I then went calmly in to my coffee, which had a distinctly Oriental flavor that morning.
Things went smoothly after this. The prevailing spirit of secession found its way only as far as the nursery, when pretty Adele Rivière entered a convent (with but one expressed regret, that the bonnets were so unbecoming), and a dear little genius, Annie Powers, took her place,—coming regularly for fifty cents a day, and making me independent of the elusive dressmakers who lorded and queened it over my unhappy friends.
And just here I feel constrained to apologize to my friend who has, at this moment, this page before him, for recording so many trifling incidents; but in painting a faithful picture of any time, the little lights and shadows cannot be left out. Nothing is unimportant. Even
"To the God that maketh all
There is no great—there is no small,"
words which I quote with no fear of being deemed irreverent; since the couplet has been discovered by a sojourner in the Orient to have been a petty larceny of Emerson's from the book of a Brahmin, and is not a quotation from the pen of inspiration, as we understand inspiration.
CHAPTER IV
SOCIAL LIFE DURING BUCHANAN'S ADMINISTRATION
We attended Dr. Gurley's church and found that the President also had taken a seat in that church. Our own was near the door, and for many Sundays before I knew him, I was interested in seeing him enter the church and walk briskly up to his pew near the pulpit (while the bell was ringing), buttoned in his broadcloth coat, wearing no overcoat in the coldest weather. Immediately after the benediction he would walk rapidly down the aisle, the congregation standing until he passed. Miss Lane attended St. John's Church, and the President was accompanied only by his secretary, Mr. Buchanan Henry. After I knew him quite well, I always spoke to him when he passed me near the door and I sometimes ventured, "A good sermon, Mr. President!" he never failing to reply, "Too long, Madam, too long."