“Why not?” he asked.
“Because it will be so shaken up, it will be like tasting bad drugs. Madeira of any age, if once moved, cannot be tasted until it has had at least a month’s repose. President Arthur is a good judge of Madeira, and he would not drink your wine.”
“Well, what am I to do?” said he.
“Why, my dear Governor, I will myself carry to your house for him a couple of bottles of my very best Madeira.” This I did, sitting in the middle of the carriage, one bottle in each hand (it having been first carefully decanted), and into the Governor’s parlor I was ushered, and then placed my offering before the President, telling him that I well knew he loved women, as well as song and wine; prayed him to honor me with his presence at a Newport picnic, promising to cull a bouquet of such exotics as are only grown in a Newport hothouse. The invitation he at once accepted, much, I thought, to the chagrin of the Governor, who, accompanying me to his front door, said:
“My dear sir, one must remember that he is the President of the United States, ruling over sixty millions of people. He is here as my guest, and now to go off and dine on Sunday with a leader of fashion, and then to follow this up by attending one of your open-air lunches, seems to me not right.” (I must here say in his defense, that the Governor had never been to one of my “open-air lunches,” and knew not of what he spoke.)
I then resolved to make this picnic worthy of our great ruler, and at once invited to it a beautiful woman, one who might have been selected for a Madonna. This is the first time I have made mention of her; she possessed that richness of nature you only see in Southern climes; one of the most beautiful women in America. She promised to go to this country party, and bring her court with her.
I selected the loveliest spot on Newport Island, known as “The Balch Place,” near “The Paradise and Purgatory Rocks,” for this fête. The Atlantic Ocean, calm and unruffled, lay before us; all the noise it made was the gentle ripple of the waves as they kissed the rocky shore. Giving the President our great beauty, he led the way to the collation, partaken of at little tables under the sparse trees that the rough winter barely permitted to live, and then we had a merry dance on the green, on an excellent platform fringed with plants.
At a subsequent breakfast, I was intensely gratified to have the President say to me, before the whole company, “McAllister, you did indeed redeem your promise. The beauty of the women at your picnic, the beauty of the place, and its admirable arrangement—made it the pleasantest party I have had at Newport,”—and this was said before my friend the Governor. Grand, elaborate entertainments are ofttimes not as enjoyable as country frolics.