The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1894-06-26

A President may do. almost anything
without attracting general attention or
exciting more than casual gossip if he
does it habitually. President Grant
used to take frequent walks on Pennsyl-
vanla Avenue, for example, and in time
people would betray as little curiosity on
meeting him as if he were no more than
the rare Congressman who has enough
respect for his physical we'll being to
walk to and from the Capitol. If Mr..
Cleveland should take it into his head
to stroll on the Avenue. the newspapers
from the Atlantic to the Pacific would
comment on the extraordinary fact for
days. In other words, a President is ex-
pected to keep on doing what he has al
ways done, and if he does not begin to
walk on the Avenue ON the 9Th of March
after his first inauguration he must not
expect to be able to do SO in the middle
of his second term without exciting COM
ment and certain amount of distrust
The American citizen has an uncon-
scious belief that all other American
citizens, including Presidents, Governors,
Senators, Mayors, and all that kind of
people, live about as he does. The
standard of each American citizen is the
perfect standard, and if his evening
meal is tea, he would be slightly sur
prised to learn that the Presidents is
dinner, and the information that the
dinner hour was eight o'clock would
give him topic of conversation with his
sympathetic family for whole evening.
So it is that when the President has
aH-o 0r,o Il \
vacation or on business, the American
people become intensely interested; and
the President has very unhappy time
while he is in the public eye, unless he
happens to lack sensitiveness, or unless
he has store of vanity which is pleased
by the evidence that he lis an "attrac-
ton" within the meaning of the show
man. If the President ana his family
should live in glass house, and be con-
tinually on exhibition, the chroniclers of
the period would doubtless find matter
of comment in every act of the unhappy
people, who would be thereby serving
the country at an immense cost. We
should know when the baby had a new
rattle, and remote citizens, unfamiliar
with the social progress of our great
cities, would be scandalized on learning
| thatethe President employed valet, who
| brushed his clothes and cleaned his boots
| everyEmorning.
1t is quite possible, it the country
knew all about the life of President
| that no one would ever again endure the
pains and penalties of a second term.
| 1t is well for the President, personally
and officially, that his countrymen as
| sumo that his domestic life is very much
| like their own. How far this assump-
| tion is correct was attested unconscious
| ly by a prominent member of the fra
| ternity called raconteurs in Paris and
| Washington, but storyteIlers elsewhere.
| This narrator of strange tales used, in
| telling a story about President whom
| he did not like, and who had come from
a rural community to describe the even
| ing fireside at the White House in the
! library the family and their friends sit
| ting about the hearth in slippered ease,
| the head of the nation clad in smoking
| jacket, the motherly wife knitting in a
rocking chair, the children on hassocks,
| apples baking at the fire and generous
| pitcher of cider simmering on the
hearth. 1t was pleasant picture, and
while this particular story teller was
moved by malice in giving local color to
| his tale, there was a good deal OF truth
| in it, When citizen OF the republic at
tains the Presidency he is likely to have
reached the age when his habits, domes-
tic, social and otherwise, are settled for
| life, and the American citizen is rightsin
his supposition that the President and
| his family are possessed of the same
habits in the White House that they &C.
quired in their humber sphere. From
The President at Home" by Henry
Loomis.E Nelson, in Harper's Maya zine
| for July.