The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-02-28
By Associated Press

I Washington, fteDTuary St-Nopetish"'7E Inauguration of President-eect Harding will mark the first swing of ceremonies i toward simplicity since Thomas Jeffer- son toled up Capitol Hill afoot 121 years ago.
 The ceremony of administering the oath
 will be as it was prescribed by George i Washington. There will be no change in l it's utter simplicity, but Mir. Harding, by 1 his own decision, will enter upon his great 1 task without the pomp and parade that 1 have increasingly surrounded that soi-
 emn moment as the years went by. Not i even the 'Salvos of artillery that her
 aided the dawn of Jefferson's inaugura- tion day will wake the sleeping echos
 along the Potomac next Friday. | Gone, too will be the inaugural parade time-honored since regular and militia 1 troops blazed the historic route up Penn sylvania avenue to ''the Presidents
 house." when President Madison rode
 in state to take up duties laid down by Jefferson. Weather alone has prevented 1 or hindered this national Spectacle in the years that followed.
 FLOATS FADE AWAY
 f Cone also the decorated floats and the soidiery from many states which accom- panied President William Henry Harri-
 son as he rode his horse to the capitol to take the oath; gone the tramping
 ranks of cabinet officers and clergy and
 professors and students of Georgetown university which made the historic jour- ney with Polk; gone the military splen- dor of the pageants that marked eleva- tion to high office of soldiery Zachary Taylor and U. s. Grant.
 Among things of the more recent past mot to be revived for MT Harding will be the gray and whte-clad lines of West +c ct perfect unison up the great avenue. ln- ] Inauguration has been for these future lead- i CTS of the army and for their brothers llof the midshipmen corps from Annapohs. a great public day, and the nation has 1 lavished well deserved plaudits on their lappearance.
 When Polk rode to his inauguration
 kid glove troop of young Virginans, the Fairfield cavalry, clattered before him as special escort. It was the hrst 1 time "a military organization had been specially distinguished such fashlon, but at times thereafter incoming Presi- dents have paid and received compliments | of the kind which will be lacking at MT. i Harding's inauguration. President Ben janhn Harrison rode at the head of hi.- old regiment, the Seventeenth Indiana
 Volunteer infantry; President Mckinley was escorted by Troop A of Cleveland s
 Black Horse cavalry
 i Great with problems as may be the { four years ahead of MT. Harding as he
 turns with the weight of his oath upon
 him to the work he has himself said will
 be calling, a grim tenseness that na- hung over the inauguration of some of his predecessors will be lacking.
 l Madison was to see Washington in enemy hands and ''the Presidents house. fired by British the drumming tramp or troops in full war gear, called to guard l the capital in the brewing storm of Civil war was in Loncoln's words as he pledged | his faith, his very. life, to this task. Yet Douglas, his defeated rival, stood at his
 side and held his hat as Lincoln bent his long figure to seal his oath with his lips upon the Bible
 Four years later again called to high service; Lincoln saw the wrack and ruin of war. spreading far to the south be- yond the Potomac: war maimed men were grooming in hospitals hard by where l he stood to take his oath and ahead lay bitter days of reconstruction.
 1 President Hayes was twice sworn in. March 4 was Sunday that year. The election decision had left ranking sore behind it, for one electoral vote had de- feated Tilden On March 3, privately the oath. was first administered to President Hayes to be repeated in public March D. When Woodrow Wilson rode down l Pennsylvania avenue and back again | American entry into the World war was
 at hand The last remnants of the court tof honor before the White House. erected for inauguration. had not disappeared be- fore the nation was aflame with war bus liness.
 i JACkSON'S INAUGURAL T There have been other inaugurations over which even darker cloud hovered. I Andrew Jackson took office in 1Sz9. soon lafter the death of his wife, which cur tailed inauguration ceremonies, and fiFe times vice presidents have been called to the presidency through death of the < President three times by assassination
 h each case the Vice President took up
 his duties without formal ceremony other I than private administration of his oath of
 office Tyler, at his home in Washing { ton. Fillmore at the capitol. Johnson in < the office of the President. Arthur at his hcme in New York city and Roosevelt in { Buffalo thus took up the presidency l Curious tales, many now almost legan- dary, and some of them tinged with bit atArness of partisan feeling of their day
 have drifted down the years from inau-
 e,lratiora periods long gone by. Much
 has bee3 written and said of the Jeffer-f
 son sin1piicity''s of the third President. { yet not al lof 1t appears to be well found x 1 cd on fact. agas
 It has been often repeated that Jefferson.
 rode his horse to his inauguration, hitch-
 ing the animal to fence near the capitol
 while he went to take the oath. lHves- i tigation by historians appears to have established, however that it was an in { csaent eight years later, when Jefferson
 surrendered office to Madison. from which ,, this account sprang. He did ride to see. lr;s successor installed leaving his horse Y