I was being taken care of by Captain Archibald Butt, so I had nothing except the weather to worry about. With a last hopeless look out of doors I proceeded to don my Inauguration finery, feeling duly thankful that it was not too springlike in its character. The newspapers say I wore a purple satin suit, and a small hat trimmed with gold lace and a high white aigrette. This is as good a description as any, though it might have been more flattering, considering the importance I attached to the subject. I remember the hat perfectly. The aigrette was not quite as high as it started out to be. It had nearly met an untimely end at a reception the day before where it collided with a lighted gas-jet. Fortunately it was put out before it was greatly damaged, but it had to be trimmed down some, and I imagined that it exuded a faint odour of burning feathers.

At least two years before the election, when no one could anticipate who would be the next President, President Roosevelt had announced at a Cabinet meeting that he did not intend to ride back to the White House with his successor. It was a precedent which he did not like and which he desired to break. Mrs. Roosevelt went, with her family and friends, directly from the White House to the station to wait for her husband to join her after the Inauguration. It was about half past eleven when Captain Butt and I started in a limousine for the Capitol where we arrived to find the “scene set” for the ceremonies in the Senate Chamber.