Mr. Taft used for a dressing-room.

The corresponding suite across the hall I gave to Helen, my daughter. It had been occupied by both of the Misses Roosevelt and before them, I believe, by Mrs. McKinley. It had been fitted up in pretty flowered chintz for Miss Ethel Roosevelt, after Miss Alice had married, and we left it unchanged.

I strolled down the hall, which contains only a large table and a few portraits of Presidents for which there is no wall space downstairs, and looked into the Library which is exactly in the center of the house on the south side. It is oval like the Blue Drawing Room beneath it and it is a little dark in the daytime, being shaded by the roof of the south portico. This was Mrs. Roosevelt’s favourite room and it had been fitted most charmingly with many of her own belongings, but as they were now gone and my own had not yet been moved in, it looked rather bare. The furniture had not been upholstered for many years and it was a little shabby. Later on I had it all recovered and the walls of the room retinted, and when I had put in some of the Oriental tapestries and handsome pieces of furniture which I had brought with me from the Far East it made a very beautiful and livable room. We used it a great deal, especially when there were guests, but for the family the sitting-room at the end of the hall was always the favourite gathering place.