My first necessity in my generally considered enviable position was to find a house in Washington large enough to contain my family, to permit such participation in social life as would be expected of us, and the rent for which would not wholly exhaust the stipend then allowed to a Cabinet officer.

Eight thousand dollars a year, sufficient income though it may be when it is expected to accommodate itself to an ordinary eight-thousand-dollars-a-year standard of living, shrinks alarmingly when its recipient is expected to maintain on it the dignity of a Cabinet position. If we had not had some private resources I don’t quite see how we could have managed. Fortunately for my husband, and more so for his successors in office, this figure was raised to twelve thousand before he left the War Department, and still there are complaints which I am amply able to appreciate.