There was nobody at the White House to bid us welcome except the official staff and some of our own guests. But it didn’t matter. There is never any ceremony about moving into the White House. You just drive up and walk in⁠—and there you are. The aides and ushers who greeted us at the entrance, treated our occupation of our new residence so much as a matter of course that I could not help but feel something as Cinderella must have felt when her mice footmen bowed her into her coach and four and behaved just as if they had conducted her to a Court Ball every night of her life. I stood for a moment over the great brass seal, bearing the national coat-of-arms, which is sunk in the floor in the middle of the entrance hall. “The Seal of the President of the United States,” I read around the border, and now⁠—that meant my husband!

But I could not linger long because my duties as a hostess began at once. I was not unused to the accepted regulations of official life, so, in spite of a slight feeling that the whole thing was unreal, I was not embarrassed as I walked into the great dining-room and took my place by the door to receive guests for the first time as mistress of the White House.