Its furnishings have, undoubtedly, been changed many times and yet I found it to contain many old and interesting pieces. The most striking object in the room was an enormous four-poster bed with a great curved canopy of wood, decorated with carved and gilded eagles and upholding heavy draperies of blue and white brocade. In this bed, we had been told, the Prince of Wales slept when he visited this country in 1860, but on the first night I discovered that, whatever its historic interest, I did not like it as a bed to sleep in. I soon replaced it with two smaller mahogany beds and I dispensed altogether with the draperies. There were canopies of the same gilded eagles over the windows, and the curtains suspended from them, as well as the upholstery of the sofa and chairs, were of the same blue and white brocade. Some of the furniture was colonial, some Victorian. The colonial furniture in the White House is very good and there is quite a lot of it in all the bedrooms, but many of the bureaus and wardrobes are of the scarcely-to-be-called beautiful style of the Victorian era. I secured for our room, later on, the beds, a dressing-table and some chairs, all colonial. These were about the only pieces of furniture I bought for the White House.