The Pension Office was not built for balls, Inaugural or otherwise, and on the evening of March Fourth, 1909, after a day of melting sleet and snow, the entrance was not especially inviting. Neither was the dressing-room which had been assigned to me. I suppose that for years it had rung with the ceaseless click of scores of typewriters and that its walls had beheld no more elaborate costume than a business blouse and skirt since the occasion of the last Inaugural Ball which had marked the beginning of the second Roosevelt administration four years before. But as I needed to do very little “prinking” it really didn’t matter and I quickly rejoined the President and proceeded, on his arm, to the Presidential Box, this being a small round gallery above the main entrance of the great ballroom which is itself, in everyday life, the principal workroom of the Pension Office.