If I could remember how many turkeys the President gives away every Christmas I could tell just how many persons there are in the White House service. I know it is something like one hundred, but they go to employees of all kinds, to important house officials, to minor officials, to servants of high and low degree, to gardeners, stable boys, chauffeurs and all.

The staff of the White House proper is not so numerous, eighteen or twenty perhaps, including cooks, kitchen maids, butlers, boys, housemaids and laundresses. There was one coloured cook, Alice, who prepared the meals for the servants’ dining-room and who had been in the White House twenty years.