For my first dinner I chose pink Killarney roses for table decorations and it would be difficult to express the pleasure I felt in having just as many of them as I needed by merely issuing instructions to have them delivered. The White House greenhouses and nurseries were a source of constant joy to me. I had lived so long where plants are luxuriant and plentiful that a house without them seemed to me to be empty of a very special charm and the head horticulturist remarked at once that during my regime his gems of palms and ferns and pots of brilliant foliage were to be given their due importance among White House perquisites. I filled the windows of the great East Room with them, banked the fireplaces with them and used them on every possible occasion.

The state Dining Room is one of the many splendid results of the McKim restoration and, next to the East Room, is the handsomest room in the White House. It is not so tremendously large, its utmost capacity being less than one hundred, but it is magnificently proportioned and beautifully finished in walnut panelling with a fireplace and carved mantel on one side which would do honour to an ancient baronial hall. A few fine moose and elk heads are its only wall decorations.