The hostess doesn’t have to worry about seating the Cabinet officers because it is all a matter of precedence and is attended to by the Social Executive Secretary. The rank of a Cabinet officer is determined by the date on which his office was created and not, as one might think, by the relative importance of his official status.

The only time when a friendly democracy presents itself to the President en masse is on New Year’s Day. At the New Year’s Reception he receives just as many persons as he can shake hands with between the hours of eleven in the morning and half past two or three in the afternoon. His wife, the wife of the Vice-President and the ladies of the Cabinet receive with him as long as it is physically possible for them to do so. While writing in the third person I am thinking in the first, of course. These were our customs.