Twenty-five years married and all but a single year of it spent in the public service. It did not seem unfitting to me that this anniversary should be spent in the White House or that we should seek to make it an event not to be forgotten by anybody who happened to witness it. I thanked the happy fate that had given me a summer wedding-day because I needed all outdoors for the kind of party I wanted to give. That silver was showered upon us until we were almost buried in silver was incidental; we couldn’t help it; it was our twenty-fifth anniversary and we had to celebrate it.

I am not going to try to remember or to take the trouble to find out how many invitations we issued. I know there were four or five thousand people present and that a more brilliant throng was never gathered in this country.