e."

"Oh, yes, respectability is good enough in its place, but it can be
overdone. I like Washington, where respectability is not made a hobby."

"But are you not enjoying yourself here, honey?"

"No, I am not. To tell you the truth, I am very unhappy. I'm so scared
for fear I'll say something about the place that will be used against me
by the St. Paul folks, that I most wish I was dead, and everybody wants
to show me the new bridge and the waterworks, and speak of 'our great
and phenomenal growth,' and show me the population statistics, and the
school-house, and the Washburn residence, and Doc Ames and Ole
Forgerson, and the saw-mill, and the boom, and then walk me up into the
thirteenth story of a flour mill and pour corn meal down my back, and
show me the wonderful increase of the city debt and the sewerage, and
the West Hotel, and the glorious ozone and things here, that it makes me
tired. And I have to look happy and shake hands and say it knocks St.
Paul silly, while I don't think so at all, and I wish I could do
something besides be president for a couple of weeks, and quit lying
almost entirely, except when I go a-fishing."

"But don't you think the people here are very cordial, dawling?"

"Yes, they're too cordial for me altogether. Instead of talking about
the wonderful hit I have made as a president and calling attention to my
remarkable administration, they talk about the flour output and the
electric plant and other crops here, and allude feelingly to 'number one
hard' and chintz bugs and other flora and fauna of this country, which,
to be honest with you, I do not and never did give a damn for."

"Grover!"

"Well, I beg your pardon, dear, and I oughtn't to speak that way before
you, but if you knew how much better I feel now you would not speak so
harshly to me. It is indeed hard to be ever gay and joyous before the
great masses who as a general thing, do not know enough to pound sand,
but who are still vested with the divine right of suffrage, and so must
be treated gently, and loved and smiled at till it makes me ache."

Mr. Cleveland was greatly annoyed by the publication of this
conversation, and could not understand it until this fall, when a
Minneapolis man told him that the pale, haughty coachman who drove the
presidential carriage was a reporter. He could handle a team with one
hand and remember things with the other.

And so I say that as a president we can not be too careful what we say