reatly
to the success of the Administration of President Hayes. She
was a woman of great personal beauty. Her kindness of heart
knew no difference between the most illustrious and the humblest
of her guests. She accomplished what would have been impossible
to most women, the maintenance of a gracious and delightful
hospitality while strictly adhering to her principles of total
abstinence, and rigorously excluding all wines and intoxicating
liquors from the White House during her administration. The
old wine drinkers of Washington did not take to the innovation
very kindly. But they had to console themselves with a few
jests or a little grumbling. The caterer or chef in charge
of the State dinners took compassion on the infirmity of our
nature so far as to invent for one of the courses which came
about midway of the State dinner, a box made of the frozen
skin of an orange. When it was opened you found instead of
the orange a punch or sherbet into which as much rum was crowded
as it could contain without being altogether liquid. This
was known as the life-saving station.

Somebody who met Mr. Evarts just after he had been at a dinner
at the White House asked him how it went off. "Excellently,"
was the reply, "the water flowed like champagne."

CHAPTER III
CABINET OF PRESIDENT HAYES

There has hardly been a stronger Cabinet since Washington
than that of President Hayes. Its members worked together
in great harmony. All of them, I believe, were thoroughly
devoted to the success of the Administration.

The Secretary of State was William M. Evarts. He was my near
kinsman and intimate friend. His father died in his early
youth. My father was Mr. Evarts's executor, and the son,
after his mother broke up housekeeping, came to my father's
house in his college vacations as to a home. He studied law
at the Harvard Law School, and with Daniel Lord, a very eminent
lawyer in New York. One of his early triumphs was his opening
of the celebrated Monroe-Edwards case. The eminent counsel
to whom the duty had been assigned being prevented from attendance
by some accident, Evarts was unexpectedly called upon to take
his place. He opened the case with so much eloquence that
the audience in the crowded court-room gave him three cheers
when he got through.

He rose rapidly to a distinguished place in his profession,
and before he died was, I suppose, the foremost advocate
in the world, whether in his country or E