CURRENT LITERATURE.
THE STORY OF THE WHITE HOUSE.
The Story of the White House. By Esther Singleton. 2 vols. (Hodder and Stoughton. 21s. net.)—The " White House," we need hardly explain, is the official residence of the President of the United States of America. In these volumes we read about the building of it, the furnishing, the keeping up, the receptions which have been held, the entertainments which have been given in it, and about various kindred matters. The story covers a period of something more than a century. It would not be easy to find a Royal palace which during the same number of years has had so few scandalous associations. And the President, it must be remembered, lives under a glare of publicity. The searchlight of party hostility is directed on him and his belongings, but it has discovered very little. President Tyler's second marriage shocked Democratic susceptibilities, for John Quincy Adams spoke of it as " a revolting indecency." But there was nothing very shocking about it. He had succeeded to the Presidency on the sudden death of General Harrison on April 4th, 1841. In September, 1842, his wife died, and he married again in June, 1844, the bride being the elder daughter of a certain Mr. Gardiner, ex-Senator for New York, who had been killed, along with a number of other notabilities, by the explosion of a cannon on board the `Princeton,' which was making a trial trip on the Potomac. She was much younger than her husband; but this was no great scandal after all. President Jefferson's wine- bill was supposed to be too large for Republican simplicity ; it amounted to £2,100 for eight years (two terms of office), or
£262 10s. per year. Among the interesting things plentifully dispersed through the volumes are various details as to the expenditure on the House, or, we should say, Houses. The building of to-day is very different from that which originally housed the President. Britain is responsible for one event in this history of changes, for in 1814 the White House was burnt to the ground,—a military operation which now seems very strange. It was, it should be said, a deliberate act, for the British troops were sternly kept from anything like plunder of private property. The simplicity of early days has certainly given way to an expenditure which we might venture to call regal. Some of the items for the lighting, refurnishing, &c., of the House in President Grant's time are not a little astonishing. Rebuilding a stable cost £2,820; refurnishing the House £32,000; and £420 was spent on flower-pots. It is almost as magnificent an expenditure as we should expect in an East End workhouse. The illustra- tions, consisting of portraits, elevations, &c., add much to the value and interest of these volumes.
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