You still saw occasionally a tiny cottage inhabited by a
colored family cuddled up against a new and imposing palace, just
as you might pass a colored mammy on the same sidewalk with a
millionaire Senator, for the residential section had not yet been
socially standardized.
Only a few years before, under President Cleveland, a single
telephone sufficed for the White House, and as the telephone
operator stopped work at six o'clock, the President himself or
some member of his family had to answer calls during the evening.
A single secretary wrote in long hand most of the Presidential
correspondence. Examples of similar primitiveness might be found
almost everywhere, and the older generation seemed to imagine
that a certain slipshod and dozing quality belonged to the very
idea of Democracy. If you were neatly dressed and wide awake, you
would inevitably be remarked among your fellows; such remark
would imply superiority; and to be superior was supposedly to be
undemocratic.
Nevertheless this was a time of transition, and the vigor which
emanated from the young President passed like electricity through
all lines and hastened the change.
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