It was in February that Roger wrote somewhat formally to ask if his
Cousin Patty might have a room in Mary's big house during the coming
inauguration.
"She is supremely happy over the Democratic victory, but in spite of
her advanced ideas, she is a timid little thing, and she has no
knowledge of big cities. I feel that many difficulties would be
avoided if you could take her in. I want her, too, to know you. I had
thought at first that I might come with her. But I think not. I am
needed here."
He did not say why he was needed. He said little of himself and of his
work. And Mary wondered. Had his enthusiasm waned? Was he, after
all, swayed by impulse, easily discouraged? Was Porter right, and was
Roger's failure in life due not to outside forces, but to weakness
within himself?
She wrote him that she should be glad to have Cousin Patty, and it was
on the first of March that Cousin Patty came.
Once in four years the capital city takes on a supreme holiday aspect.
In other years there may be parades, in other years there may be
pageants--it is an every-day affair, indeed, to hear up and down the
Avenue the beat of music, and the tramp of many feet. There are
funerals of great men, with gun carriages draped with the flag, and
with the Marine Band playing the "Dead March." There are gay
cavalcades rushing in from Fort Myer, to escort some celebrity; there
are pathetic files of black folk, gorgeous in the insignia of some
society which gives to its dead members the tribute of a
conspicuousness which they have never known in life. There are circus
parades, and suffrage parades, minstrel parades and parades of the boys
from the high schools--all the display of military and motley by which
men advertise their importance and their wares.
But the Inauguration is the one great and grand effort. All work stops
for it; all traffic stops for it; all of the policemen in the town
patrol it; half the detectives in the country are imported to protect
it. All of fashion views it from the stands up-town; all of the
underworld gazes at it from the south side of the street down-town.
Packed trains bring the people. And the people are crowded into hotels
and boarding-houses, and into houses where thresholds are never crossed
at any other time by paying guests.
To the inauguration of 1913 was added another element of interest--the
parade of the women, on the day preceding the changing of presidents.
Hence the red and white and blue of former decorations were enlivened
by the yellow and white and purple of the Suffrage colors.