Ten o'clock was the hour at which he was supposed
to begin receiving visitors, but it was often necessary to see
them unpleasantly early. Occasionally they forced their way to
his bedroom before he had quite finished dressing. Throngs of
people daily filled his office, the ante-rooms, and even the
corridors of the public part of the Executive Mansion. He saw
them all, those he had summoned on important business, men of
high official position who came to demand as their right offices
and favors that he had no right to give; others who wished to
offer tiresome if well-meant advice; and the hundreds, both men
and women, who pressed forward to ask all sorts of help. His
friends besought him to save himself the weariness of seeing the
people at these public receptions, but he refused. "They do not
want much, and they get very little," he answered. "Each one
considers his business of great importance, and I must gratify
them. I know how I would feel if I were in their place." And at
noon on all days except Tuesday and Friday, when the time was
occupied by meetings of the cabinet, the doors were thrown open,
and all who wished might enter. That remark of his, "I know how I
would feel if I were in their place," explained it all. His early
experience of life had drilled him well for these ordeals. He had
read deeply in the book of human nature, and could see the hidden
signs of falsehood and deceit and trickery from which the faces
of some of his visitors were not free; but he knew, too, the
hard, practical side of life, the hunger, cold, storms, sickness
and misfortune that the average man must meet in his struggle
with the world.
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