"Ah, the White House!"

His father abused it and knitted his brow if he only glanced in that
direction; and he himself--he loved it, as if part of his soul lingered
there. Why? He did not know. Perhaps only because his mother loved it. She,
too, stood often at the window, gazing at it; but she did not knit her
brow, not she; her face grew soft and melancholy, and from her eyes
there shone a longing so ardent that he, standing near her, often felt a
sensation of awe steal over him.

Was not his little heart filled with the same longing? Did not that home,
ever since he could think at all, appear to him as the embodiment of
everything beautiful and magnificent? Did it not always stand before him
when he shut his eyes and even creep into his dreams?

"Have you ever been in the White House?" he asked his mother one day, when
he could restrain his curiosity no longer.

"Oh yes, my son," she answered, and her voice sounded sad and unsteady.

"Often, mamma?"

"Very often, my boy. Your parents once lived there, and you were born
there."

Ever since then the "White House" was to him what "Paradise Lost" is to
mankind.

"Who lives in the White House now?" he asked another time.