How President Arthur Lives.

Manawatu Times, Volume X, Issue 1145, 8 January 1884, Page 2

How President Arthur Lives.

The present President of the United States is the first since President Buchanan (who preceded Lincoln) "to live like a gentleman," m the ordinary conventional sense of that phrase. This is chiefly due to the fact that he is a New Yorker and of the town towny. President Lincoln, a poor "Western lawyer m the West's yet cruder days, had, probably never m his life sat at a handsomely ap- ' pointed table until he came to Washington. President Grant's parents were poor and obscure, and when the war broke out he was driving his own produce intoJSt. Louis from a small farm m the neighborhood. President Hayes is essentially Western and provincial. His wife is an uncompromising Blue Bibbonist, and ghastly indeed were the elaborate dinners served m her day at the White House, with nothing but tea and coffee to wash dewn ten. courses. The representations, of the Secretary of State only succeeded m obtaining a mitigation of the temperance law m the case of State dinners to the Diplomatic Corps, to whom, it was represented to Mrs President, a dinner was really not a dinner without wine. President Arthur, however, keeps London hours. He dines at eight, and has an excellent table and excellent wine. On a salary of $50,00Q a-.year he entertains much more frequently than, and, if report be true, fully as well as an illustrious personage with forty times that income who usually occupies her London palace from eight to ten days m the*year. ' The White House and its conser- -\ vatories are maintained at the pubi lie expense, and including this and ( certain allowances, the pecuniary j value of the Presid^ental qmce may probably he put down at not less than $75,003.— Vanity Fair.