| "The White House by Moonlight" by Paul McGehee. This beautiful view of the Executive Mansion in 1905 is best described by the pen of Walt Whitman: "I wander about a good deal, sometimes at night under the moon. To-night took a long look at the President痴 house. The white portico葉he palace-like, tall, round columns, spotless as snow葉he walls also葉he tender and soft moonlight, flooding the pale marble, and making peculiar faint languishing shades, not shadows容verywhere a soft transparent hazy, thin, blue moon-lace, hanging in the air葉he brilliant and extra-plentiful clusters of gas, on and around the facade, columns, portico, &c.容verything so white, so marbly pure and dazzling, yet soft葉he White House of future poems, and of dreams and dramas, there in the soft and copious moon葉he gorgeous front, in the trees, under the lustrous flooding moon, full of reality, full of illusion葉he forms of the trees, leafless, silent, in trunk and myriad-angles of branches, under the stars and sky葉he White House of the land, and of beauty and night耀entries at the gates, and by the portico, silent, pacing there in blue overcoats耀topping you not at all, but eyeing you with sharp eyes, whichever way you move". It was a time of great excitement in Washington, D.C. In the winter months of early 1905, the nation's capital was preparing for the second term of President Theodore Roosevelt, a popular and forceful leader who had been reelected by an unprecedented majority of votes. |
