Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir

[174] it; and when he ascertained the importance attributed to visits in the official and high political world in which he lived, he became anxious that they should be paid and returned punctiliously. In time it was he who urged Mrs. Grant to make her calls, and those who did not know would hardly believe how particular he grew about placing people at dinner. Not that he regarded these points as important, but others did, whom he was unwilling to neglect or to offend.

So too about his parties. He was always willing to open his house, and wanted no one left out whom it was proper to invite. He had indeed a genuine liking for society; not only because wherever he went he was the chief and the idol, though this might make any one fond of the world; but he was social by nature. He not only had a pleasure in the company of his intimates, not only enjoyed the conversation of important men; but he liked to look at pretty girls and to listen to the talk of clever women. For a long time, however, he was not ready in replying; he had little small talk, and could not make conversation without a theme; but he observed closely under his mask of silence, and I always relished his criticisms of people and manners. He gossiped very genially, and observed little points of behavior and their significance as acutely as many of long experience in what is called ‘the world.’ I had a great deal to do with his early social career. I was very much at his house and his table before he became President; I dispensed the invitations to his receptions, and went with him to dinners and parties innumerable in half the cities of the Union. I stood by him at public receptions when thousands shook him by the hand, and every man put all his enthusiasm and all his patriotism into a single grasp, until Grant's arm became swollen and lame for weeks, and the newspapers published a caricature of ‘The hand we shook so often.’ Sometimes in the crowd the aides-de-camp thrust out their hands and saved him many