hotel, the Willard, now more than ever the center of city life. Its corridors were crowded with men seeking patronage jobs from the new administration; its writing room was packed, so much so that “the rustle of pens rose to a little breeze,” Russell wrote. The hotel restaurant served twenty-five hundred guests a day; its waiters “never cease shoving the chairs to and fro with a harsh screeching noise over the floor.” Tobacco stains marred this floor as well. The hotel, Russell wrote, “probably contains at the moment more scheming, plotting, planning heads, more aching and joyful hearts, than
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