Esther Cleveland

"It's queer what things stick in a child's mind. I can still remember where we used to have our supper, and the general plan of that part of the White House where we were allowed to play. I can also remember our last day there, when we were waiting for the carriage to convey us to the railway station. I remember the satisfaction with which I wore my little gloves in preparation for the journey. There is one thing I do not remember, but which members of the family have told me. I was sitting there very primly, waiting to leave the White House, when one of the attaches said, teasingly: "Why are you leaving us?" I am supposed to have replied: "'Cause there can't be two presidents!""

"One of my nicest memories is of father having me downstairs in his study before I went to bed. He would put me on his knee and encourage me to put my fingers in the ink pots on his desk and draw pictures on his huge blotters. He loved it, and of course I loved it too."

"I am all for President Kennedy and his wife - they are Democrats like my father. I will be glad if it is one of their children who follows me in being born in the White House. ... My husband and I were at breakfast when we heard the announcement [of the First Lady's pregnancy] on a radio news program. We laughed when the announcer said the only [president's] child to be born in the White House was born there nearly 70 years ago. It rather brought home my age to me."

"I think by now I have pretty well absorbed the British "way of life," but that does not mean that I forget for one moment that I am thoroughly American. Perhaps it is because I am so much of an American that I have been able to adapt myself so easily to English ways."