A Clever Ruse

When President-elect McKinley's party reaclied Washington, there was a jam at the hotel entrance awaiting their coming. The clever way they were out-witted is thus told by an ínter Oeean correspondent: All the preparations indicated that the entrance would be made on the Fourteenth street side of the hotel. There was a guard of policemen at the door, and the corridors leading in from this point were kept ostentatiously clear. The ladies' entrance from F street was left comparatively unnoticed, save for a policeman or two to keep back the crowd. Women were almost in a majority in the crowd, and most of them were armed with boquets, as though designing to commit floral assaults on the incoming administration. At twenty minutes past elevn o'clock there was a cry of "Here they come" as the first carriage of the Presidential party drove up Fourteenth street. Every one crowded forward toward the corridor leading to the Fourteenth street entrance. The line of policemen and hotel people wavered, and hroke before the pressure, and let the most irnpetuous of the crowd surge down the corridor in a wild rush to the Fourteenth street door. But it was only a feint. The carriage never stopped, but swung briskly around the corner to the S street front. The pólice re-formed and pinned the mass of the crowd down in the cal de sac toward the Fourteenth street entrance. Another body of policeman emerged . from the ladies' parlor umi formed a solid line of bluecoats from the ladies' entrance elevator fifty feet a way. In an instant Major and Mrs. McKinley were out of the carriage, and inside the hotel, under convoy of Chairman Bell and Secretary Porter. Mark Hanna, General Alger, Colonel MeCook, and Stewart Woodfocd, oi New York had been given a hint of the moveinent and greeted the new President before any one else. Mr. McKiiiley once inside the hotel, entered an elevator. Tlie gray-clothed boy in charge, grinning eomplacently, pulled the rope and sent the car shooting skyward, and Secretary Porter, hearing a sigh of relief, raised a muchruflled silk bat in grave salute to his disappearing chief, then elbowed his way over to the entrance of the ladies' parlor to receive the gentle maledictions of a crowd of ladies pinned in behind the policemen, the disappointed ones admitting that the flank movement had been cleverly done, but declaring the secretary ' too mean for anything."