Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1897 — LONG IN THE SERVICE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LONG IN THE SERVICE.

FIVE OLD ATTACHES OF THE WHITE HOUSE. Employes Who fervod Under Many Admininistrations -Presidents Come and Go, but These Good and Faithful Servants Remain. White Hou*e Fixtures. Washington correspondence:

THAT this world is not all a fleeting show is evidenced by several people nt the White House in Washlng- \ ' ton, D. C. You SR meet one of them at the big door as you enter, and he is made known to you as Capiaiu Thomas PeaJel, chief doorkeeper. '* You meet the sec",r ond in the person of Col. William ' 11 Dubois, chief II > usher. If you succeed in gettingpast their vigilant eyes

you will meet a third iu the person of a military- looking gentleman who stands guard over the cabinet room and the door leading to the private part of the President's home. He is Major Loeffler. L’p in that region you will also find Col. Pruden, the White House sphinx, and Col. Crook, the all-around generalissimo. There ate others, but these are the ones who, like Tennyson's brook, go on forever. Presidents come and go, children who played at egg-rolling on the White House lawns grow to men and women and visit the White House with their children, and there are greeted by the same kindly faces that were about them in the long ago happy days. Whole generations of White House children have come and gone, yet the faithful servitors of their presidential progenitors are ctill there under the historic roof, caring for

the guest of the nation even as some cared tor the fathers and grandfathers of those who come now. Captain Feudel le Senior, The very oldest in point of service, and of years as well, is Capt. Thomas Feudel, who murks with a star in his memory the 3d day of November, 1864, when he was transferred from the Metropolitan police force, or rather was detailed, for special duty at the White House. Those were troublous days in Washington, and the tired, worried, harassed man who had taken upon his broad shoulders the awful burden of carrying a government through a civil a ar was facing a future that looked black, and his heart was heavy within him. Captain Pendel was a bricklayer by trade, and served his apprenticeship until he was 21. He was born on what was Analostnn island, in 1824, and is now 73 years old. He does not look it, for his abundant hair is coal black, and only a little gray shows at the temples. His grandfather was in the revolutionary war, his father in the war of 1812, and he was himself in the marine service of the Mexican war. He does not know of a creature living to-day, outside of his immed'ate family, who bears his name. He is married and has several charming daughters, who played in youth with the White House children.

Couldn’t spare Crook, Next longest in point of service at the White House is Col. Crook. He says that title was not won in military service, and carries no straps with it, but that it came upon him gradually and he wears it because he can’t seem to get rid of it, but then nobody wants to have him give it up. for it fits admirably. Col. Crook came to act as bodyguard for Mr. Lincoln late in Novi rnber, 1864. He was a soldier in a Maryland regiment when detailed to the White House, and he found favor at once in the eyes of Mr. Lincoln, who seemed to have singled him out on many occasions. Col. Crook was drafted late in the war, and just a little over a month before the death of Mr. Lincoln, he wrote the following: “My man Crook has been drafted. 1 cannot spare him. I*. M. G. please fix. "A. LINCOLN. “March 2, 1865.” Col. Crook did not have to be spared, but the man he had served with such tender dev< tion was taken. The man so valuable to Mr. Lincoln had been just as. much worth to all the other administrations, and so “Col. William Crook” is borne upon the pay rolls of the White House now, exactly as he was thirty-three years ago, only his duties have increased and his responsibilities. He has rilled nearly every desk in the office, and was for a time private secretary for President Grant. He is now the disbursing clerk, ami has served under nine Presidents, two of them having been there two terms, Grant and Cleveland. Loeffler Has a Record. The slight military looking gentleman with the snow-white hair and the keen eyes wno stands guard over the door to the cabinet room, and also over that which leads from the public to the private part of the executive mansion, is Maj. Charles D. A. Loeffler, who was born in Stuttgart, but ,wh > eame to America and entered the regular army as a member of the Second Cavalry in 1858. He campaigned all over the Western frontier liefore the war, and what he does not know of hardship, hunger and thirst is scarcely worth printing. The famous Custer was a cadet at West Point when Major Loeffler was doing outpost duty in Texas, and he saluted Col. Robert E. Lee as commanding officer. Attached though he was te bis command-

er, he lemained la the Union when Lee went out, and was ordered to Washington, where he became dispatch bearer and was trusted with many secrets between Lincoln and ffis generals. He acted as messenger for Secretary Stanton, and finally became a messenger in the White House, where for nearly a quaiter of a century he has watched cabinets come and go, he himself a fixture. He is low-voiced and gentle as a woman, and it is rarely you can get him to open the storehouse of anecdotes that he is so rich in. For many years all the callers upon the President passed through the doors which he guards. He knew all the statesmen and office holders in the country, all the military men, and all the dead beats He got so that he could turn down a man so nicely he never knew it till he was bowed outside of the corridor into the air. He never made a mistake in letting a man in to see the President, it is said, and in that way made himself almost invaluable. Another White House Fixture. Geni.il Major O. L. Pruden is another of the White House appurtenances which President McKinley has found checked over to him for nearly twenty-five years. His office, that of chief executive clerk, comes'next to that of the secretary to the President in importance. Major Pruden has been called "the administration sphinx” ever since he assumed his duties at the desk. He knows a great many things and knows them very well, but he is one of the birds who can sing, and won’t. But, oh, what stories he could tell if he only would. He came to Washington. “a boy in blue, ’ from New Jersey, early in the war, and his splendid penmanship won him immediate recognition in the War Department. His regiment was ordered away, but he was held to be too valuable a penman to spoil his fingers handling a big gun. In 1872 he was detailed to the White House, and was placed on the official staff by President Grant, and he has been there ever since. Col. Pruden’s duties are manifold, vexing and perplexing, but he is jolly through it all. He puts into writing the history of every official transaction in the White House. Every nomination made by the President, from a cabinet minister to the appointment of a cross roads post-master-"whose salary is 5 cents a year and furnish your own postoffice building”

—with the action of the Senate, is recorded by him in handwriting that rivals copper-plate. All the communications between the executive mansion and the departments are entered in his books. He makes the copies of all the President's messages, and personally delivers them to the President of the Senate and Speaker of the House. The history of the documents which he has thus carried would make interesting reading, if he would give the inside facts away. But he won’t.

A GROUP OF OLD WHITE HOUSE ATTACHES.