Ratcliffe lifted the weight of affairs from his shoulders with hardly an effort.

He knew everybody and everything.

He took most of the President's visitors at once into his own hands and dismissed them with great rapidity.

He knew what they wanted; he knew what recommendations were strong and what were weak; who was to be treated with deference and who was to be sent away abruptly; where a blunt refusal was safe, and where a pledge was allowable.

The President even trusted him with the unfinished manuscript of the Inaugural Address, which Ratcliffe returned to him the next day with such notes and suggestions as left nothing to be done beyond copying them out in a fair hand.