| In
the beginning, children came into the White House with
baskets of brightly dyed hard-boiled eggs. On Easter Monday,
1885, young egg rollers marched into the East Room, hoping
for a personal audience with President Grover Cleveland.
When he came down from his office to greet them, he was
charmed, and indoor egg roll receptions became customary.
These visitors ruined the East Room carpet, which, as
the Washington Post reported, was “ground full of
freshly smashed hard-boiled egg and broken egg shells.”
Still, when Cleveland returned in 1893 for a second, non-consecutive
term, he continued to grant the egg rollers carte blanche
access to the house and grounds.
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