With the passing of another season, in no way different from those that went before, I come to the end of my story. There is another story to tell, longer and fuller, but it does not belong to me. It belongs to the man whose career has made my story worth the telling.
After Mr. Taft was renominated, or rather after the second convention in Chicago when the Republican party was divided, I began to make plans for the future in which the White House played no part. I stopped reading the accounts of the bitter political contest because I found that the opposition newspapers made so much more impression on me than those that were friendly to my husband that I was in a state of constant rage which could do me no possible good.
Mr. Taft had never been subjected to bitter criticism and wholesale attack until his term in the Presidency and I suppose I had formed a habit of thinking that there was nothing to criticise him for except, perhaps, his unfortunate shortcoming of not knowing much and of caring less about the way the game of politics is played. Such criticism of him as Mr. Bryan’s supporters were able to create for their use in 1908 amounted to nothing. His record of twenty years’ uncriticised service stood, and he stood on it. I think we both avoided much perturbation after we became convinced of the unfairness and injustice of much that was said by hostile newspapers, by not reading it. Mr. Taft took much satisfaction from those words of Lincoln’s which Mr. Norton, his Secretary, had photographed and placed in a frame on his office desk:
“If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how—the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”
I wanted him to be reelected, naturally, but I never entertained the slightest expectation of it and only longed for the end of the turmoil when he could rest his weary mind and get back into association with the pleasant things of life. Fortunately we are a family that laughs. Both Mr. Taft and the children manage to get some fun out of almost everything, and I and my matter of factness have afforded them lifelong amusement. They like now to tell a story about me which doesn’t impress me as being particularly funny.
During the last campaign I was at Beverly alone a good part of the summer, but when Mr. Taft did join me for short intervals he brought Republican Headquarters with him, more or less, and a few political supporters were sure to follow for consultation with him.
There was one good old enthusiastic friend who had always supported him and who was then making a valiant fight in his behalf. And he had faith that they would win. He assured me they would win. He told me how they were going to do it, pointing out where Mr. Taft’s strength lay and telling me how kindly the people really felt toward him.
“Mrs. Taft, you mark my word,” said he, “the President will be reelected in November!”
“Well,” said I, “you may be right, but just the same I intend to pack everything up when I leave Beverly, and I shall take the linen and silver home.”
At a dinner given by the Lotos Club in New York, just ten days after Mr. Wilson’s election in 1912, Mr. Taft said:
“The legend of the lotus eaters was that if they partook of the fruit of the lotus tree they forgot what had happened in their country and were left in a state of philosophic calm in which they had no desire to return to it.
“I do not know what was in the mind of your distinguished invitation committee when I was asked to attend this banquet. They came to me before election. At first I hesitated to accept lest when the dinner came I should be shorn of interest as a guest and be changed from an active and virile participant in the day’s doings of the Nation to merely a dissolving view. I knew that generally on an occasion of this sort the motive of the diners was to have a guest whose society should bring them more closely into contact with the great present and the future and not be merely a reminder of what has been. But, after further consideration, I saw in the name of your club the possibility that you were not merely cold, selfish seekers after pleasures of your own, and that perhaps you were organised to furnish consolation to those who mourn, oblivion to those who would forget, an opportunity for a swan song to those about to disappear. …
“The Presidency is a great office to hold. It is a great honour and it is surrounded with much that makes it full of pleasure and enjoyment for the occupant, in spite of its heavy responsibilities and the shining mark that it presents for misrepresentation and false attack. … Of course the great and really the only lasting satisfaction that one can have in the administration of the great office of President is the thought that one has done something permanently useful to his fellow countrymen. The mere enjoyment of the tinsel of office is ephemeral, and
