RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
This came before I had been in the Islands a month and when Mr. Taft was so deep in the complications of his work that he was almost a stranger to his friends.
There was an accompanying cablegram from Secretary Root strongly urging acceptance on the score of my husband's impaired health. Mr. Root declared that he was most unwilling to lose his services in the Philippines, but thought it better for him "not to take any serious risk of breaking down and having to leave the Islands an invalid even after a considerable period of further service." As Mr. Taft was feeling particularly well and was taking daily exercise and keeping himself in excellent condition this sounded rather like anticipating a very unlikely calamity, but the last time Mr. Root had seen him he was anything but robust so it was easy to understand the Secretary's friendly concern for him.
What to do? This was not a question which gave Mr. Taft even a shade of hesitation, because he knew immediately what he must do. All his life his first ambition had been to attain the Supreme Bench. To him it meant the crown of the highest career that a man can seek, and he wanted it as strongly as a man can ever want anything. But now that the opportunity had come acceptance was not to be thought of. I had always been opposed to a judicial career for him, but at this point I shall have to admit I weakened just a little. I remembered the year of illness and anxiety we had just been through; and sometimes I yearned to be safe in Washington even though it did mean our settlement in the "fixed groove" that I had talked against for so long.
Mr. Taft's plain and unmistakable duty held him in the Philippine Islands. He knew he could not detach himself completely from the enterprise upon which he was engaged without grave consequences to it. His one cause for uncertainty as to what he should do lay in a suspicion that he
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