RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
This subject of my husband's appointment to the Supreme Bench cropped up with what seemed to me to be rather annoying frequency. While we were in Cuba it was rumoured that he would be asked to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Brown, but the report correctly stated that he would be likely to refuse the appointment because of the rapidly developing possibility that he would be the Republican nominee for the Presidency the following year.
At this time Mr. Taft was all but impervious to any friendly advice which, being followed, would have tended to enhance his own political advantage. He was not playing politics for himself; he was attending strictly to business, fully imbued with the conviction that the public desired a continuation of the Administration as it stood. Mr. Roosevelt's personal popularity could not be denied nor in any way belittled, but he had already announced that he was not a candidate for a third term, and all over the country the party was organising to support Mr. Taft, while a number of other names were prominently mentioned as "possibilities." Mr. Roosevelt had assured my husband that he could count on his support, and he also urged him to lose no opportunity to give personal encouragement and impetus to the campaign that was being started in his behalf. But Mr. Taft paid very little attention, and never did he cease to regard a Supreme Court appointment as vastly more desirable than the Presidency. If his letters of that period could be read it would readily be seen that he was a most difficult candidate for his loyal and eager supporters to manage.
About this time, in conversation with Mr. Roosevelt in respect to Mr. Taft's candidacy, I got the impression that he was discouraged over my husband as a candidate because he had avoided co-operation with certain political organisations in the West, and, further, that Mr. Roosevelt
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