RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
The Outlook that he ought to print it in extenso and call attention to it. He will apply to you directly for it and I hope you will let him have it.
I am going to start Saturday afternoon to be away for a week, and if you see any gaping lids about my Department in the meantime, please sit on them gently.
Faithfully yours,
Elihu Root.
"Sitting on the lid" was not in any sense the stationary and reposeful performance the expression seems to suggest. Before Mr. Taft returned to Washington from a tour of inspection of brigade posts, which followed immediately upon his trip to Idaho, Mr. Roosevelt had gone to Panama, leaving behind him various questions, including the one which resulted from the discharge without honour of the three companies of coloured troops at Brownsville, Texas, for the Secretary of War to keep within bounds until his return. Then there were many matters of a purely executive nature which, as long as they did not require the signature of the President himself, Mr. Taft was authorised and expected to dispose of. And with the Secretary of State also absent, his office became government headquarters, practically, where foreign Ambassadors, Senators and officials of other Departments had to take their chances of an interview along with visitors or representatives from the Philippines, Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, Alaska and the Canal Zone, and with Army officers and War Department clerks.
I finally gave up all idea of ever getting him home to luncheon, but we nearly always had a dinner engagement, so along about the hour when I knew he would have just time to rush home and dress I would call him on the telephone. And then, if I were fortunate enough to get him without a disgraceful delay, he almost invariably came in, followed by an extra private secretary bearing a large portfolio of papers to be disposed of before such hour as he chose to consider bedtime.
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