RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
disposed to have Mr. Taft visit any of the courts of Europe except at St. Petersburg and that only for the purpose of conveying his grateful acknowledgment of the courtesies shown us in our long trip across Siberia. Nor in the state of his mother's health, which we knew to be precarious, was he disposed to accept the invitations which he received from the German Emperor, the King of Belgium, the President of France and others, to visit their countries and become their guest. At Berlin we had just time to dine with the American Ambassador and Mrs. Tower, and to meet a few American friends whom they had invited in, then Mr. Taft and the other members of the party went to Hamburg to take the Steamship General Grant at that port, while I, with Mrs. Post Wheeler, rushed down to Paris to do a few hours' shopping, planning to join the Grant at Boulogne the next evening. In the meantime a terrible storm began to rage along the coast, and when we reached Boulogne there was some question about our being able to get to the Grant which lay at anchor just outside the breakwater. However, we boarded the little tender and she started for the very wild looking open channel. She had no sooner struck the heavy seas before she had broken her rudder and was being buffeted about in a really terrifying manner. We managed in some way to get back inside the breakwater where some repairs were made, then we started out again. We repeated this performance several times, listening meanwhile to generally voiced predictions that nothing on earth could save us from going to the bottom, and, although it was only nine o'clock in the evening when we boarded the little vessel, it was four o'clock in the morning before she came alongside the Grant and discharged her dilapidated and exhausted passengers.
Mr. Taft had waited up for us and had seen the tender come out of the harbour and go back, and, assuming from what was told him that no attempt would be made to trans-
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