RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
fer the passengers before morning, he went to bed. When I got aboard the steamer, filled with excitement over the dangers through which I had passed, and found him peacefully sleeping in his cabin, I declined to accept any explanation. A French sub-prefect, who had been sent out by the Minister of the Interior of France with greetings and compliments, and who had come in his full regimentals with a cocked hat, was waiting to see Mr. Taft and I was cruel enough to insist that he should get up and receive him. Throwing a long fur coat over his pajamas the Secretary of War of the United States walked out into the salon to meet the polite representative of the politest of peoples, but after a grave exchange of formal salutations the situation proved too much for their gravity. They burst out laughing at each other, to the immense enjoyment of the bystanders, and the gloom of the wee sma' hour was lifted.
When we touched at Plymouth that afternoon we received a despatch announcing the death of Mr. Taft's mother. The funeral took place in Cincinnati, at the home of Mr. Charles Taft, several days before we could reach New York.
On our return to the United States we found that my husband's rivals for the Republican nomination had been making great headway. Mr. Roosevelt was quite impatient at the loss of ground that Mr. Taft's candidacy had suffered and he urged him to take a more active interest in the situation. He insisted that Mr. Taft should change the subject of a speech which he had agreed to deliver in Boston from the Philippine problem to a discussion of the financial situation which was then acute after the depression which had taken place during our absence. Mr. Roosevelt's forcible expression was that the business and political public had no more interest in the Philippines than in the subject of "nature faking."
I cannot go into the details of the preliminary convention
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