RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
that were the same questions presented to him again, he would do the same thing he had done, and that he had no excuses to offer. From that point he made a long trip in the West, upon which I did not accompany him. I remained in Cincinnati with Mrs. Charles Taft and my sister Mrs. Anderson. It was the first political campaign in which Mr. Taft was a candidate before the people. The reports that came indicated that he had lost his voice, and I was greatly concerned lest he might break down in his strenuous labours and new experience. The ups and downs of such a campaign, the prophecies, the hopes, the fears aroused by favourable and opposing newspapers were all new and trying to me, and in a way I think I was under as great a nervous strain as my husband was, without the steadying help of the hardest kind of work. However as the campaign drew near to a close, the Republican confidence grew stronger and stronger, so when we were assembled finally under the hospitable roof of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Taft, with a company of friends to receive the dispatches on election night, the news of the great success that came did not surprise us.
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