RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
Titanic, facing death like a soldier, after the lives of nearly all the women and children had been saved.
We had invited a large number of people to the usual Inaugural luncheon. The cook and several of the staff of servants were to accompany Mrs. Roosevelt to Oyster Bay, but they remained until the afternoon of the Fourth when the staff I had engaged were installed. There are a few old, official servants who remain in the house from one administration to another, keeping in operation an uninterrupted household routine, so there was no reason why the Inaugural luncheon should not be carried through with the same smoothness and despatch to be expected on ordinary occasions. But again we reckoned without the weather. The difficulties of traffic, added to the crush on the avenues, made it impossible for our guests to arrive on time and they continued to straggle in throughout the whole afternoon, each one wishing to apologise in person and make special explanation. This, of course, made anything like systematic reception out of the question and the result was that the luncheon really ran into and became a part of the tea for my husband's classmates of Yale, which was scheduled for five o'clock. There was some confusion, but much goodwill and frank enjoyment and the fact that the President was not there to receive his classmates caused nothing more than a few repetitions of, by that time, familiar comments on the elements.
Mr. Taft was reviewing the Inaugural Parade and the last of it did not pass the reviewing stand until after nightfall. He came in, however, in time to exchange greetings with old-time, enthusiastic friends, the members of the Yale class of '78, and to hold them longer than they had intended to remain. When the last of them had wished us Godspeed and said good-bye, we stood, the five of us,—my husband, my three children and I,—alone in the big state dining-room, and tried to realise that, for the first time, the
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