RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
My very active participation in my husband's career came to an end when he became President. I had always had the satisfaction of knowing almost as much as he about the politics and the intricacies of any situation in which he found himself, and my life was filled with interests of a most unusual kind. But in the White House I found my own duties too engrossing to permit me to follow him long or very far into the governmental maze which soon enveloped him.
I was permitted fully to enjoy only about the first two and a half months of my sojourn in the White House. In May I suffered a serious attack of illness and was practically out of society through an entire season, having for a much longer time than that to take very excellent care of myself. During this period my sisters, Mrs. Louis More, Mrs. Charles Anderson, Mrs. Laughlin and Miss Maria Herron, came from time to time to visit us and to represent me as hostess whenever it was necessary for me to be represented.
But even in my temporary retirement, as soon as I was strong enough to do anything at all, I always took a very lively interest in everything that was going on in the house, and from my apartments on the second floor directed arrangements for social activities almost as if I had been well.
I didn't even have the privilege of presiding at all my first year garden parties, though this was a form of hospitality in which I was especially interested and which, I believe, I was able to make a notable feature of our administration. Garden parties are very popular in the Far East and I think, perhaps, I acquired my very strong liking for them out there, together with a few sumptuous notions as to what a garden party should be like.
The Emperor and Empress of Japan give two each year;
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