RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
the great fountain was playing at its topmost height in every colour of the rainbow; while on the gleaming point of the Monument and on the flag stretched in the breeze from the staff on the top of the White House shone the steady gleam of two searchlights.
My husband and I received the almost endless line of guests under a large tree about midway between the South Portico and the fountain; the entire house was thrown open and was filled constantly with people seeking the refreshment tables laid in the dining rooms and vestibule. I have a right to be enthusiastic in my memory of that party because without enthusiasm it could not have been given at all. And why should not one be frankly grateful for success?
With the passing of another season, in no way different from those that went before, I come to the end of my story. There is another story to tell, longer and fuller, but it does not belong to me. It belongs to the man whose career has made my story worth the telling.
After Mr. Taft was renominated, or rather after the second convention in Chicago when the Republican party was divided, I began to make plans for the future in which the White House played no part. I stopped reading the accounts of the bitter political contest because I found that the opposition newspapers made so much more impression on me than those that were friendly to my husband that I was in a state of constant rage which could do me no possible good.
Mr. Taft had never been subjected to bitter criticism and wholesale attack until his term in the Presidency and I suppose I had formed a habit of thinking that there was nothing to criticise him for except, perhaps, his unfortunate shortcoming of not knowing much and of caring less about the way the game of politics is played. Such criticism of him as Mr. Bryan's supporters were able to create for their use in 1908 amounted to nothing. His record of twenty years'
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