around outside and peek in the window," suggested Miss Harding. This we did, leaving the picture with someone in charge who said they would see that Mr. Harding autographed it for me in due time. Through the window we could see Mr. Harding at his desk in earnest conversation with Mr. Hays whose back was toward us. How we attracted the President-elect's attention I do not remember, but Mr. Hays turned and looked out and smiled and Mr. Harding immediately came out the side door. We shook hands formally, and I thought Mr. Harding looked slightly annoyed; perhaps he was. Anyway I asked him if he would mind autographing the picture for me. It was a photograph he had found in his desk in the Senate office (so he told me in New York in 1917) and had said to himself when he found it, "I'm going to give this picture to Nan," and Miss Harding and her family had agreed it was the best likeness they had ever seen when I showed it to them before taking it over for his autograph. "Where did you get that picture. Nan?" inquired Miss Harding, "I have never seen one like it." I think I told her I had gotten it at the Republican Headquarters in Chicago. It is possibly one of perhaps a very few copies in existence. I have never seen one except my own.
After talking with us a few moments, Mr. Harding walked back into the office and Miss Harding and I went downtown. Frank, the chauffeur the Hardings had for so many years, was just ready to go down in the President-elect's official car and he drove us.
A few days later I obtained from the headquarters my own special photograph of Mr. Harding, duly autographed in the handwriting which was so familiar to me. I remember Miss Harding inspected it closely and said, "Yes, that's his writing all right," indicating that he had not given it to a possible copyist to do for him. Could she have known of the thousands of words her brother had written to me! On the bottom of the photograph he had inscribed, "To Miss Nan Britton, with the good wishes of a Marion neighbor and friend, Sincerely, Warren G. Harding."
