less than cut-throats and that "the Chief" had really had mighty few friends.
Tim related to me his own experiences in Marion, Ohio, where he was for several months the President-elect's bodyguard. I was sorry to hear him say frankly that he had never met such a "bunch" in all his life, and I assured him that I was certain the streak of social madness of which he spoke had developed in Marion only since the birth of the excitement surrounding Mr. Harding's nomination for the presidency. I knew all or nearly all of the people of whom he spoke and I had known them from childhood, and the wildness to which they might have inclined as the result of a misdirected patriotic stimulus was condoned by me who knew the genuineness of my home town people. I could not believe as Tim believed, that "The whole bunch out there is rotten." No town which could produce Warren Harding could be fundamentally wrong in any respect. It was only a temporary social dementia from which they would recover with the passing of time.
Tim said Mr. Harding had instructed him that in case of "anything happening" to him, Tim should get from his private secretary, George Christian, the President's little black notebook in which the latter had kept private memoranda. Tim said Mr. Harding had told him he was to tear out immediately the sheets containing my several addresses and my name. I moved around, you will remember, quite frequently, and likely if Mr. Harding kept these addresses they had filled several sheets of such a notebook. However, it did seem to me, as I told Tim, that Mr. Harding would have felt it important enough to see that each time I moved he himself blotted out or destroyed my previous address, and it also seemed entirely unlikely that he would have my real name written in this notebook. Any fictitious name would have sufficed, and he and I had many secret initials which meant something to us and which he might have used for such purpose. Nevertheless, Tim said, those were his orders. It seems to me Tim said that when he had gone to Mr. Christian for the notebook the latter told him it had already been destroyed.
