procession, head bared, acknowledging this tribute of the home folks who loved him. . . .
Loved him? Yes. But who of men can essay an explanation of that instinct of the American voter who can hypocritically hail a candidate one day and the following day betray him at the polls?
As I look back upon that election, a state-wide land-slide for the Democrats, putting Judson Harmon in the Governor's chair, I do not feel as I felt then, saddened beyond words, for events have been witness to the fact that nothing can prevent those who are predestined from "coming into their own."
(These two episodes, the one of the meeting with Mr. Harding when I carried the pail of milk, and the political mass meeting, I have quoted in substance from an autobiography which I wrote in 1921 at Columbia as one of our class assignments. I took this manuscript down to the White House at that time and Mr. Harding read it, expressing in a letter to me his interest and praising me for having received an "A" on it at Columbia, however cautioning me as usual very lovingly against treading compositionally upon what he thought seemed to be "dangerous ground." The whimsical expression in his face when we used to discuss his earlier political activities often led me to feel that he had felt far from the hero I had pictured him, and perhaps more like the disillusioned candidate his friends reported him to be after that election, driven by ambitious admirers into a field he would fain have avoided.)
In June of 1913, when I was a Junior in high school, my father passed on. We had very little money, but my mother managed to keep us together for a year and a half or so. She went back to teaching and was given a position in the Marion Public Schools. My baby brother John was about eighteen months old. My older sister Elizabeth was the pianist
