was with Mr. and Mrs. Daniels who lived at 607 West 136th Street. I had heard of Mrs. Daniels through Helen Anderson who in turn had met her at the Y. M. C. A. where she had filed her notice of "rooms to rent." I lived there from July to November, 1917.
Of course I was proud of my friendship with Mr. Harding, and, inasmuch as up to this time it had been free from deepest intimacies, I felt freer to discuss him, although as a matter of fact I had always talked about him so much at home and elsewhere that it was much a matter of course.
The Daniels were wise enough to appreciate that their roomer was rather more than "in" with a United States Senator. Moreover, mention was made from time to time in the papers of senate activities in which Mr. Harding took a prominent part, and on August 12, 1917, The New York Times carried in its magazine section a front-page article entitled, "Need of Dictator Urged by Harding." I wondered at the time whether the publication of this article had been arranged for in a series of telephone calls made to the Times, the Sun and newspaper friends of Mr. Harding upon the occasion of one of his visits here when I was with him. The Daniels immediately said that I ought to try to persuade the senator to dine at their home. It would, obviously, have been a feather in their joint social headgear! As a matter of fact, he did not do so, though I had his assurance that he would if it would please me.
It was mid-July when Mr. Harding came over from Washington. We went to a moderate-priced hotel on Seventh Avenue. He told me that that hotel had once been a very nice place, and he knew George and Dan Frank (dry-goods merchants from Marion) used to stop there when in New York.
