had kissed it many many times. He wrote, "Don't waste any more kisses on a likeness, Nan, when the original yearns for your kisses." The only thing I did not like about that cherished likeness was that he told me a woman had snapped it!
In this connection an incident occurs to me which he related to me upon one of our earlier visits. He told it to me at dinner, with reference to annoying requests from petty office seekers who employ all kinds of bribery to gain their ends.
One such individual, a man, had an even more ambitious wife, who desired to see her husband lifted to a certain post and chose Senator Harding as the intercessor. Mr. Harding said that the lady called him on the phone and requested that he stop in on his way home one evening—she wished to see him "on business." He said he thought nothing about it and accordingly stopped at her apartment, naturally expecting to find her husband home also. The lady herself answered his ring, however, and Mr. Harding said when he followed her into the living-room he observed with bewilderment and embarrassment that she was becomingly en negligee, and the way in which she dropped down upon the comfortable couch and spread the flimsy folds of her negligee gracefully about her could mean but one thing. He told me with such adorable embarrassment of her frankness and of his own confusion. I can imagine well all of this because I know his innate sense of delicacy and refinement. It was probably with difficulty that he excused himself, for I am sure women of that type do not let their prey go easily. The thing of course that pleased me about the story was his assurance that he couldn't ever "fall for" anybody but me.
I think it was late fall of 1918 when Mr. and Mrs. Harding went to Texas to visit their friends, Mr. Fred Scobey and his wife. Mr. Scobey, Mr. Harding told me, had a large warehouse in San Antonio and was rather wealthy.
I failed to hear from Mr. Harding upon the occasion of that trip South as soon as I felt I should, and so I wired him at Scobey's, in care of the warehouse. I received a wire in return,