Recollections of Full Years/Chapter 1
Cincinnati, the city of my birth and early memories, was, in the 'sixties, about as begrimed and noisy and altogether unattractive as any place well could be; yet it possessed certain attributes which really entitled it to the proud designation of "The Queen City of the West."
It was prosperous; it had hardly yet been surpassed in prosperity by Chicago; Cleveland was not even spoken of as a rival; and in many ways it was the most important centre west of New York and east of the Mississippi.
It owed its early development principally to its advantageous location. It lay on the great central route from the East to the West, which runs from Baltimore and Washington to Cumberland and over the Alleghenies to Pittsburg, thence by the Ohio River to Cincinnati and on west to St. Louis and south to New Orleans. It had an important trade with New Orleans and drew commerce from a large territory to the north. But whatever else may be said of it, its most devoted citizen could not claim that Cincinnati was beautiful. Its buildings were unlovely; its streets were badly paved and as badly kept; and it lay under a pall of soft coal smoke which left its sooty mark upon everything—inhabitants included.
Yet, ugly as it was, the city boasted an unusual society. During the first half of the nineteenth century many young men of good stock and great ability, drawn by the promise of rapid advancement, had moved to Cincinnati from all parts of the East and South; New Jersey, New England, Virginia and Kentucky contributing, perhaps, the greatest number. There were many families of wealth and culture which, without parade or display, maintained fine homes and dispensed a generous hospitality. The suburbs, East Walnut Hills, Mt. Auburn and Clifton, on the heights to the north and east, were famous for their beautiful country places.
Then there was a large population of the best class of Germans, many of whom were university men who left their own country after the Revolution of 1848 and came to Cincinnati to settle. Of these, Frederick Hassaurek, General Willich and Judge Stallo, who came to Cincinnati when Carl Schurz went to St. Louis, are perhaps the most prominent. The German influence upon the community was marked. It made for a more liberal Sunday; it brought the study of German into the public schools; and it developed a strong taste for good music. Indeed, the musical advantages of Cincinnati in my girlhood were better than those of any city in the United States, with the exception of New York or Boston. Theodore Thomas was president of the Conservatory of Music and he organised a symphony orchestra which he continued to direct until he went to Chicago along about 1890.
Cincinnati in those days, with her educated, wealthy and public-spirited society, was much in advance of any other city in the Mississippi Valley in culture and refinement. There was great interest in schools of all sorts and in every kind of intellectual activity. Away back in 1848 the Literary Club of Cincinnati was formed by a company of men among whom were both Mr. Taft's father and mine, as well as Rutherford B. Hayes, Stanley Matthews, Manning F. Force and Mr. Spofford, later Librarian of Congress. This club continues to be a cherished institution and in my girlhood it was the centre of all interest in literature and intellectual pursuits.
My father, John Williamson Herron, was a graduate of Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, and was in college with Benjamin Harrison. He was for fifty years a trustee of that institution and was devoted to its interests. My husband's father, Judge Alphonso Taft, was one of the Yale class of 1833, was for many years a member of the Yale Corporation, and had five sons who graduated at that university. My mother's brother, Judge Isaac Clinton Collins, and one of my two brothers also graduated at Yale, while my other brother graduated at Harvard, so it will be seen that both my husband and I grew up in the midst of strong collegiate traditions.
To write about one's childhood is not easy. Memories by the score come flocking up, but, dear as they are, upon examination they turn out to be quite commonplace and hardly worth relating. My memories are not sufficiently "early" to have any special value. The first thing that I dimly remember is sitting on the front steps of my home watching some sort of parade in which there were many soldiers, but I was too young then to know that it was a peace celebration I was witnessing at the close of the Civil War.
My father was a lawyer who came to the bar of Ohio in the 'fortics. He was United States Attorney under Presi- dent Harrison, was a State Senator, and twice declined appointments to the Bench because the salary attached to these positions was not enough to support his large family. I was the fourth in a family of eleven, eight girls and three boys. One boy and two girls died before I can remember.
Our house was one of a block of grey brick houses in Pike Street, at the east end of Cincinnati, which, at that time, was the fashionable residence section of the city. Pike Street runs down to the river on a rather steep incline and, as it was paved with cobblestones, my early memories are somewhat marred by an impression of the frequent clatter and clang of heavy wagons pulling their way up the hill from the river landing.
While our house was not particularly distinguished, being much like those on either side of it, across the street from us there were two very striking and imposing residences which lent distinction to the neighbourhood, and in which, as I grew up, were formed the pleasantest associations of my life. The one directly opposite was a large, square, red brick house which had an air of great dignity. It was the home of Mr. Larz Anderson. There were ten boys in the Anderson family and, though they were all much older than I and most of them had gone away before I grew up, I remember that it was a very lively household always. In my later girlhood we were specially linked to this family by the marriage of one of the boys, Charles, to my sister Jennie.
The house next to Mr. Anderson's, on the north, I knew as the Sinton home. A low, colonial structure, well set in a garden of green lawns and finely kept shrubbery, it is still one of the most beautiful residences in Cincinnati, and, indeed, in the whole country. Its architecture suggests that of the White House and it was, as a matter of fact, designed by the same architect, an Irishman named Hoban. The Sinton house is lower than the White House, being only one story high with a basement, but it has the same classic outlines and it bears, moreover, the stamp of time, which gives it a character all its own.
It was built about 1800 by a Mr. Martin Baum, but was purchased by the first Nicholas Longworth in the early part of the century and was the home of the Longworth family for a generation. Long before I can remember, it was bought by Mr. David Sinton, one of the most successful business men in Ohio, and to me it was always the Sinton home. When I was about twelve years old, Mr. Sinton's daughter Annie married my husband's brother, Charles P. Taft, and as they have always lived in this old house it has come to be known, since Mr. Sinton's death in 1901, as the Taft house. It is the only Taft house in Cincinnati now, the house where my husband was born having been sold _-_photograph_-_page_4.jpg)
MRS. TAFT'S CHILDHOOD HOME ON PIKE STREET, IN CINCINNATI
My girlhood days were spent quite placidly in Miss Nourse's school, which was known in Cincinnati as "The Nursery," and where all the girls of the Herron family, as well as Mr. Taft's only sister, Fanny, received their education. Miss Nourse was a Maine woman with a thorough New England education and with a thoroughly New England idea of imparting it. She insisted, especially, upon languages and literature. Much of my time, outside of that taken up in regular school work, I devoted to the study of music, and I practised my scales on the family piano with such persistence that I wonder the whole neighbourhood did not rebel. Music was the absorbing interest of my life in those days, the inspiration of all my dreams and ambitions.
Our house was none too large for the family, but as there was a wide difference in our ages it happened that my oldest sister was married while my youngest sister was still a baby in long clothes. Then, the boys went away to college and were gone the better part of each year, so it was not often that we were all at home together. Nevertheless, we had our share of the happy-go-lucky and somewhat crowded existence of a large family on a moderate income.
My mother was Harriet Collins, and when she was seventeen years old she came with her mother to Cincinnati, from Lowville, New York, to live with her brother, Judge Collins, who was my father's law partner and continued to be so for more than forty years. Her father, Eli Collins, was a Member of Congress from the Lowville district of New York. My mother was in many ways a remarkable, as well as a most attractive, woman. She had an exceedingly keen wit and a mind alert to the humour in every situation. With so many children to nurse, to scold, to sew for and, sometimes, to cook for—in a word, to bring up on a small income—she would seem to have had little time for outside interests; but she was very popular in society and I remember that in her busiest years she went out a great deal. She had a stimulating personality and I do know that she made her family circle a very amusing and interesting one in which to grow up.
The only incident of my girlhood which was in any way unusual was my first visit to the White House as a guest of President and Mrs. Hayes. Mr. and Mrs. Hayes and my father and mother had been lifelong friends. Mr. Hayes was, at one time, a partner in my father's law firm. They had been closely associated for a great many years and had a very warm regard for each other. My youngest sister was born shortly after the election of Mr. Hayes, was named Lucy Hayes Herron, after Mrs. Hayes, and was taken to the White House to be christened. My mother paid several visits to the White House and after my sister Jennie was married Mrs. Hayes invited her and Mr. Anderson to stay a week with her and, to my intense excitement, she added that she would like to have me accompany them. I was seventeen years old; I had never been to Washington and to me it was a very important event. I was not "out," so I couldn't spend my time in the White House as I would have liked, in going to brilliant parties and meeting all manner of charming people, but, fortunately for my peace of mind, the Hayes lived very quietly, so it was not so trying to have to devote myself to seeing the sights of the Capital like any other tourist.
I didn't meet my husband until I was eighteen years old. We had been born and brought up in the same town; our fathers were warm friends and had practised law at the same bar for more than forty years; during that time our mothers had exchanged visits, and my sister Maria and Fanny Taft were schoolmates and close companions at Miss Nourse's, but the Tafts lived at Mt. Auburn, a hill suburb of Cincinnati, and after Will finished Woodward High School he went for four years to Yale, so it is not at all surprising that we did not meet.
Judge Alphonso Taft was Secretary of War, and later Attorney-General, in Grant's Cabinet while his son Will was at college, but before the latter graduated, the family had returned to Cincinnati, so he came straight home and entered at once upon a law course in the Cincinnati Law School. It was at that time, when he was still a student and working as a law reporter on the Cincinnati Commercial, that I met him. It was at a coasting party one winter's night, I remember very well, when I went with a party of young people, including the Charles Tafts, to coast down a fine steep hill in Mt. Auburn. Will Taft was there, and after being introduced to me he took me down the hill on his big bobsled. After that we met very frequently.
A small circle of us went in for amateur theatricals with much enthusiasm and great earnestness. We launched ourselves in our histrionic careers in "She Stoops to Conquer" which we gave at the house of one of the company. Then came "A Scrap of Paper" in Mrs. Charles Taft's drawing-room, in which both Will and I took part. We had become very ambitious by this time and sent all the way to New York for a professional stage-manager to help us with the production. But it turned out a most nervous occasion. We were all overtrained, I suppose. One thing after another went wrong until at the crisis of the play, where the hero is supposed to find in the barrel of a gun the scrap of paper upon which the whole plot hinges, the amateur hero looked pretty foolish when he discovered there wasn't any gun. Another one of the company, in a fit of absentmindedness, no doubt due to overwrought nerves, had carried it off the stage, and just when the situation was getting tragic for the hero the culprit came creeping back with it and carefully put it where it belonged, for all the world as if he thought he were making himself invisible to the audience.
But our ardour was not dampened. I remember Mr. Taft specially in a burlesque of "The Sleeping Beauty," which, in its legitimate form, had been produced for charity at Pike's Opera House. The Unity Club, a most respectable organization of the young men of the Unitarian Church, decided to give their version of the same story, and it was a huge success. Mr. Taft played the title rôle and his brother Horace, who is six feet four in his stocking feet, shared with the Beauty the honours of the evening as a most enchanting Puck.
Then wre had parties in the country, too. Many of our friends had country places that spread along the Madison Road and the Grandin Road on East Walnut Hills, and two of my closest friends lived out there in a great house, looking down over the majestic but tawny Ohio River, above the point where the sweeping curve begins that carries it by the amphitheatre in which the business part of the city is built. It was a long distance to East Walnut Hills and in my girlhood we had to go the greater part of the way in a clumsy old omnibus that clumped along over the unpaved roads at the rate of about three miles an hour. But such little inconveniences didn't trouble us, and many were the vaudeville and charade parties that we had, there being _-_photograph_-_page_8.jpg)
MR. AND MRS. JOHN WILLIAMSON HERRON,
MRS. TAFT'S FATHER AND MOTHER
But in spite of all this gaiety, Mr. Taft was making very satisfactory progress in his career. As a law reporter he showed his growing interest in the public welfare by meeting certain elements in Cincinnati politics with vigorous denunciation. There was a man named Tom Campbell, a clever criminal lawyer, who had something more than a suspicion against him of bribery and corruption of both witnesses and juries, and he had succeeded in organising a political machine that was running the town according to his directions.
Campbell was counsel for the defence in what was known as the Hoffman case and was strongly suspected of tampering with the jury, and Mr. Taft in reporting the case, took special pains to bring out all the fine points in the lawyer's character and methods, telling the truth as he saw it.
This brought him into association with Mr. Miller Outcalt, the Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, who represented the State in the Hoffman case, and when Mr. Outcalt succeeded by election to the position of prosecuting attorney he offered the place of assistant to Mr. Taft, although he had been at the bar not more than seven months. Mr. Taft served in this office for fourteen months and the experience he had in the rough-and-ready practice in criminal trials, in preparing cases for trial, in examining witnesses, in making arguments to the court and in summing up to the jury, was the most valuable experience he could possibly have in fitting him for trial work at the bar.
But this experience was shortened by a circumstance not of his seeking. Major Benjamin Butterworth was the Congressman from one of the Cincinnati districts in President Arthur's administration, and the President being anxious to relieve the Collector of Internal Revenue, called on Major Butterworth to suggest the name of another man. Major Butterworth had been for a long time a warm friend of Mr. Taft, thought he had a good family name and was too young in politics to have many political enemies, so he suggested him and wrote to urge him to accept the appointment which the President immediately offered to him. He accepted the place and held it for a year, but it proved a serious interruption in his legal career. He resigned as soon as it was possible and began practice with Major H. P. Lloyd who had been his father's partner before he went to Vienna.
Mr. Taft went abroad in the summer of 1883 to visit Judge and Mrs. Taft in Vienna, and it was about this time, when we had all spent several years in frivolities, that several of us became very serious-minded and decided that we must have something by way of occupation more satisfying than dancing and amateur theatricals. I secured a position as school teacher and taught for two years, first at Madame Fredin's and then at White and Sykes, both private schools out on Walnut Hills. Then, with two of my intimate friends, I decided to start a "salon." We called it a "salon" because we planned to receive a company who were to engage in what we considered brilliant discussion of topics intellectual and economic, and we decided that our gathering should include only specially invited guests. Among these were the two Taft brothers, Will and Horace, and other men common friends of us all.
In view of the fact that two marriages resulted from this salon, Mr. Taft has suggested ulterior motives on the part of those who got it up, but there was no truth in the charge. We were simply bent on "improving our minds" in the most congenial atmosphere we could create, and if our discussions at the salon usually turned upon subjects of immediate personal interest, to the neglect of the abstruse topics we had selected for debate, it was because those subjects were just then claiming the attention of the whole community. Cincinnati, thanks to the activities of Tom Campbell and his followers, was then in a tangle of political mismanagement of a particularly vicious character, and our little circle developed a civic spirit which kept us alive to local interests to the exclusion, for the time being, of everything else. Mr. Taft was intimately connected with the reform movement, and in all its phases, through comedy and tragedy, disappointment and elation, we fought it out at our salon meetings with such high feeling and enthusiasm that its history became the history of our lives during that period.
Then came the famous Berner case. This was in 1884. Berner had committed a deliberate murder of an unusually appalling nature and with robbery as the motive, and there was great excitement about it. Campbell became his counsel and, in a trial which held the attention of the community while it lasted, he succeeded in getting the man off for manslaughter when the unanimous opinion was that he should have been hanged. Nobody could see how an honest jury could have rendered any other verdict. There was intense indignation throughout the city and a meeting was called to denounce Campbell as an embracer of juries and a suborner of perjury.
On the evening when the meeting to denounce Campbell was called we were having a session of the salon and our whole discussion was of the possible developments which might grow out of the infamous Berner trial. We were greatly excited about it. I remember the evening distinctly because of the terrible things that happened. We were disturbed by a great commotion in the street and we sallied forth in a body to see what it was all about.
The mass meeting was held at Music Hall and was presided over by Dr. Kemper, a very effective speaker. The crowd was angry and quickly passed the condemnatory resolutions which were framed. But with all the indignation and resentment everything might have been carried out quite calmly had not the match been applied to the powder. Just as the meeting was breaking up somebody shouted:
"Let's go down to the jail and take Berner out!"
It was an appeal to the mob spirit which responds so readily in an angry crowd; they went; and of course the worst elements immediately came to the top. They attacked the jail, which was in the rear of the court house, but were held back until the militia, which had been instantly summoned, arrived. Then they went around to the front and set fire to the court house. With the streets packed with raging humanity it was not possible to fight the fire and the building was completely destroyed.
The militia charged the mob and this inspired somebody with the idea of raiding a gun store and seizing arms and ammunition with which to make a resistance. The idea caught on and spread rapidly. One place attacked was Powell's gun shop near Fourth and Main. But Powell, either forewarned or foreseeing some such development, had quietly made preparations to meet it. He lighted up the front of the store as brightly as he could, then, with two or three other men who were expert shots, he put himself behind a barricade in the rear. The mob came on and as the ringleaders broke into the shop they were picked off by the men behind the barricade and killed in their tracks. Four or five of them went down in a heap and the crowd behind them, not expecting such a reception, instantly was brought to its senses. This was in April, 1884.
Such an outbreak was a disgrace to the city of Cincinnati, but it had the effect of bringing the Campbell controversy to a head. A bar committee of ten men, of which both my father and Mr. Taft were members, was formed to see what could be done to rid the community of the evil reputation it had acquired. This committee made a thorough investigation
of Campbell's character and record, prepared charges _-_photograph_-_page_12.jpg)
MEMBERS OF THE SALON. MR. TAFT IN THE CENTER, WITH THE AUTHOR AT HIS RIGHT
Campbell had been indicted on a criminal charge of attempting to bribe a man called on the Berner jury and the prosecutor in this case was our intimate friend and associate; Mr. Rufus Smith, who had been in Europe with Mr. Taft the year before. The jury hung, eight to four, although the evidence was strong against the defendant. This fanned the flames of popular resentment and I don't suppose our little salon was the only place in Cincinnati where Campbell was carefully retried and convicted. In this criminal case Mr. Foraker, who shortly afterward became Governor of Ohio, was counsel for Campbell.
The disbarment hearing was set for the following November and some six months was thus given for taking the depositions of non-resident witnesses. Mr. Kittredge and Mr. Ramsey, leaders of the bar, were retained as senior counsel for the committee, and Mr. Taft and Mr. John Holmes, a warm friend of ours, were junior counsel and were directed to prepare the evidence. In this work Mr. Taft and Mr. Holmes went all over the country taking depositions and we kept in constant touch with them. All the members of the committee expected to have their reputations assailed, being perfectly certain that Campbell would not hesitate at any measure he might be able to take to discredit them, but they went ahead nevertheless.
When the trial came on Mr. Ramsey, of the senior counsel, expected to open the case, but he became quite seriously ill and was confined to his house for days. Through his unexpected absence, the duty of making the opening statement fell to Mr. Taft. He was taken completely by surprise, but he rose to the opportunity, which was certainly a splendid one for a man so young. He had then been at the bar only four years, but having assisted throughout in the preparation of the evidence he knew the ease from beginning to end and he made a speech which lasted four hours and a half. Mr. Taft thinks this was an opportunity improved which had an important influence on his career. The special part it played in his subsequent promotion I shall speak of.
The result in the Campbell case was at first disappointing because the Court which heard the disbarment charges found Campbell guilty only on minor charges and, by a vote of two to one acquitted him on those which would have required his disbarment. But the public disapproval of the Court's decision and the moral effect of the proceedings drove Campbell from the city and the State and accomplished the purpose of the bar association.
The Campbell trial was finished in December, 1884, and in January, 1885, Mr. Rufus Smith, an old and intimate friend, entered the office of County Solicitor and tendered to Mr. Taft the place of Assistant County Solicitor. The advantage of this office was that it paid $2500 a year and that, while he acted as counsel for the county, he still was able to continue the general practice of law with his partner, Major Lloyd.
Mr. Taft and I were engaged in May, 1885, and were married in June of the following year.
In the summer of 1885 my mother, moved I think by some sentimental attachment to the scenes of her childhood, decided that she would take us all up into the Adirondacks, to a little camp near Lowville. My two older sisters were married so there were only six of us left in the family, but we were still something of a handful to move in a body. However, my mother was equal to it. We packed almost a van load of trunks and set out, and one evening we arrived, over the worst corduroy road that was ever laid down, at a little cottage beside a beautiful lake in a setting of pine-clad hills. The scenery indeed was most satisfactory, but the cottage was so small that the family more than strained its capacity. Then we took our meals at a sort of boarding house called Fenton's, where the only thing on the bill of fare was fresh beef. I like what is known as "roughing it" as well as anybody, but even the superlative appetite produced by outdoor living demands some variety; and variety we did not get.
Mr. Taft had elected to remain in Cincinnati all summer and save money. It was a Spartan resolution and we all applauded it, but he probably found Lowville a long way from Pike Street; and I certainly thought Mother was sacrificing a good deal for the sake of renewing the memories of her youth. However, the days went on, while the fresh beef grew less and less tempting.
I had written Mr. Taft something about the Fenton fare and he, wanting very much to join us, but having no excuse for breaking his admirable resolution to remain in Cincinnati, hit upon the only plan for escaping comment on his lack of fortitude. He went down to Peeble's, a fancy grocer, and selecting a box as big as a Saratoga trunk, ordered it filled with every kind of delicacy he could think of or have pointed out to him and brought it with him to Lowville.
We went rowing on the lake about sundown the evening he arrived, and right in the middle of a fine long stroke he suddenly dropped his oars, reached in his pocket and drew out a letter. He laughed a little when he handed it to me, then picking up his oars he rowed on without a word. The letter was from his father.
Judge Taft was at this time Minister to St. Petersburg, having been transferred from Vienna. Will had written him about his engagement and about his plan to remain in town all summer and devote himself strictly to business and the accumulation of funds; and this was the answer. There were a lot of nice complimentary things about me, with the warmest congratulations and good wishes; then the letter closed by saying: "I am very much pleased with your decision to remain in Cincinnati this summer. I myself have found it not at all bad if you take care of yourself, and there is no doubt that during the quiet months one can make and save considerable money by staying at home. I congratulate you on your strength of character." We really had a delightful summer at Fenton's after that.
My father had given me a very nice lot at the end of McMillan Street on the site of an old quarry, which commanded a fine view of the Ohio River and the surrounding country, and Mr. Taft and I determined to build a house on it which should be ready for us when we got back from our wedding trip. So the winter before our marriage was filled with architects' plans, contractors' estimates and all the other fascinating details of building, and we thought that we had finally settled upon a design that met with every requirement of good taste and modern comfort.
For our wedding trip, we went abroad, and I had my first taste of the foreign travel of which I had always dreamed. We crossed on the City of Chester which was the oldest, and therefore the cheapest ship of the Inman line. We chose her for the simple reason that her rates accorded with our means, but we found, much to our astonishment, that we were the only people on board who had deliberately selected her. Everybody else had been forced to take her because of some emergency or some mishap. One man had to miss the Germanic in order to give his dentist time to relieve a very troublesome tooth. Another man was called to court just as he was about to board the Britannic. Those were the proud ships of the Atlantic in those days and it was not at all difficult to understand why anybody should prefer them to the City of Chester, but it amused us greatly to hear the shamefaced excuses of our fellow passengers. My hus_-_photograph_-_page_16.jpg)
MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT AT THE TIME OF THEIR MARRIAGE
The trip was full of interest to us both. We spent the greater part of the summer in England and saw the sights of London and the cathedral towns in great detail. Our only trip on the Continent was through Holland to Paris. I remember that in Amsterdam I bought some old and rather large Delft plates. They wouldn't go into any trunk we had, so I had them carefully packed in a wicker hamper and this article became thereafter a part of our hand luggage, and was the occasion for a decided disagreement between my husband and me as to what the true object of travel was. He used to say that he "toted that blamed thing all around Europe and after all it arrived in Cincinnati with its contents in small pieces." Which was true. He had "toted" it all around Europe, but when we arrived in New York I entrusted it to an express company with the result that when we opened it we found its contents in such a condition that only an accomplished porcelain mender could put a sufficient number of pieces together to make what my husband always afterward referred to as "the memento of our first unpleasantness."
Our trip from Cincinnati to Cincinnati took just one hundred days and cost us just one thousand dollars, or five dollars a day each. I venture to say that could not be done nowadays, even by as prudent a pair as we were.
During a subsequent trip abroad, two years later, I was able to indulge my desire to hear music. We went to Beyreuth, to the Wagner festival, and heard Parsifal and The Meistersingers gloriously rendered; after which we went to Munich and attended operas and concerts until Mr. Taft rebelled. He said that he enjoyed a certain amount of music just as much as anybody, but that he did want to get something more out of European travel than a nightly opera and a daily symphony.
So—we went to Italy and saw Rome and Florence in true Baedecker style. When we arrived in Rome we opened our Baedecker and read that there was almost no foundation for Rome's awful reputation as an unhealthy place. "Rome is a very healthy place," said Baedecker, "at all times of the year except the first two weeks in August, when a visit there is attended with risk." We had arrived for the first two weeks in August!
When we came home from our wedding trip we found that our house was not yet completed, so we went to stay with Judge and Mrs. Taft for a month at the old house in Mt. Auburn. It was a nice old place, with about three acres of ground, but the air around it was just about as sooty as if it had been located down under the factory chimneys. Mt. Auburn ts on a sort of promontory which juts out into the city; it is on a level with the tops of the smoke stacks and it catches all the soot that the air can carry that far.
Judge and Mrs. Taft had come home from their European mission in time for our wedding. Judge Taft had been ill in St. Petersburg and had given his family a great deal of anxiety, but he was now settled down to the business of quiet recuperation and the enjoyment of well-earned rest.
My husband's father was "gentle" beyond anything I ever knew. He was a man of tremendous firmness of purpose and just as set in his views as any one well could be, but he was one of the most lovable men that ever lived because he had a wide tolerance and a strangely "understanding sympathy" for everybody. He had a great many friends, and to knew him was to know why this was so.
Mr. Taft's mother, though more formal, was also very kindly and made my visit to her home as a bride full of pleasure. The two, the father and mother, had created a family atmosphere in which the children breathed in the highest ideals, and were stimulated to sustained and strenuous intellectual and moral effort in order to conform to the family standard. There was marked serenity in the circle of which Judge and Mrs. Taft were the heads. They had an abiding confidence in the future of their children which strongly influenced the latter to justify it. They both had strong minds, intellectual tastes, wide culture and catholic sympathies.
Not long after we arrived my husband came to me one day with an air of great seriousness and said:
"Nellie, Father has got himself into rather a difficulty and I hope I can rely on you to help him out—not make it too hard for him, you know,—make him feel as comfortable about it as you can. The truth is he used to have a messenger at the War Department in Washington whom he was very fond of. He was a bright man—colored, of course—and he was very devoted to Father. Now this man called on Father down town to-day. He's here on a private car and Father says he's made a great success as a porter. Father got to talking to him, and there were lots of things they wanted to talk about, and besides the man said he would like very much to see Mother,—and Father, who was just about ready to come home to lunch said—right on the spur of the moment—you understand he didn't think anything about it—he said to this man, 'Come on home and have lunch with us.' He's downstairs now. Father came to me and said he had just realised that it was something of a difficulty and that he was sorry. He said that he could take care of Mother if I could take care of you. So I hope you won't mind."
As soon as I could control my merriment caused by this halting and very careful explanation, I went down to luncheon. I didn't mind and Will's mother didn't mind, but the expression on the face of Jackson, the negro butler, was almost too much for my gravity. I will say that the porter had excellent manners and the luncheon passed off without excitement.
We made a short visit at my mother's on Pike Street before we moved into our new house on McMillan Street; but we began the year of 1887 under our own roof which, though it was mortgaged, was to us, for the time being, most satisfactory.