The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 173
Upon completion of the poem, "The Child's Eyes," before I had submitted it for publication, I sent Daisy Harding a copy, but I included no letter and made no comment. Under date of July 16th, 1926, I received a letter from her which in tone differed from some of her recent communications. It was more like the real Daisy Harding I know and love.
She wrote that as she finished reading my poem she both thought and said aloud, "beautiful!" "Perhaps it is in the full of poetry your talent lies. Real poetry must come through true inspiration and it is evident, very evident, in this one," she wrote. Other paragraphs were taken up with discussion of her doings, mainly, she wrote, in getting back her health. She said frankly that she was glad I appreciated the money she had been sending me each month because she denied herself to send it. The investments she had made had not turned out at all well and she and her husband were having "many blue hours" over them. Would I please send her Elizabeth's address? "I see where Alice Copeland has sued for divorce. Unfortunate," was a piece of information which interested me. Alice Copeland (Guthery) was a schoolmate of mine, daughter of a prominent Marion lawyer. She it was who said to me in November of 1920, when I went to Marion simultaneously with Mr. Harding's overwhelming-majority election, "Nan, do you remember when we were kids in school you used to say Warren Harding would be President?" Did I remember! . . . .
I was riding in Marion with this same Alice Copeland one day back in our Freshman high school days in 1910. Alice was driving the electric runabout which always identified her those days. We passed the Warren Harding home on Mt. Vernon Avenue. Alice observed my excitement with relish: Mr Harding sat with his wife on their front porch! Having passed the house once, she proceeded to turn around to pass it the second time. And, as Mr. and Mrs. Harding smiled again and waved, Alice said to me, "There he is, Nan! There's your hero! Look at him—quick! . . . . Nan, why don't you 'set your cap' for Mr. Harding anyway? You're so crazy about him . . . . and Mrs. Harding is sick most of the time!" Alice always meant these things to be amusing and we all accepted them in the spirit in which they were said. But I never forgot that, and one time I repeated it to Mr. Harding. He smiled and said, "Well, you 'got' me all right, you darling!"