The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 8
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 in a local theatre, a moving picture house. However, we girls continued to chum with the "best people" up to the time we left Marion, which was in 1915.
My mother had often thought she would like to do Chautauqua work, and it was in this connection that after father's passing she took occasion to consult Mr. Harding. He had had some experience in this line for I remember my mother took me one Sunday afternoon to hear him, and afterward allowed me to go up and shake hands with him and tell him how much I enjoyed his speech, for which hesitating utterance I received one of his loveliest smiles and a courtly "Thank you kindly, thank you kindly!"
It was upon the occasion of my mother's visit to Mr. Harding's office that Mr. Harding, inquiring how "Nan" was, and being assured of my continued admiration of him and any cause he sponsored, said ruminatively, "Mrs. Britton, maybe I can do something sometime for Nan." I walked for days in the clouds after mother had repeated this to me.
Before we broke up our housekeeping and left Marion, the people had elected Warren G. Harding United States Senator from Ohio. Even in the face of my own difficulties—being thrown upon the world with absolutely no equipment except a high school education and possibly some innate common sense—I felt an ecstatic elation over this victory for my beloved hero, and when Miss Abigail Harding "dared" me to go out to his house and congratulate him, it took less urging than courage to do so. Mrs. Harding came to the door in a pink linen dress. I braved her all right and asked if I might be permitted to speak to her husband. It was late afternoon and he was playing cards with his regular "bunch." He came out, and I shall never forget his smile—I do not think now it would be too much to say it was a smile of genuine appreciation, for so he assured me in later years—and I thrilled unspeakably under the touch of his hand. Mrs. Harding stood pat; it even seemed to me she curtailed any lengthy remarks Mr. Harding might have been tempted to make just to please me by drawing his attention to the gentlemen in the other room who were waiting for him. But she could have nothing to do with the pressure of a hand-shake which was Mr. Harding's seal of sincere cordiality to me.