“There was nothing that he enjoyed more than a social time with friends at dinner. He always entered into the spirit of the occasion and contributed his full share of merriment. And once aroused he showed a side of his character that few were acquainted with. He enjoyed jokes to the full measure, and was a pleasant tease. When he once had a joke on me he rung all the changes; and no one enjoyed a joke on himself more thoroughly than he did.
“In 1897, when I was a tenderfoot, recently arrived in Washington, he asked me to give up a dinner engagement with some gentlemen to fill up the table as an emergency man at a dinner to be given at the White House that night. I declined, saying I had a better thing—not knowing that an invitation from the White House was equivalent to a social command. This joke on me was a delight to him.
“When he was a guest at my house for several days, or a member of a house party, his flow of genial spirits began at the breakfast table and continued uninterrupted all day. He seemed to feel as if he were on a vacation, and had the joyous spirit of a big boy home from school, always looking after the comfort of others, with never, apparently, a thought for himself. An ideal home body was William McKinley, and the American fireside was a shrine of worship with him.
“At one of our house parties we had a flashlight photograph taken of the dinner guests. He was particularly fond of this dinner picture because it contained a splendid likeness of Mrs. McKinley.
“When McKinley laughed, he laughed heartily all over, and was a perfect boy in his enjoyment. In all the social visits to my home it was an inspiration to me to see the way he could throw off the cares of the day. It always made me feel twenty years younger to spend a social evening with him, and I cannot begin to measure the depth and value of this friendship, to me, entirely aside from his public career.
“He was never much inclined, I believe, to take an active part in athletics, though his simple, normal habits of life kept him always in excellent condition physically and mentally. He proved the enduring sturdiness of his frame by his hard service in the Civil War and by the tremendous amount of labour which he afterward put into the study and presentation of public questions. He was, of course, interested in the notable athletic contests that the college boys held, but it was as late as 1894 that he and I witnessed together our first game of football—a Princeton-Yale game at New York.
“It was a drizzling, cold day, but he watched every movement of the game from the clubhouse with as keen an interest as he gave to a debate in Congress.
“When some mysterious movement in a ‘pile up’ was made, he would turn and ask me about it, but I had to shake my head and confess it was my first game and that it was all Greek to me.
“He told me how he felt like the country boy who went to a college football game for the first time, to see the ‘real thing.’ When asked how he liked it, the country boy naïvely replied:
“‘They didn’t have no game; they got into a scrap and kept fightin’ all the time when they ought to have been playin ball.’