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 know 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, not to say of conciliation 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.
CHAPTER II
CINCINNATI AND WASHINGTON
One day after we had been married less than a year my husband came home looking so studiously unconcerned that I knew at once he had something to tell me.
“Nellie, what would you think,” he began casually, “if I should be appointed a Judge of the Superior Court?”
“Oh, don’t try to be funny,” I exclaimed. “That’s perfectly impossible.”