Behind us in the theatre sat a man who seemed to recognize Mr. Harding, for I heard him speak Mr. Harding’s name and turned after awhile to look at him. Mr. Harding turned too later on, but said he did not know the man. I suggested that some day everybody would be turning to look at him—when he was President! In this connection I repeated to Mr. Harding what Woodrow Wilson had been quoted as having said the previous Friday night. “Well, I’ve got one over him!” Mr. Harding whispered to me, as the curtain rose, “I’m not tired and I am having a grand time!”
One night we went to see Al Jolson in “Sinbad, the Sailor,” at the Winter Garden. I was not particularly taken with the show and evidenced my impatience to leave during the finale. I pulled my wrap about my shoulders, picked up my gloves and paid no attention to the performance. “Where are you going, Nan?” Mr. Harding asked in gentle rebuke. If ever there was anyone thoughtful of others it was Warren Harding, and it is likely that, being a speaker himself, he wished to extend all possible courtesy and attentiveness to others who held the stage.
HOW HARDING LOOKED IN THE BAND
MARION, O.—This is how Candidate Warren G. Harding looked when, as a youth, he played a horn in his home-town band. Note the plumed hat, foxy buttons and epaulets of the uniform.
I am reminded in connection with these gay evenings of the many times Mr. Harding told me how proud he was as a youth to play in the local band in his very small home town of Caledonia, Ohio. He said he played the bass horn, and would chuckle over recollections of his vociferous contribution to the ensemble.
Despite the fact that I cut out and preserved pictures of him in his band uniform, I have always been unable to visualize a youthful Warren Harding in any capacity. He always seemed to me too dignified to have ever been less than the statesman I first beheld; yet he said that he felt far more eminently important and dignified as a member of the Caledonia Band than as United States Senator from Ohio!
Shortly after this, Mr. Harding invited me to Washington. He met me at the station and announced zestfully that he had secured the apartment of a friend of his with whom he sometimes played cards. I registered at the New Ebbitt Hotel, and he called for me there. The apartment to which he took me was not far from the New Ebbitt and we walked. He told me on the way over that it was quite a “cute little apartment” and he guessed it was all right for him to borrow it, although he knew the fellow to whom it belonged would undoubtedly come after him for some political favor as a result. When we entered the apartment, a walk-up, on the second or third floor, it seemed so dark, and when we found the room untidy and things in quite a mess, poor Mr. Harding was more than embarrassed. “Really, Nan, it is quite a nice place when it is fixed up,” he apologized, and I felt so sorry for him in his embarrassment. He never borrowed it again.
In January of 1919 Theodore Roosevelt died. Mr. Harding came over with many other notables to attend the funeral. I met him at the Biltmore Hotel. A good many of his friends and colleagues were standing about the lobby, looking very dignified and important in their formal clothes and top-hats. How stunning Mr. Harding looked! That time and once in the White House on Sunday morning were the only occasions on which I ever saw him “dressed up.” We dined at the Biltmore that evening, and as we passed through the aisle of tables in a dining-room which sparkled with atmosphere under glittering candelabra, I heard a woman say, “There goes Harding!” I told him this and he identified her as a friend with whom he sometimes played billiards in Washington.