Two or three unkempt little children stood gazing wistfully up at the colorful array of sweets above them—children whose bed-hour should have been six or seven o’clock. Mr. Harding looked down at them and put his hand on one little fellow’s head.
“Why don’t you buy it?” he teased. I adored him when he talked to children. Their eyes grew big as they looked way up at him and smiled sheepishly. He handed them each a coin—a quarter apiece I think it was—and looked at me and winked.
Around Christmas time in 1918 I received a letter from Miss Daisy Harding, with whom I have always corresponded more or less regularly. After I had read it I enclosed it in one of mine to her brother Warren. He had given me $50 that Christmas, with which I had purchased the long-coveted mesh-bag of which I have spoken. In his reply to my letter he enclosed a letter which he had recently received from his sister Daisy in which she thanked him for his Christmas gift to her of $10. Miss Harding remembered having received this amount of money from him as a Christmas gift when I recalled it to her mind in June of 1925.
I remember hearing my mother tell how Mrs. Sinclair had told her that Warren Harding, upon being at their residence one Sunday morning when she was about to leave for church, had given her $25 to put in the collection basket. Although he did not attend the church Mrs. Sinclair attended, nor even attended his own church regularly, Mr. Harding was quick to recognize the good in any organization, religious or otherwise, and wanted to contribute to its progress. Warren Harding was one of the three kindest men I have ever known.
35
I have gotten away from my main story, but these things occur to me and I wish to set them down. Little things that happened, or that dropped, unconsciously perhaps, from Mr. Harding’s lips, often gave me clues as to how he felt about important matters concerning which we had no actual discussion.
In this connection, I remember well a dinner at the Manhattan Hotel early in 1918. Woodrow Wilson, then President, was making spectacular efforts which occupied front-page space. However, the newspaper headlines that night carried the latest news from the battle-front, and Mr. Harding’s eyes were heavy when he looked up at me. He was quiet for several seconds and his eyes went wet.
“The world’s in a bad way, Nan,” he said, shaking his head.
I myself had had no intimate contact with the war except through my friends, having had no relatives—at least no near relatives—who had gone over, and its grim horrors were not felt by me as deeply as those who had sent their dear ones to the front. In fact, the two years the United States was in the war were the two years I shall ever look back upon as the happiest of my life, as one cherishes the memory of precious hours with one’s sweetheart. And if I ever during that time voiced a desire to be of more active help in war-work, I was reminded by both Mr. Harding and my employer in the United States Steel Corporation that an employee of that Corporation, in view of the vast part steel played in the war, was doing his or her bit effectively.
Perhaps something of this was going through my mind as I watched Mr. Harding over the dinner-table. So far as I knew, he had no near relative “over there” either, but I was sure he was very close to the war situation as a United States Senator. His tone changed into one of severe criticism with his next remark.