He had not told me his name, and his obvious reticence had piqued my curiosity. When I inquired of him who he was, he indicated that he did not care to disclose his correct name. On his finger, however, he wore a signet ring, rather an unusually good-looking one I thought, and I made out the initial “S.” “Mr. S.” I called him then, and he smiled and substituted the name “Scott.” So “Mr. Scott” it was during the remainder of his visit. He seemed to think I had selected the most God-forsaken, undesirable place in the world, and I did not blame him, for the mosquitoes were more than usually aggressive that evening. I had a lot of fun with him, and discovered to my delight that he had quite a sense of humor in the many suggestions he had for making Eagle Bay a passably habitable place for human beings who had small regard for where they lived!
The following Sunday in the paper I happened to see a picture of a man who, in this narrative, I shall call Tim Slade, chief secret service man and bodyguard to the President-elect, and in this newspaper likeness I identified the messenger who had come to me at Eagle Bay. In the same paper there was an excellent enlarged snapshot of Miss “Daisy” Harding and Mrs. Votaw, her sister, together in the garden of their father’s home at Marion, and I cut it out and have it now, framed.
My sister Elizabeth, writing from Chicago, kept me pretty well posted about the baby, but there were times when I felt I just must get back immediately to her. I managed to gain several pounds while in the mountains, and in early August, if I remember correctly, I returned to Chicago. I found the baby pink and white, like a peach blossom, and was delighted with Mrs. Woodlock’s fine care of her. She was getting prettier and prettier every day. And, oh, that Harding smile which captivated everyone who saw her!
50
July 22nd, 1920, Warren G. Harding formally accepted the nomination for the Presidency of the United States, delivering his acceptance speech at Marion, Ohio, to the thousands gathered in Garfield Park to hear him. I never had the privilege of hearing Mr. Harding in his supreme moments, though I bought all the available newspapers and thrilled second-handedly at his speeches. In the public utterances of my beloved hero were instanced variously the characteristics which I knew so well dominated his life movements, and I need not cite passages to illustrate the sincerity by which he seemed to be actuated in his every purpose. However, in the papers which I have retained, now becoming yellow and worn, as well as in my huge Harding scrapbook which contains clippings from many newspapers dating from the time of his senatorship to his death, I find marked passages which have moved me deeply and in which I have seen the character of the real Warren Harding. “These are the things I so love in him,” I think as I read them over. His humbleness, kindness, good will, generosity, sympathy, honor, trust in mankind, honesty, fidelity to friends—these qualities mark the Warren Harding the people love and revere. The concluding paragraph of his speech, accepting the Presidential nomination, is as follows:
“I would not be my natural self if I did not utter my consciousness of my limited ability to meet your full expectations, or to realize the aspirations within my own breast, but I will gladly give all that is in me, all of heart, soul, and mind, and abiding love of country, to service in our common cause. I can only pray to the Omnipotent God that I may be as worthy in service as I know myself to be faithful in thought and purpose. One cannot give more. Mindful of the vast responsibilities, I must be frankly humble, but I have that confidence in the consideration and support of all true Americans which makes me wholly unafraid. With an unalterable faith and in a hopeful spirit, with a hymn of service in my heart, I pledge fidelity to our country and to God, and accept the nomination of the Republican party for the presidency of the United States.”
All the editorial panegyrics which followed the unexpected and tragic death of Warren G. Harding might well have been based upon any one of the above ideals of service to his country and to his God. Adding three words to the shortest sentence in the paragraph quoted above, he could truthfully have said, “One cannot give more than one’s life.”
These inherent qualities of nobility in Warren Harding were readily discernible even to those who knew him slightly, but the friends who knew him intimately as a man as well as a President carry in their hearts the memory of sincerity and loyalty in the numberless manifestations of his service to others. And what more meetly parallels the above quoted paragraph, and others of similar manfulness, than the text upon which the President’s lips rested when he took the oath of office? This text, kissed by the President as a seal of his oath, is the eighth verse of the sixth chapter of Micah and reads: “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
The author, while employed by the National Republican Committee in campaign work in Chicago, in the fall of 1920