Mrs. Belle Woodlock shed real tears when we took Elizabeth Ann away in the taxi, never again to return to her. Only once afterward did I see Mrs. Woodlock, and it had then been so long since I had heard myself called “Mrs. Christian” that she had to hail me several times, on the elevated platform downtown, before I realized she was calling to me. The baby had been with her, you see, over a year, and one grows attached to a baby in that length of time even though the parents hover near.

My sister Elizabeth continued for several weeks to play in the theatre where she led the orchestra, but Scott’s work permitted him to be home on certain evenings. Scott’s father, a hardy farmer, was visiting the Willitses about a week after the baby had arrived to make that her home, and both he and Scott were home one evening when the baby exhibited unusual lung force and much temperament. The reason therefor was doubtless because she had begun to cut her first difficult teeth. I shall never forget how that night she cried herself to sleep in my arms, her cheek, tear-wet, against my cheek, her tiny arms wrapped about my neck. This, of course, excited wonder from Mr. Willits, Sr., who, not knowing of course that I was the mother, marvelled at my “way with babies”!

In the spring of that year, 1921, possibly in April when most people move, we went over to the North Side. Dr. and Mrs. John Wesener, the latter a first cousin of Mr. Harding, also lived on Lafayette Parkway, down the street in an apartment house right on Lake Michigan. I have forgotten how we discovered this; perhaps Daisy Harding told us in a letter after Elizabeth or I wrote to her giving her our new address. Lafayette Parkway is but a block or so long and runs from West to East between Sheridan Road and Lake Michigan. It was at the Weseners’ that Daisy Harding visited when she came to Chicago, and it was when she made such a trip—in the summer of 1921, I think—that she first saw her brother Warren’s child, her niece, though, of course, not known to her then as such.

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I was at this time unable to walk a block without feeling the most inexpressible sensations of fatigue. I would waken in the morning, always being able to sleep all right—a sort of heavy, dead sleep—and could not stand on my feet unless I immediately had something to eat. At last I decided if I could but get into a hospital, anywhere, where I would not be allowed to get out of bed for weeks, and where I would be waited upon hand and foot, I might regain some of my lost strength. There was a minor operation which I had contemplated having for some time, and I thought I would go ahead and have it and thus get into a hospital. I consulted doctors about it and was headed definitely in that direction. I wrote to Mr. Harding. He sent me $450 for my expenses. He sent this of course in a plain envelope, as usual, enclosing it several times in smaller envelopes.

Elizabeth, however, who had tried all along to persuade me not to go to a hospital, finally did influence me to see her friend and family doctor, Dr. Frederic L. Barbour, a physician whom Scott had known for several years and who had skilfully treated Scott early in January of 1920, when the latter was seriously ill. Dr. Barbour had two offices; one on the South Side and one in the Marshall Field Building downtown. It was to the latter office that Elizabeth took me one noon. I shall never forget how I looked those days. My eyes were weak as a direct result of my general run-down condition and I wore tortoise-shell glasses most of the time. I was extremely thin, and I had no smile except certain times when I had been lying down for awhile and felt comparatively rested.

Dr. Barbour was young and cheerful. I think it did me good to look at him. He examined me thoroughly, took an X-Ray of my chest, and in the end told me I was in a very excellent condition to pass on under any anesthetic, refusing to treat me at all if I even so much as considered an operation of any kind. I became Dr. Barbour’s patient at once, giving up all thought of an operation, and remained under his care for many months. And he became one of my best friends. He was obliged among other things to treat me for a very weak condition resulting from lack of recuperation after my baby’s birth, and he himself guessed intuitively the whole of my story with very little information from me, even to the identity of Elizabeth Ann’s illustrious father.

My sister Janet was living with us at that time, and my brother “Doc” was also in Chicago and at our apartment frequently. It was difficult for us to hear each other correct Elizabeth Ann, who was now approaching the age when she had to be told right from wrong. It annoyed Scott, my brother-in-law, fully as much as it annoyed me, I am sure, to suffer her to be reprimanded first by one of us and then by the other, though I felt I was naturally the one to give orders in her behalf and the one whom she should obey above all others. This created a state of continual dissension and superinduced an added nervous condition in me which I was trying desperately with Dr. Barbour’s treatment to overcome. Therefore, I determined the only thing for me to do was again to yield my baby to the care of others and return to New York for the oncoming winter, allowing the Willits home to regain normal composure. I am sure this must have brought a great sense of relief to Scott and I know it made things far easier of accomplishment for my sister Elizabeth, in regard to both the baby and Scott.

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In June of that spring, 1921, I made my first trip to Washington. I had wanted so much to attend the inauguration on March 4th, but it did not seem wise for me then to undertake a trip which would doubtless prove physically detrimental to me; and there was much to do anyway, because my precious girl was with us; and, mother-like, I felt no one could handle her as well as I. So this June trip was the first I had made to Washington since the President’s formal installation in the highest office of the land.