I located at 314 West 72nd Street, in a room on the top floor of a studio apartment building. This structure has since been torn down and one of the newer type of tall apartment buildings substituted.
Mr. Harding had always encouraged me to write as much as possible, praising me for my letters which I wrote to him and which he said were the most graphic letters he had ever read. He used to tell me how he kept them under lock and key until he had absorbed every line of them, often taking them to the Senate Chamber, where he so often wrote to me, sitting apart from the other senators. “I am writing to you within hearing of epoch-making speeches,” or “I am writing near the scene of important legislative events,” he often said in his letters to me. And the knowledge that he had so often expressed what seemed to me was genuine pride in my writing encouraged me more than anything to strive for a certain goal that year at Columbia—that goal being a fair mark of excellence, of course.
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In October of that year, 1921, I went again to Washington. I do not remember at which hotel I stopped on each occasion, but on my various visits to Washington I have stopped at the Raleigh, New Ebbitt, Harrington, New Willard, Capitol Park, and, I think, at the Washington.
It seems to me it was upon this visit that Mr. Ferguson, another secret service man, met me at the station with his Ford coupe. I do not remember very distinctly whether it was after or before my conference with the President that Mr. Ferguson asked if I would like to occupy some of my time by driving. I thanked him and he took me for a drive out along the Potomac. He seemed curious about me and endeavored to “draw me out.” It gave me the keenest pleasure to pretend to misunderstand his questions and to be naively ignorant of the motive behind them. I am sure he must have despaired of being enlightened as to my identity, even though the President had given him my correct name.
I told Mr. Harding at that time that I felt he was very foolish to allow anyone but Tim Slade to meet me. I voiced my own faith in Tim’s trustworthiness and put it up to him direct.
“Don’t you trust Tim Slade, sweetheart?” I inquired.
I remember right where Mr. Harding stood, beside his desk, when I asked him this. He shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows as he answered, “Oh, measurably!” He told me he had tried to get Tim on that occasion, but he was either busy or out of the city—probably out of the city, for it always seemed to me Tim was at my beck and call, and I am sure he must have been more so at the President’s. But I managed to convince Mr. Harding that every new man he sent to me was just “one more,” and he agreed we might better stick to Tim. “I like Slade all right,” he conceded when I pressed him for an opinion. In fact, as time went on, I was sure an element of affection in Mr. Harding’s attitude toward the man who was our confidential intermediary. In any event, that was the one and only time that Mr. Ferguson met me in Washington, although he did come on one occasion to Chicago with some money when the President was unable to secure Tim Slade’s services. Tim himself reminded me of this in one of the many talks we have had during the past two years.
The President listened eagerly to the latest news I had received from my sister Elizabeth concerning our child, and upon these visits to Washington I would invariably take with me pencilled scratches from Elizabeth Ann, these constituting the “letters” she would occasionally send to me. Naturally the enthusiasm with which I began these recitals ended in tears for me, for I could not talk long with her father about her without crying. And Mr. Harding’s eyes would grow heavy with sadness as he turned the conversation into other channels and pulled out a ready handkerchief to dry my eyes. He would try so hard to bring a smile to my face!
“What did you say to Woodrow Wilson that made him laugh when he rode with you the day of your inauguration?” I inquired of him upon one such occasion of weeping.