The President and his father, Dr. George T. Harding
Dr. Harding with his horse and buggy on East Centre Street, Marion, Ohio, in front of the Star office
One reason why Miss Harding had come to Chicago was to purchase some new clothes and these she showed me upon that visit with her. They were lovely, but she needed nothing elaborate, in my estimation, to accentuate the natural loveliness which was hers.
I could not help deploring the change in her which was not a becoming change. I remember when I was a child, in Grace Cunningham’s eighth grade class, I was given a poem by her to recite upon Lincoln’s birthday. It was known as Lincoln’s favorite poem, and begins, “Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud!” The changed Daisy Harding brought this poem to my mind. I thought of the visits with her brother Warren in the White House—the President of the United States—yet to me he had not been changed a whit by this great honor; rather had he been made nobler and more humble. And it grieved me to see this instance of woman-change in Daisy Harding. But I loved her none the less.
I remember a passing remark which Miss Harding made to me upon the occasion of that visit. We were talking about my sister Elizabeth and Miss Harding remarked her surprise that Elizabeth and Scott with their music careers ahead of them (Scott a violinist and Elizabeth a pianist) should have taken a baby. It occurred to me then, as it has occurred to me dozens of times since in the distress of my own dilemma, that a more admirable thing they could not have done, even though the baby were taken from an orphan’s home, even though they had taken a child as a means of preventing their too deep engrossment in themselves and their “careers.” However, perhaps I am prejudiced in favor of taking care of the babies in this world.
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Winter—the last winter Warren Harding was ever to know on this earth—was fast coming on. My letters from him spoke his disappointment that he had not seemed able as yet to have me with him intimately in Washington. Around Christmas time he wrote and sent me $250 with which to buy my own Christmas present, besides having provided me liberally with other Christmas money. With $225 of that $250 I bought myself a little diamond and sapphire link bracelet, having indulged again in the erroneous belief that a new trinket might help to make me forget—at least while its newness lasted. This idea had become somewhat of a mania with me. Whenever I found myself eaten to distraction with too much thinking I would go out to purchase a gaily colored gown or a hat or a pretty pin, eventually giving it away perhaps, but easing myself at least during the moment of buying. I used to drag my darling baby around with me on these mad hunts for happiness, which, alas, never sparkles for the desolate even in caskets of diamonds and rubies.
I surfeited Elizabeth Ann with toys; there was nothing she wanted that I did not immediately buy for her, often to my sister’s disgust. But somehow I felt that my sorrow must also be Elizabeth Ann’s and that I must assuage her grief, in advance, by heaping frivolous toys upon her then, for I was sure she would be ultimately saddened by the knowledge that I could not have her for my own. It is easy to see that my mind was not functioning normally. I was becoming unable to view things evenly, and the slightest mental upheaval brought on magnified mental distortion, and a pronouncement of inevitable disaster; I rushed madly about to find a method of forestalling the doom which seemed to impend. But it was all so vain. Happiness for myself and my baby could not be bought in stores. I could not escape the thing that was to come.
Elizabeth Ann at four, while her mother was attending Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois