Since our marriage my wife has generously acted as my secretary, having specially learned shorthand and typewriting in order to free me from carrying such a burden, and has helped me enormously ever since on this line. But lecture tours used to make me despair of keeping abreast of correspondence. I sometimes was forced to treat letters as Henry Drummond did—who allowed them to answer themselves—if I wished free mornings in which to visit the hospitals, just at the time that all their professional work was in progress. These clinics are invaluable and almost unique experiences. They persuaded me more than ever how much depends in surgery as well as in medicine on "the man behind the gun"; and that mere mileage is not the real handicap on members of our profession whose fields of work lie away from the centres of learning. They also imbued me with the profoundest spirit of respect for the leaders of the healing art.
To no one but myself did it seem odd that a plain Englishman should be invited to perform the function of best man at the wedding of the daughter of the President of the United States of America at the White House. The matter was never even noticed either in the press or in conversation. The only citizen to whom I suggested the anomaly merely said, "Well, why not?"
My long-time fellow worker and one of my best of friends, Francis B. Sayre, was to be married on November 25, 1913, to Miss Jessie Wilson. Her father, who, when first I had had the honour of his acquaintance, happened to be the President of Princeton University, was now the President of the United States. So we had all the fun of a White House wedding. Not less than fifty of our fishermen friends from Labrador and North Newfoundland were invited, and some members of our staff were present.
We started the wedding procession upstairs, and came down to the fanfare of uniformed trumpeters. Our awkwardness in keeping step, though we had rehearsed the whole business several times, only relieved the tension that must exist at so important an event in life.
Trying to dodge the reporters added heaps of fun, which I am sure that they shared, for they generally got the better of us; though the thrill of escape from the White House and Washington, so that the honeymoon rendezvous should not be known, was practically a victory for the wedding party. As it would never be safe to use the tactics again, I am permitted after the lapse of many years to give them away. As soon as dark fell, and while the guests were still revelling, the bride and groom were hustled into a secret elevator in the thickness of the wall, whisked up to the robing chambers, and completely disguised. Meanwhile a suitable camouflage of automobiles had arrived ostentatiously at the main entrance, to carry and escort the illustrious couple in fitting pomp to the great station. From the landing the couple were dropped direct to the basement to a prearranged oubliette. The password was the sound of the wheels of an ordinary cab at the kitchen entrance. The moments of suspense were not long. At the sound of the crush on the gravel a silent door was opened, two completely muffled figures crept out, and the conspirators drove slowly along round a few corners where a swift automobile lay panting to add liberté to égalité and fraternité.